In this paper I hope to open a window to the vast and mysterious world of dreaming. To most people, information about dreams isn’t common knowledge. In researching this subject though, I found that everybody has and reacts to dreams, which are vital to your mental health. You will also find how you can affect your dreams and how they affect you.
All over the world different people, scientists, and civilizations have different dream theories. For instance, the Senoi tribe in Malaysia has a fascinating tradition of dream telling. Every morning the people of the tribe begin their day by discussing and interpreting their dreams with each other. The children, as they grow older, actually learn to control their dreams by simply wishing bad dreams into positive ones. It is observed that, by paying tribute their dreams, the people of the Senoi tribe learn to have faith in themselves. Also, they have very few, if any, mental problems “could working constructively with dreams be part of the answer” to mental issues? (Peirce)
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’s theory however, is only one of many such as Francis Crick’s. He believed that dreams were a way of mental “house cleaning” or getting rid of unneeded memories. He thought them useful because you don’t have to remember every small minute detail of your life.
...
... middle of paper ...
...esults. One interesting thing found, is that although it is though that dreams happen in a blink of an eye that they actually happen in a realistic time span (General Information). Another is that dreams generally take place in familiar settings and are random leftover thoughts from the previous day. What’s interesting though, is that during studies in which participants were woken on a regular basis, scientists found that the dreams remembered the following morning were “more coherent, sexier, and generally more interesting” than the dream descriptions that were collected in data for research. Most participants remembered very little of their dreams and only about the last fifteen minutes of dreaming before awoken.
In conclusion, I hope you learned something about dreams that you didn’t previously and that you now realize that it’s not “just a dream.”
...heory, reverse learning theory, and activation synthesis model, others focus on the mental exercise and simulations that dreams bring to us in the evolutionary theory of sleep. While many of the theories agree that dreams are a representation of ideas and thoughts from the unconscious mind, no single theory has been formed as the single primary authority on the matter of dreams despite more support for some of the theories. The fact of the matter is that despite the rampant research and discourse on the concept behind dreaming, these theories are merely speculations. But these speculations feed the curiosity on dreams and will hopefully lead to the expansion of dream analysis to not only better develop the current understanding of dreams, but also to help people around the world by possibly expanding dream analysis to become an early identifier of mental illness.
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...
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.
It is universally known that dreams are full of meanings and emotions. In Freud’s theory, all dreams are wish fulfillments or at least attempts at wish fulfillment. The dreams are usually presented in an unrecognizable form because the wishes are repressed. Freud proposes there are two levels in the structure of dreams, the manifest contents and the latent dream-thoughts. The manifest dream, a dream with understandable contents, is a substitute-formation that hides latent dream-thoughts, which are the abstract ideas in dreams. This translation of latent dream-thoughts to the manifest dream-content is defined by Freud as “dream-work”. Dream-work consists of certain types of transformation.
Many different cultures around the world and through out time feel that dreams are bigger; more important than our brains just continuing the thought process while we sleep. One example of cultural differences on why people dream, and what they mean; “The ancient Egyptians used dreams to make predictions about the future. They thought dreams were messages from the gods, which contained vital wisdom and prophecies,” (Turner). This allows researchers to think there may be deeper purposes for the brain to create these mini movies in peoples minds, while at rest. This paper will take a further look into two theories of why we dream, and what people dream about; emotions/trauma, and problem solving. Then taking a look at what lucid dreaming is, and controlling dreams and how they coincide with emotions and trauma, and with dreams being problem solving actions of the brain.
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.
When humans wake up from sleeping, we do not always recollect our dreams, yet the brain is still dreaming of what has actually happened. Dreams are formed through various processes, with the past being transformed into content that is thought to be not creative. Freud mentions in the On Dreams that dreams do not make things up that the psyche has not already experienced. As Freud states our dreams are not creative works, “…dream-work is not creative, that it develops no phantasies of its own, that is makes no judgements and draws no conclusions…” (Freud 162). In his terms, dream-work is known as the transformation process that dream-thought shifts to dream-content; consisting of both latent content and manifest
During the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, a psychologist named Sigmund Freud welcomed the new age with his socially unacceptable yet undoubtedly intriguing ideologies; one of many was his Psychoanalytic Theory of Dreams. Freud believed that dreams are the gateway into a person’s unconscious mind and repressed desires. He was also determined to prove his theory and the structure, mechanism, and symbolism behind it through a study of his patients’ as well as his own dreams. He contended that all dreams had meaning and were the representation of a person’s repressed wish. While the weaknesses of his theory allowed many people to deem it as merely wishful thinking, he was a brilliant man, and his theory on dreams also had many strengths. Freud’s theories of the unconscious mind enabled him to go down in history as the prominent creator of Psychoanalysis.
Dreams have always mystified humans. In ancient times, they were held in high regard as foretellers of major events. While some people still hold much stock in dream interpretations, most scientists have a more modern view of dreams. However you view them, it’s certain that we have much to learn about dreams, including why we dream.
I chose to research a topic that can relate to anybody: dreams. It is something people are less inclined to think of as socially applicable; rather, they think dreams are personal. Perhaps through further analysis and study, more applications for dreams in social life can be found. Dreams may tell a lot more about how a person functions in society than might be originally thought. In this paper, I will review some of the ways people interact with others in and through dreams.
« The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind ».1 While Freud already used hypnosis and free association with his patients, he soon felt the need to include the interpretation of dreams in psychoanalysis as well. Freud decided he would developped his 'theory of dreams' to go further in his analysis. According to Freud, dreams allow unconscious desires, fears or emotions to express themselves in a disguised way. Dreams are an expression of wish fulfilment communicating through symbols.
Dreams are mental images and emotions during sleep that may also have sounds and it can be confusing and surprising at times. In Freud’s earliest writings in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), he insisted that dreams are “the royal road to knowledge of activities of the unconscious mind”. This means dreams offer a means of understanding walking experience. According to Freud, it is important and meaningful to understand our dreams. Hence, Freud identified two types of content in our dreams, that is the manifest and the latent content.
Other theories just state that dreams help with memory formation, problem-solving, or just a random brain activation. Sigmund Freud, who developed the psychological discipline of psychoanalysis, wrote about dream theories and interpretations in the early 1900s. “Sigmund Freud believed dreams are a window into our
The Psychodynamic view of dreaming suggests that the content in our dream is symbolic of something. Also, that the content in our dreams are based on unconscious desires as well as internal conflict.
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.