Keep Dreaming Dreams, according to the Webster Dictionary, are a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during the state of unconsciousness (sleep). In this essay, one will come to understand what dreams are, how they can be linked to medical illnesses, why we dream and, what nightmares are. What are Dreams? Long before any relevant studies were made, people believed that dreams were a sort of communication passageway between the Earth and the world of the gods. In fact, the Greeks and Romans both believed that dreams contained powers to a prophecy of some sort. It was not until the end of the 19th century that modern investigations for dreams began by Sigmund Freud. Freud believed that dreams allowed …show more content…
It was not until 1953 that the theory was more enhanced by the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. REM sleep according to Joseph Nordqvist is "one of the five stages of sleep that most people experience nightly. It is characterized by quick, random movements of the eyes and paralysis of the muscles". Going back to Mark Katz passage, dreams have been recognized to give forth the presence of illness. For instance, "prospective studies have shown that among men dreams of death, and among women dreams of separation, correlate with worse clinical outcomes independent of the disease, and with the severity of cardiac dysfunction in patients with cardiac disease. Furthermore, dreams about forgetting and issue or item is stated to reflect brain atrophy where as a migraine can reflect by …show more content…
Many researchers such as the neurobiological theory, as noted above, states that dreams have no actual purpose or meaning. Other researchers, like Sigmund Freud, say that dreams are necessary for our emotional, mental, and physical health. WebMD states that “studies have shown the importance of dreams to our health and well-being. In one study, researchers woke subjects just as they were drifting off into REM sleep”. In that study, the researchers found that the people who were interrupted as they drifted to REM sleep experienced an increase in tension, anxiety, depression, difficulty concentrating, lack of coordination, weight gain, and lastly tendency to hallucinate. This lead to many expert researchers to think that dreams exist in order to help solve problems that are troubling us in our daily lives, incorporate memories and as well as, processing emotions. In other words, “if you go to bed with a troubling thought, you may wake with a solution, or at least feel better about the
In the early 1900s, Sigmund Freud proposed that dreams serve as a gateway between a dreamers’ conscious and his subconscious thoughts (Mccurdy, 1946). Many ideas and information were condensed into a single dream. The dream displaced important parts and insignificant parts of the dream to confuse the dreamer. Certain objects would be introduced into the dream to symbolize the embryonic substance of the dream (Sprengnether, 2003). The dreamer would then comprehend the dream, thus generating the content of th...
A common definition of dreams according to “Patterns for College Writing” is “the symbolic representation of mental states”, but this sparse definition does not begin to encompass the complex mechanisms behind dreams and its effects on human culture around the globe. Dreams have long been the topics of folklore and urban legends. Since human beginnings, people have sought to uncover the origin of dreams. The ancient Greeks believed dreams came from the God Oneiroi. The Chinese believes that dreams happened when the hun or spirit leaves the body for the land of the dead. The Ishi Indians believed that dreams were sacred messages from the Gods. Yet even now, with the current technological and intellectual advancements, scientists and psychoanalysts have still to find the true reasons and meanings of these dreams. Some argue that dreams are the products of overactive subconscious minds while others argue that dreams are solely randomized emotions from the limbic system during sleep. Despite these contrasting theories, the truth of the matter is that the topic of dreams and the reasons behind them remain a mystery.
What is a dream? A dream is number of events and sensations that pass through the mind while sleeping. Sleep is not a break for your mind, but it is a state of consciousness (Turner, 2012, 1). People may lose their sensor skills when they are unconscious, yet the mind is running with full ability until the end of time. What is sleep? Sleep is a natural period in which one loses complete consciousness (Turner, 2012, 1). An average human spends one third of their life sleeping. Sleep is a basic need for the health of the human body, yet our mind does not truly rest like the rest of our body. Dreams have always been a mystery in the historical world, but it has been known dreams can be understood as events in another objective world. Dualism is
Have you ever woken up feeling like you’ve been to the end of the world and back, yet never left your bed? Or maybe you might have had all your worst fears realized when you were asleep? In that case, you were probably dreaming. Dreams are a “series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep” (The American Heritage High School Dictionary, 2004). Everyone has about three to seven dreams a night, but it has been estimated that we forget up to 95 percent of them ( Stevens 2011). Although no one really knows why we dream every night, it’s more likely than not a way for our brain to help us solve problems.
The history of dreaming began in the early centuries. “Dreams were often considered prophetic” (Comptons by Britannica). That means that dreams were seen as a message from the gods. Thousands of years ago, “Greek sick people slept in temples in order to receive dreams that would heal them” (Kantrowitz, Babara; Springen Karen). Current dream science started at the end of the 19th century. Dreams were seen as a kind of “desires” (Kantrowitz; Springen) stemming from childhood. Scientists still don’t know for sure why we are dreaming and what are dreams made of; howe...
