The Psychology Of Dreams Essay Research Paper

The Psychology Of Dreams Essay, Research Paper

I remember my dream last night quite vividly. We, my roommates and I, were navigating our way through the confusing highways of Long Island trying to get home to New Jersey, all of which happened that very day. In my dream, as in real life, I was sitting shotgun in the car since I was assumed to be the expert. However, in the dream we continually arrived at one intersection

with the normal amount of traffic but we would just stop not knowing where to go: Straight, left, right, or back. This happened over and over again. Of course when I woke up, I realized the significance of this particular dream. In real life we were lost on our way home and my friends put their trust in me so we wouldn t get lost in the first place, but, unfortunately, we did get sidetracked a little. So, by having a crossroads in my dream and not knowing where to go was my unconscious telling me what it felt like to be on a trip where trust was put on you, and you failed. Of course we got home safe and sound, though two hours late.

Sigmund Freud also experienced unusually vivid dreams ever since his own boyhood. He had always had a keen, almost superstitious interest in dreams and dreaming. He wrote to Martha, his wife, about one instance when he had a blissful dream of a landscape, which, according to the private note-book on dreams which I have composed from my experience indicates travelling (Thornton 209). Freud s first published reference to his interest in dreams occurred in his writing Studies , where he reported unusually vivid dreams, beginning in late 1894. At about this time some of his patients began to relate their dreams, which they often explored in their psychoanalytical sessions. (Thornton 210)

Despite this, there is no proven fact on why we dream, which is why there are so many theories on the topic. Freud’s theory states that dreams carry our hidden desires. There is also Jung’s theory that dreams carry meaning, although not always of desire, and that these dreams can be interpreted by the dreamer. After these theories, others continued such as the Cayce theory in which dreams are our bodies means of building up of the mental, spiritual and physical well-being. Finally came the argument between Evans’ theory and the Crick and Mitchinson theory. Evans states that dreaming is our bodies way of storing the vast array of information gained during the day, whereas Crick and Mitchinson say that this information is being dumped rather than stored.

Out of all theories before his, and all of those today, Freud s is the one that stands out the most. He believed that a dream represented an ongoing wish along with the previous day s activities. They may even portray wishes that have been inside us since early childhood. In fact, he believed, every dream is partially motivated by a childhood wish. Another interesting idea was that nothing is made up during a dream and that they are biologically determined, derived completely from instinctual needs and personal experiences.

Probably one of the most interesting ideas among these theories is his theory of dream occurrence. Dreams occur in a state of “ego collapse” when the demands of the Id (imperative bodily needs) and Superego (conscience ego ideals) converge upon the Ego (personal desires and mediator between the Id and Superego). In simpler terms, a dream will occur when the unconscious wish is bound to the preconscious, instead of just being discharged.

Many of Freud’s theories still stand true today, but most of all in the area of defense mechanisms our body uses while we dream. If our minds have been dealing with too much denial, regression, or repression, it causes an internal conflict, a dream in this case, to take place. This prevents us from building up intolerable states of psychological tension in waking life. This is why, if one becomes overemotional, it actually works to “sleep it off.”

The actual study of dreams in the late twentieth century has focused on two topics: 1.) The physiological process of dreaming, and 2.), The content of dreams. Researchers have found physiological clues as to when a dream is actually taking place. The principal dream period, marked by a combination of rapid eye movement, a brain-wave pattern similar to that produced during wakefulness, and increased physiological activity, is known as REM Sleep (or the Dream state).

Ever since the discovery of REM Sleep in the mid-1950s, researchers have conducted experiments in which they awaken subjects who show signs of REM sleep–in most cases the subjects report intensely the experience of vivid visual dreams. Subjects awakened while not in REM sleep report dreams less frequently and have more difficulty remembering them. This evidence naturally supported a close association between REM sleep and the experience of vivid, spontaneously recalled dreams. However, extreme sleep-related behaviors such as night terrors, nightmares, enuresis (bed-wetting), and sleepwalking have generally been found unrelated to ordinary dreaming.

It s a known fact that REM sleep recurs about every 90 minutes throughout the time spent asleep, in periods that successively grow in duration from an initial length of 10 minutes. Between the ages of 10 and the mid-60s, people spend about a quarter of their time asleep in REM sleep. If this amount is temporarily lowered bec