Dreams, Their Meaning and Theories

There are many things in our universe that we don’t understand. Baffling mysteries that just don’t seem to make sense. Where did the universe come from? Was it a big bang like many believe or was it something else. Does God really exist, or is he just some fantasy made up for humans to blame for everything bad. Extraterrestrial life forms, is there a chance they exist, or are they, once again a figment of our overactive imagination. One of the most intriguing mysteries, however, is a little closer to home. Dreams, we all have them, but no one truly understands them. This essay is about dreams, what dreams exactly are and why they happen. Dreams are sensations, images, emotions, or thoughts that happen while we sleep, but as for why they happen, there are many theories.

People have been fascinated by dreams and their meaning for thousands of years. Many believe that ancient peoples weren't intelligent enough to have been able to differentiate between reality and the world of dreams. As you start to learn more, however, you will discover that as long ago as they may have lived, they were very ingenious.

The Ancient Egyptians were strong believers in the power and influence of dreams. Egyptians also believed that their gods would show themselves in visions and dreams. The Egyptians divided their dreams into three categories. These consisted of: the demands of gods, warnings, and ritual induced dreams. They felt that all dreams were answers from gods. The Greeks believed in inducing dreams as well. They had a special ritual they went through before entering any of their temples to cleanse themselves. This ritual included, not eating any meat, abstaining from sex for two days, and sacrificing an animal to the god in which they wish to see in their dreams. After entering one of their temples, they would lie on the skin of the animal they sacrificed, hoping for helpful dreams. The Babylonians believed that god sent good dreams and demons sent bad dreams. They also believed in a distinction between the dreams of their rulers and leaders and those of the common people, and like many ancient culture believed in a powerful connection between dreams and religion. The Hebrews, like the Babylonians, felt that bad dreams were from evil spirits and the good dreams came from God. They, like other ancient cultures, tried to receive dreams in their temples. Samuel, who was a Hebrew prophet, was known to have slept in temple to receive a dream from God before the Ark. The bible tells of prophetic dreams such as Jacob’s Ladder.

Dreams, which are often falsely said to be momentary flashes, are instead believed to span across all of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, usually about two hours, this, however, decreases with age. Sleep scientists believe that certain patterns of REM and NREM (non-Rapid Eye Movement) sleep somehow increases our mental and physical recuperation. Protein synthesis reaches its high during REM sleep, which keeps the body working properly. REM sleep also seems important for mood regulation and memory unification. 'Every time we experience REM sleep, we literally go mad. By definition, psychosis is a condition characterized by hallucinations and delusions. Dreaming, some sleep scientists say, is a psychotic state – we fully believe that we see what is not there, and we accept that time, location, and people themselves can morph and disappear without warning.'

Sleep includes a highly active interplay of brain circuits, which results in the various stages of sleep. As an adult passes into deeper stages of sleep, their brain waves get slower and become larger. Through the night, an individual would go through these stages many times with only small periods of REM sleep. 'Researchers found that each night, over the course of the first hour or so of sleep, the brain progresses through a series of stages during which brain waves slow down. This period of slow wave sleep is accompanied by relaxation of the muscles and the eyes. Heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature all fall.' During the night, the cycle continues to alternate, each time the slow wave sleep get less deep and the REM periods get longer until we wake up.

As mentioned earlier, there are many theories as to why we dream. One of those theories is the Activation-Synthesis theory. This theory is a neurobiological explanation of why we might dream. This theory suggests that dreams are caused by the brains’ physiological processes. According to J. Allan Hobson, the psychiatrists who came up with this theory, and other researchers, brain circuits are activated during REM sleep. After these circuits are activated, the amygdala, hippocampus and other parts of the limbic system involved in memories, emotions, and sensations are activated. The brain then synthesizes and interprets the activity of those circuits and parts of the limbic system and attempts to create meaning from these signals, this results in dreaming.

Another theory is the Continual-Activation theory. This theory hypothesizes that both the unconscious and the conscious subsidiary systems of working memory need to be continually activated for the brain to continue functioning properly. When the level of activation of either the conscious or subconscious subsidiary systems decreases past a certain point, the continual-activation part of the brain will be triggered to create a data stream from the stores of memory to flow through the system to maintain continual-activation.

Richard Coutts' theory of emotional selection states that dreaming is a way to make changes to one's mental schema.

The theory of emotional selection is about a process of executing a set of dreams during the non-REM sleep. A second set of dreams is executed during the following REM sleep in the form of test scenarios. It defines an accommodation as the process of reframing one's mental representation of the external world to fit new experiences. If the accommodations performed during the preceding non-REM dreams reduce one's negative emotions, they are selected for retention, else they are abandoned. Thus emotional selection says that the psychology of dreams is usually about the enhancement of mental schemas, it's about increasing one's social abilities.

