Dream

Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes: The Dream

A 'dream' is the experience of a sequence of images, sounds, ideas, emotions, or other sensations during sleep, especially REM sleep.

Dreams have long been one of the most puzzling aspects of consciousness that mankind possesses. Both religion and science have tried for years to define what dreams are, where they come from and what they mean, but the process of dreaming and the dreams dreamt remain a mystery. The events of dreams are often impossible, or unlikely to occur, in physical reality: they are also outside the control of the dreamer. The exception to this is known as lucid dreaming, in which dreamers realize that they are dreaming, and are sometimes capable of changing their dream environment and controlling various aspects of the dream.

Cultural/Religious Perspectives

Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337): Legend of Saint Joachim, Joachim's Dream

Long before science and psychology, religion and cultural beliefs were developed to explain the dream phenomena. Dreams were thought to be part of a spiritual world, and were seen as messages from the gods. The Abrahamic faiths, Christianity, Islam and Judaism believed that there were two sources of dreams: God and Satan. Dreams are prolific in the Bible, Torah and Qur'ān. Sometimes, these dreams are messages from God, such as when Saint Joseph, the husband of Mary, when the Angel Gabriel spoke to him in a dream and told him that the baby Mary was carrying was the Son of God. After the visit of the Three Wise Men to them in Bethlehem, an angel appeared to him and told him to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt for their safety. The angel appeared again in a dream to tell him when it was safe to return to Israel. Other times people given more obscure messages that were meant to be interpreted. Both Jacob and Daniel are all given the ability to interpret dreams by God. Likewise Joseph was given the power to interpret dreams and act accordingly, which he did for the Pharaoh of Egypt, which set in motion the circumstances for the story of Exodus.

Jacob's dream of a ladder of angels

Ancient Buddhism taught that dreams were the mental projections of a person's desires and fears, an illusory construct developed out of each person's attachment to the illusory world of waking consciousness. Tibetan Buddhism took the idea one step further, and taught that the dream state was actually one of the bardos, or transition states of conscious that was akin to the spiritual state a person goes through when they die; hence, developing consciousness within this the bardo-dream state would help prepare someone for the ultimate transition in death. In India, scholars such as Charaka (300 B.C.E.) had a similar take on dreams, believing that they were the product of the senses and natural make-up of a person.

Shamanism in various cultures saw dreams and dream-like states as connections to worlds and realms of the spiritual. Although there were hundreds of different shamanistic traditions, generally, dreams were considered by most to be alternate states of consciousness were as people could visit different spiritual realms, engage in spiritual and physical healing, commune with deities and spirits as well as obtain special knowledge and abilities.

Psycho-dynamic interpretation of dreams

Before the rigors of biology and neurology were applied to the dream riddle, psychology developed its own theory on what dreams were. Both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were the first to identify dreams as an interaction between the unconscious and the conscious. They also assert together that the unconscious is the dominant force of the dream, and in dreams it conveys its own mental activity to the perceptive faculty. While Freud felt that there was an active censorship against the unconscious even during sleep, Jung argued that the dream's bizarre quality is an efficient language, comparable to poetry and uniquely capable of revealing the underlying meaning.

Fritz Perls presented his theory of dreams following the holistic nature of gestalt therapy. Dreams are seen as being projections of parts of oneself. Often these are parts that have been ignored, rejected or even suppressed and there is a scientific proof for this. One aim of gestalt dream analysis is to accept and reintegrate these. According to Perls, the dream needs to be accepted in its own right - not broken down and analyzed out of existence.

Science of Dreams

There is no universally agreed-upon biological definition of dreaming. General observation shows that dreams are strongly associated with REM sleep. REM sleep is the state of sleep in which brain activity is most like wakefulness, which is why many researchers believe this is when dreams are strongest, although it could also mean that this is a state from which dreams are most easily remembered. During a typical lifespan, a human spends a total of about six years dreaming. (which is about 2 hours each night It is unknown where in the brain dreams originate — if there is such a single location — or why dreams occur at all.

Discovery of REM

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In 1953 Eugene Aserinsky discovered REM sleep while working in the lab of his Doctor of Philosophy advisor Nathaniel Kleitman. While observing sleepers for Kleitman's sleep lab, Aserinsky noticed the eyes beneath the subjects' eyelids seemed to be fluttering. He proposed studying these eye movements to Kleitman, who agreed, suggesting that Aserinsky use a polygraph machine to record changes in the brain. During these sessions observing sleepers, Aserinsky began to notice patterns in the brain waves of the volunteers. During one session he awakened a subject who was crying out in his sleep during REM and confirmed an earlier hunch that dreaming was occurring. In 1953 Kleitman and Aserinsky published the ground-breaking study in Science.

