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.
Dreams are incredible events that occur to each of us every single night. From lucid dreaming to nightmares, they’ve had a huge impact on life as we know it today, yet we’ve barely scratched the surface on knowing how they work and what they mean. Maybe it’s our brain trying to solve our life’s problems, or maybe it’s just a mess of thoughts and experiences from the past few days. No one really knows, and that’s why they’re so compelling.
The average person spends over one-third of their life sleeping, and over this period of time he or she can have over 1,825 dreams (Wicklinski). By definition, dreams are mental images, thoughts, or emotions that are experienced while sleeping. In the beginning, dreams were thought to be messages sent from the gods or spirit world. Researchers now have many theories explaining why people dream. Many of these theories explain that dreams can resemble an individual’s sensory experiences or even secret wishes. All people dream, but only 42% of people can recall their dreams from the night before (“Dreams”). The study of dreams is a topic that is constantly being debated by researchers for many reasons. Dreaming is important because it can impact people’s health, provide insight into what they are feeling, and reveal information about their behavior.
Many people dream, but most do not know what they mean and why. One dictionary definition says dreams are a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep. But there is more to dreams than one phrase. Some studies have shown that
Psychology, neuroscience try to explain them, 2012). He studied dreams to better understand aspects of personality as they relate to pathology. Freud believed that every action is motivated by the unconscious at a certain level. In order to be successful in a civilized society, the urges and desires of the unconscious mind must be repressed. Freud believed that dreams are manifestations of urges and desires that are suppressed in the unconscious. Freud categorized the mind into three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. When one is awake, the impulses if the id are suppressed by the superego, but during dreams, one may get a glimpse into the unconscious mind, or the id. The unconscious has the opportunity to express hidden desires of the id during dreaming. Freud believed that the id can be so disturbing at times that the id’s content can be translated into a more acceptable form. This censor leads to a sometimes confusing and strange dream image. According to Freud, the reason one may struggle to remember a dream is because the superego protects the conscious mind from the disturbance of the unconscious mind (Dream Theories,
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.
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.
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.
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.
Usually when you end up drifting off to sleep, you fall into a deep sleep and begin to experience a so called dream.” However, most children, and even some adults, experience some even more terrifying so called dreams. These dreams are called nightmares. Nightmares have been occurring in people’s sleep for hundreds of years. People have been interested in them for centuries and they have quite an interesting past to them.
Dreaming has always been more of a controlled thing. In a way, dreams can determine what he want to eat, what they want to wear, or even who he may be marrying one day. An Australian doctor has found that dreams are not messages from the spirits but dreams are messages from ourselves (Andre-Clark). In most cases dreams do reflect reality, because dreams are communications from yourself rather trying to contact a person through their dreams, and tell them something that may happen in the future. Dreams may or can reflect things that have happened to anyone. Dreams do not say anything about the future nor predict anything. Dreams may comfort someone or help them understand something that has happened to them in the past.
First, let examined the definition of dream according to Sigmund Freud “dream is the disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish. Dreams are constructed like a neurotic symptom: they are compromises between the demands of a repressed impulse and the resistance of a censoring force in the ego” (Freud, 28). This simple means that all dreams represent the fulfilment of a wish by the dreamer. Dreams are the mind way of keeping an individual asleep and to digest and work out all that we have going on inside our brains, the negative, positive, fear and unclear thoughts and actions. This set the framework for dream work. Freud also stresses that even anxiety dreams and nightmares are expressions of unconscious desire. Freud further went on to say that, “the general function of dreaming is to fending off, by a kind of soothing action, external or internal stimuli which would tend to arose the sleeper, and thus of securing sleep against interpretation” (Freud, 28). With this, it shows that a dreamer can take apart his dream and analysis it, if he or she remembers, once conscious.
...eams has intrigued and puzzled society and psychologists for the entirety of human existence. Although we have a better understanding today because of influential psychologists such as Freud and Hall, we still do not have any concrete reasoning for or complete agreement on dream’s true purpose. Some people side with the Freudian ideals of dreams as a practical necessity for existence while others side with Hall’s opinion that dreams serve as learning devices. After completing my research I believe that dreams not only serve both those purposes, but most likely have many more purposes and roots as well. The complexity of and intricacy of dreams leads me to believe they are not meaningless exercises performed by the brain, but deeply meaningful and useful keys to our existence. I think there are many more secrets to be unlocked and revealed by the studying of dreams.
All of us dream, several times at night. It is believed by some that we sleep in order that we may dream. Dreams can come true if somebody makes them true, as the saying goes, “A dream is just a dream, unless you make it come true”. Dreams provide us the actual picture of our thoughts. Dreams may tell us about any physical event which took place with us or which is going to happen with us. The dream is trying to inform the dreamer about his condition in any walk of life. Basically, we can dream about anything logical or illogical, fictious or non-fictious and reasonable or unreasonable.