What is the most dramatic aspect of sleep? For many people, the answer is obvious: dreams- the jumbled, vivid, sometimes disturbing, confusing images that fill our sleeping minds. What are these experiences? Why do they occur? Let’s first consider basic facts about dreams, then turn to the answers to these questions provided by psychological research. Dreams are cognitive events often vivid but disconnected, that occur during sleep. Most dreams take place during REM sleep.
DREAMS: SOME BASIC FACTS
Does everybody dream? The answer seems to be yes. But not all people remember dreaming How do long dreams last? Many people believe that dreams last only an instant, but they seem to run in “real-time”: the longer the dreams seem to last, the longer they are. Can external events become part of a dream? Yes, at least to a degree.
When people cannot remember their dreams, does this mean that they are purposely getting them, perhaps because they find the content disturbing? Probably not. Research on why people can or cannot remember their dreams indicates that this is primarily a function of what they do when they wake up. If they lie quietly in bed, actively trying to remember the dream, they have a good chance of recalling it. if instead they jump out of the bed and start the day’s activities, the chances of remembering the dream are reduced.
It is motivated by forgetting- there is little evidence for its occurrence .Do dreams foretell the future? There is no evidence for this widespread belief. Now that we’ve considered some basic facts about dreams, let’s turn to several views concerning their nature and functions.
DREAMS: THE PSYCHODYNAMIC VIEW
Let’s begin with the idea that dreams express unconscious wishes or impulses. This view has existed for centuries, but its influence was greatly increased by Sigmund Freud, who felt that dreams provide a useful means for probing the unconscious – thoughts, impulses, and wishes that lie outside the realm of conscious experience. In dreams, Freud believed, we can give expression to impulses we find unacceptable during our waking hours. Thus, we can dream about gratifying illicit sexual desires or the painful torture of people who have made us angry- thoughts we actively repress during the day.
Freud carefully analyzed the dreams of his patients, he reported that in the manner he frequently gained important insights into the causes of their problems, conviction, that many people quickly accepted Freud’s claims; and such beliefs about the meaning of dreams are alive and well today. Despite this fact, they are not supported by convincing scientific evidence.
On the contrary, Freud provided no clear-cut rules for interpreting dreams and no way of determining whether such interpretations are accurate. Given these facts, few psychologists currently accept the view that dreams offer a unique means of exploring the unconscious. Instead, most accept one of the views we will now consider.
DREAMS: THE PHYSIOLOGICAL VIEW
If dreams are not reflections of hidden wishes or impulses, what are they? An answer is provided by what is sometimes known as the physiological view of dreams. According to this perspective, dreams are simply our subjective experience of what is, in essence, random neural activity in the brain. Such activity occurs while we sleep simply because a minimal amount of stimulation is necessary for the normal functioning of the brain and nervous system.
Dreams then simply represent efforts by our cognitive systems to make sense of this random neural activity. A logical extension of this view suggests that the activity of which we try to make sense is not random; rather, it occurs primarily in the two systems of the brain that are most active when we are awake – the visual system and the visual images. And although many dreams are usually silent but are filled with visual images. And although many dreams contain images of movement, few persons report experiencing smells, tactile (touch) sensations, or tastes in their dreams.
Dreams are related to important events in our daily life. Dreams sometimes reflect Aspects of Our Memories or events in our Daily Lives – even the memories of old TV shows have influenced the dreams. Therefore we can conclude dreams are a crucial part and are related to our daily events.
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