In 1976 J. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarly proposed a new theory that changed dream research, challenging the previously held Freudian view of dreams as subconscious wishes to be interpreted. The activation synthesis theory asserts that the sensory experiences are fabricated by the cortex as a means of interpreting chaotic signals from the pons. They propose that in REM sleep, the ascending cholinergic PGO (ponto-geniculo-occipital) waves stimulate higher midbrain and forebrain cortical structures, producing rapid eye movements. The activated forebrain then synthesizes the dream out of this internally generated information. They assume that the same structures that induce REM sleep also generate sensory information.

Role of forebrain

Hobson's 1976 research suggested that the signals interpreted as dreams originated in the brain stem during REM sleep. However, research by Mark Solms suggests that dreams are generated in the forebrain, and that REM sleep and dreaming are not directly related. While working in the neurosurgery department at hospitals in Johannesburg and London, Solms had access to patients with various brain injuries. He began to question patients about their dreams and confirmed that patients with damage to the parietal lobe stopped dreaming; this finding was in line with Hobson's 1977 theory. However, Solms did not encounter cases of loss of dreaming with patients having brain stem damage. This observation forced him to question Hobson's prevailing theory which marked the brain stem as the source of the signals interpreted as dreams. Solms viewed the idea of dreaming as a function of many complex brain structures as validating Freudian dream theory, an idea that drew criticism from Hobson.

Continual-activation theory

Combining Hobson's activation synthesis hypothesis with Solms's findings, the continual-activation theory of dreaming presented by Jie Zhang proposes that dreaming is a result of brain activation and synthesis; at the same time, dreaming and REM sleep are controlled by different brain mechanisms. Zhang hypothesizes that the function of sleep is to process, encode and transfer the data from the temporary memory to the long-term memory, though there is not much evidence backing up this so-called "consolidation." NREM sleep processes the conscious-related memory (declarative memory), and REM sleep processes the unconscious related memory (procedural memory).

Zhang assumes that during REM sleep, the unconscious part of a brain is busy processing the procedural memory; meanwhile, the level of activation in the conscious part of the brain will descend to a very low level as the inputs from the sensory are basically disconnected. This will trigger the "continual-activation" mechanism to generate a data stream from the memory stores to flow through the conscious part of the brain. Zhang suggests that this pulse-like brain activation is the inducer of each dream. He proposes that, with the involvement of the brain associative thinking system, dreaming is, thereafter, self-maintained with the dreamer's own thinking until the next pulse of memory insertion. This explains why dreams have both characteristics of continuity (within a dream) and sudden changes (between two dreams).

Hippocampus and memory

A 2001 study showed evidence that illogical locations, characters, and dream flow may help the brain strengthen the linking and consolidation of semantic memories. These conditions may occur because, during REM sleep, the flow of information between the hippocampus and neocortex is reduced. Increasing levels of the stress hormone Cortisol late in sleep (often during REM sleep) cause this decreased communication. One stage of memory consolidation is the linking of distant but related memories. Payne and Nadal hypothesize that these memories are then consolidated into a smooth narrative, similar to a process that happens when memories are created under stress.

Dream content

Antonio de Pereda: The Knight's Dream (1640)

From the 1940s to 1985, Calvin S. Hall collected more than 50,000 dream reports at Western Reserve University. In 1966 Hall and Van De Castle published The Content Analysis of Dreams in which they outlined a coding system to study 1,000 dream reports from college students. It was found that people all over the world dream of mostly the same things. Hall's complete dream reports became publicly available in the mid-1990s by Hall's protégé William Domhoff allowing further content analysis.

Emotions

The most common emotion experienced in dreams was anxiety. Negative emotions are more common than positive feelings. Some ethnic groups like the Yir Yiront showed an abnormally high percentage of dreams of an aggressive nature. The U.S. ranks the highest amongst industrialized nations for aggression in dreams with 50 percent of U.S. males reporting aggression in dreams, compared to 32 percent for Dutch men.

Gender differences

In men's dreams 70 percent of the characters are other men, while a female's dreams contain an equal number of men and women. Men generally had more aggressive feelings in their dreams than women, and children's dreams did not have very much aggression until they reached teen age. These findings parallel much of the current research on gender and gender role comparisons in aggressive behavior. Rather than showing a complementary or compensatory aggressive style, this study supports the view that there is a continuity between our conscious and unconscious styles and personalities.

Sexual content

Sexual content is not as prevalent in dreams as one might expect. The Hall data analysis shows that sexual dreams show up no more than 10 percent of the time and are more prevalent in young to mid teens.

Recurring dreams

While the content of most dreams is dreamt only once, most people experience recurring dreams—that is, the same dream narrative is experienced over different occasions of sleep. Up to 70% of females and 65% of males report recurrent dreams.

The Soldier's Dream of Home

Common themes

Content-analysis studies scientists have identified recurring themes in dreams. Common reported themes have been shown to be: themes relating to school, being chased, sexual experiences, falling, arriving too late, a person now alive being dead, flying, and failing an examination. 12% of people dream only in black and white.