It is very important that people dream if they want to remain in good health. Sleepers can cycle through five stages of sleep continuously throughout the night, one of the most important being Rapid Eye Movement (REM). REM sleep can last for up to five minutes at a time, and is entered multiple times throughout sleep. On the other hand, the brain stem, which controls a person’s emotions, memory, and desires, is very active during sleep. However, the “reasoning brain” is shut down. A person’s brain also cuts off all signals from the senses and blocks messages sent to the muscles, which prevents someone from acting out his or her dreams (Andre-Clark). Dreams occur during the REM phase, the most restful time of sleep. For this reason, scientists have concluded that dreaming is beneficial to an individual’s health. Robert J. Hoss, author of Dream Language, states, “dreaming is...
Dreams are series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep. Dreams occur during a certain stage of sleep known as REM. Several different psychologists, including Freud and Hobson, have studied dreams. Psychologists have provided many theories as to what dreams are and the meanings behind them.
Along with tradition, there are also many theories about dreams. Sigmund Freud, the first psychologist to study dreams in-depth, hypothesized that dreams were just subconscious thoughts. He believed that dreams show wants and thoughts in symbolic form that aren’t acceptable on a conscious level. He used the term manifest content to describe the contents of dreams, and the term latent content as the concealed meanings behind symbolic dreams.
Freud also discusses the beliefs of early man, as dreams were connected to demons, gods and mythical deities. Dreams were perceived to be of a supernatural nature in primitive times and dreams were believed to portend the future.
Oprah Winfrey once said, “The best thing about dreams is that fleeting moment, when you are between asleep and awake, when you don't know the difference between reality and fantasy, when for just that one moment you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality, and it really happened.” But, what actually is a dream and what do dreams really have to do with one’s everyday life? In essence, a dream is a series of mental images and emotions occurring during a slumber. Dreams can also deal with one’s personal aspirations, goals, ambitions, and even one’s emotions, such as love and hardship. However, dreams can also give rise to uneasy and terrible emotions; these dreams are essentially known as nightmares.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, dream is defined by a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring involuntarily in a person’s mind during certain stages of sleep. Dreams have fascinated humans since the beginning of time. The recorded history of dream interpretation dates back to 3000-4000 B.C. with the Sumerians in Mesopotamia. They documented their dreams on clay tablets. People back then saw the dream world as an extension of reality, but that it was a more powerful realm. Furthermore, they believed that when they dream, their souls would leave their body during sleep and travel to the dream world.
What is a dream? Why do we have dreams? Do dreams have deeper meaning in our lives? The answers to these questions have eluded and intrigued many psychologists throughout history and have sparked my interest as well. As an avid and vivid dreamer I have often found myself wondering what the true meanings to my dreams were. So what are dreams? “Strictly speaking, dreams are images and imagery, thoughts, sounds and voices, and subjective sensations experienced when we sleep.”1 Even after thousands of years of research, psychologists have still not come to an agreed answer on why we dream. There are as many opinions out there as there are individual dreams. Some psychologists believe dreaming is simply the minds way of distracting itself from outside information during sleep to allow people to get deep rest. Others such as Dr. Eric Hartman suggest dreams serve almost as a psychotherapy in which the brain can make connections between different emotions and thoughts in a safe protected environment. Do dreams have any direct correlation to everyday events and experiences? Are they meant to aid individuals in understanding and interpreting their world around them?
During prescientific days, dreams were interpreted as ‘manifestations’ of a ‘higher power’. Since the introduction of psychology, dreams have had 4 distinct interpretations. The first interprets dreams as a “liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature”. The second interprets dreams as “accidental disturbances from ‘internal organs’. The third interprets dreams as a foretelling of the future. The last interpretation is Freud’s. He interprets dream as an expression of subconscious desires.
Despite the large amount of time we spend asleep, surprisingly little is actually known about sleeping and dreaming. Much has been imagined, however. Over history, sleep has been conceived as the space of the soul, as a state of absence akin to death, as a virtual or alternate reality, and more recently, as a form of (sub)consciousness in which memories are built and erased. The significance attributed to dreams has varied widely as well. The Ancient Greeks had surprise dream encounters with their gods. Native Americans turned to their dreams for guidance in life. Shamans dreamed in order to gather information from the spirits.
The sleep cycle comes in a multi-stage cycle. All in all there are five cycles. The first four of the stages is where there is non-rapid eye movement (NREM). As the fifth stage occurs, that is where rapid eyes moment (REM) happens. Nightmares almost always occur in the second half of a persons sleep and it is always followed with an awakening of the individual even if the person doesn’t remember waking up during the night. Nine times out of ten, when people’s brain can’t handle what is going on during the rapid eye movement stage, they wake up very panically and are also very aware of their surroundings.