Dreams: Nightmares The Myths & Facts About It!

When we go to bed at night we close our eyes and hope we have a great dream. What happens when the dream is not so pleasant? Instead you have a horrible dream called a nightmare. Nightmares can be very disturbing. When it comes to the human mind, it is hard for us to know why it acts a certain way, but we can always try to learn.

Everyone has had a nightmare one time or another maybe when they were a child or even as an adult. But what happens when the nightmares are constant? The fact is that nightmares are more frequent in children than in adults. According to a research done by Tucker Shaw, approximately 50% of the adult population have no nightmares. The rest only remember one or two per year. 5 to 10% remember nightmares once a month or more, but only a small percentage of people have nightmares that are disturbing enough to alter their lives.

According to Freud, nightmares relate to startling and painful experiences of the past, to events of infancy and even birth itself. These experiences left behind psychic problems that the helpless child could not solve at the time. In fact, any painful situation may leave a residue of grief, guilt and anxiety. In this view, built represents the energy used for continually repeating unpleasant thoughts, both in waking life and in dreams. We continue to dream about “unfinished” situations until we work through the guilt or anxiety. Freud called this a repetition compulsion. This pattern is illustrated vividly in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. When Lady Macbeth encourages Macbeth to murder the kind, at first she seems untroubled by her part in the murder. But her guilt shows itself in a nightmare, which finally made her lose her mind.

There is also physical illness that might produce nightmare. Although it is unclear whether illness itself or the stress that accompanies it is more important.

Also neurological disorders sometimes have been associated with nightmares. [Normally, epilepsy and postencephalitic Parkinsonism also mental illness and stressful events.] In c...

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...ugh an unusual landscape, realize that the experience is a dream, and decide to fly into the air to see the dream landscape from a new perspective.

As Sigmund Freud’s nightmare was able to retain “it’s imperishable value…by becoming a driving force in the making of a genius,” and as Carl Jung was initiated into the secrets of the earth by a nightmare and later brought light into this realm of darkness, so too have the nightmares of others heralded some meaningful change in their lives. For those with frequent nightmares, the use of the Lucid dream state could offer a unique opportunity to begin such a change.

Bibliography

A. Tucker, Shaw. Dreams. New York: 17th Street, 2000.

B. Standly, Krippner. Dreamscaping. Lowel House: Chicago, 1999.

C. Gordon, Sol. Psychology for you. New York: Syracuse, 1973.

D. Time life books. Dreams and Dreaming. 1990 Time life Books inc.