Other associated phenomena

Lucid dreaming

Lucid dreaming is the conscious perception of one's state while dreaming. The occurrence of lucid dreaming has been scientifically verified. Many people, including scientists and psychologists have started to acknowledge the benefits of lucid dreaming. If developed as a skill, a person who is able to achieve lucid dreaming can often explore the complexities of their sub-conscious, helping to deal with past trauma, fears, anxieties and can promote mental health.

Dreams of absent-minded transgression

Dreams of absent-minded transgression (DAMT) are dreams wherein the dreamer absentmindedly performs an action that he or she has been trying to stop (one classic example is of a quitting smoker having dreams of lighting a cigarette). Subjects who have had DAMT have reported awaking with intense feelings of guilt. Some studies have shown that DAMT are positively related with successfully stopping the behavior, when compared to control subjects who did not experience these dreams.

Dreaming as a skeptical argument

While one dreams a non-lucid dream, one will not realize one is dreaming (one classic example is a child dreaming that they are using the toilet and end up wetting the bed because they don't realize that they are in a dream). This has led philosophers to the idea that one could be dreaming right now (or at least one cannot be certain that one is not dreaming). First formally introduced by Zhuangzi and popularized by Hindu beliefs, the dream argument has become one of the most popular skeptical hypotheses. Out of the major religions and philosophies in the world, Buddhism makes most use of this argument.

Recalling dreams

Many humans have difficulty recalling their dreams. Researchers refer to these types of dreams as "no content dream reports." It is thought that such dreams are characterized by relatively little affect. Factors such as salience, arousal and interference play a role in dream recall and dream recall failure. Many authorities on the issue believe that a useful technique to improve dream recall is to keep a dream journal. Stephen LaBerge, author of Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, also suggests that one must lie perfectly still upon awaking from a dream, not letting concerns of the day occupy the mind. It is quite common to not remember much of what has just been dreamed, but LaBerge maintains that with sufficient concentration, the entire dream may be recalled. Another sufficient method to recall a dream is to wake at least 5 minutes after dreaming.

Déjà vu

The theory of déjà vu dealing with dreams indicates that the feeling of having previously seen or experienced something could be attributed to having dreamt about a similar situation or place, and forgetting about it until one seems to be mysteriously reminded of the situation or place while awake.

Dream incorporation

In one use of the term, "dream incorporation" is a phenomenon whereby an external stimulus, usually an auditory one, becomes a part of a dream, eventually then awakening the dreamer. There is a famous painting by Salvador Dalí that depicts this concept, titled "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening" (1944).

The term "dream incorporation" is also used in research examining the degree to which preceding daytime events become elements of dreams. Recent studies suggest that events in the day immediately preceding, and those about a week before, have the most influence .

Further Readings

• Crick, F. & Mitchinson, G. (1983) "The function of dream sleep." Nature 304, pp. 111-114.
• Tarnow, E. (2003) "How Dreams And Memory May Be Related." Neuro-Psychoanalysis 5(2), pp. 177-182.
• Van de Castle, Robert L. (1994). Our Dreaming Mind. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0345396669. 
• Artemidorus, The Oneirocritica of Artemidorus, University Microfilms, New Haven (1971).
• Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, Avon, (1980).
• Carl Jung, Dreams, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey (1974).
• Bernard Dieterle, Manfred Engel (ed.): The Dream and the Enlightenment / Le Rêve et les Lumières. Paris: Honoré Champion 2003; ISBN 2-7453-0672-3.
• Clara E. Hill, Working with Dreams in Psychotherapy (1996) ISBN 1-57230-092-2
• Koulack, David "To Catch A Dream: Explorations of Dreaming," SUNY Press, New York (1991).
• Jayne Gackenbach, Stephen LaBerge, Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain: Perspectives on Lucid Dreaming, Plenum Publishing Corporation, New York (1988).
• Acharya, Pt. Shriram Sharma, Sleep, Dreams and Spiritual Reflections (2000)
• Patricia L Garfield, Creative Dreaming (1974) ISBN 0-671-21903-0
• Will Phillips, Every Dreamer's Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding and Benefiting From Your Dreams, ISBN 1-57566-048-2, Totonada Press (1994)
• Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, Dream Yoga and the Practice of Natural Light, Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, New York (1992).
• Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, New York (1998).
• Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming, Harper Collins (1993)

External links

• A theory on the relationship between sleepwalking and hypnosis
• Dreams at the Open Directory Project.
• The International Association for the Study of Dreams
• What Dreams Are Made Of, article from msnbc.com's Newsweek.
• Content Analysis Explained The complete Calvin S. Hall / Robert Van de Castle coding system.
• The Epistemology of Descartes (fulltext) Classic philosophy on the difference between the real and the dream world.
• Dreams: The Case Against Problem Solving.

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