One other theory is the Threat Simulation Theory (TST) of dreaming. This theory states that dream consciousness is a biological defense mechanism that was evolutionarily chosen for its capability to continually invent frightening situations. Threat simulation while dreaming tests the cognitive tools required for efficient threat discernment and avoidance, which in turn leads to an increased probability of success during human evolution.

Sigmund Freud had another theory. His theory suggested that dreams symbolize our unconscious desires, thoughts, and motivations. Freud's psychoanalytic view of personality was that people are inspired by aggressive and sexual instincts that are inhibited from humans’ conscious recognition. Since these thoughts are kept from being consciously revealed, Freud suggested that they make their way into our knowledge through dreams.

There are other somewhat prominent theories as to why we dream that suggest other reasons. One states that dreams are a result of our unconscious minds interpreting external stimuli during sleep. An example would be the sound of a radio might be somehow incorporated into the content of a dream. Another theory uses a metaphor of a computer to account for dreams. This theory suggests that dreams are supposed to clear away extra information from our minds, like a computers clean-up operation. This refreshes the mind for the next day. This next theory proposes that dreams function as a type of therapy. In this theory, the one dreaming is making connections between thoughts and emotions in a safe place, much like you would do with a therapist. A modern model of dreaming merges elements of many theories. Activating the mind creates loose between ideas and thoughts, which are guided by the emotions of people in their dreams.

Some psychologists say that we have emotional dreams to let our emotions calm down. Without expressing our emotions in dreams, we would overheat. Dreams might express very strong emotions that we wouldn't allow being shown in our daily lives. They can act as an emotional safety valve of sorts to help us release some emotional tension that we have built up by suppressing these emotions. 'Jung pointed out that emotions come from the ‘Shadow’ which is the undeveloped, ‘inferior’ functions of the psyche.' Many of us refuse to acknowledge these emotions as our own and will project them onto someone else.

People don't remember very many of their dreams, but of those who do, most are focused on the things that took place in the dream and the emotions they felt while dreaming. They don't pay attention to whether they dreamed in color or black and white. It is hard to believe that nowadays anyone can dream in black and white. Due to the nature of dreams and how little we know of them, it has been hard for researchers to surmise how dreams work and whether people dream in color or not. In a study issued in 2008, it was discovered that people above the age of 55 seemed to dream in black and white about 1/4 of the time. Meanwhile, those under the age of 25 said that they rarely have any black and white dreams. In the 1940s, several studies reported that participants dreamed in color very little or never. So you can see that the changing of the times and the advancement in technology has quite obviously had something to do with the way we dream.

Lucid dreaming is when the dreamer is aware that they're dreaming. When the dreamer is in a lucid dream, they may also have some kind of control over their dreams. Lucid dreaming is what you get when you combine the aspects of dreams and the rationality of being awake into a type of hybrid consciousness. To a dreamer, a lucid dream would feel amazingly vivid and overwhelmingly immersive.

About half of people have had a lucid dream at least once. Children are more likely to have lucid dreams, and lucid dreams become less common with age. Lucid dreams are usually brief, lasting just a few minutes on average. Most other dreams are quickly forgotten, but lucid dreams tend to remain vivid in the mind even after awakening. A common theme of lucid dreams is flying in the air. The dreamer may feel spiritual ecstasy, overwhelming joy, or even fear.

These lucid dreams are connected to other events associated with the border between REM sleep and wakefulness. These sensations include out-of-body experiences, in which a person feels as if they are floating outside their body. Another experience they may encounter would be sleep paralysis, in which the dreamer is not able to move while asleep or after they wake up, but is alert to the things happening around them.

A nightmare is sometimes just a bad dream, isolated and unpleasant imagery with little emotional response from the dreamer. Nevertheless, a nightmare may lead to feelings of anxiety, fear, and terror. This can awaken the dreamer and cause disturbing emotional responses, such as, insomnia, other problems with the sleep cycle, or maybe even daytime distress. Fevers, ill-health, or a bad diet can also cause nightmares.

Usually, people dream for more than two hours a night, and nightmares usually happen in the later hours of REM sleep. The dreamer most often wakes from a nightmare with a good recollection of what happened in that nightmare, unlike in other dreams. Some researchers call these negative dreams 'threat rehearsals,' in which we test possible threats we might encounter in real life. Meanwhile, others say that the dreamer is working through upsetting events in the waking life. Most of our nightmares are related to stress. Nightmares happen more frequently to girls than boys. Children and teenagers tend to experience nightmares more than adults.

Our bodies go through different stages of sleep, from light sleep to REM deep sleep. REM sleep is activated by pons at the base of the brain, these same pons send signals that shut the spinal cord off. This shutting off of the spinal cord is why we don't move as we sleep: but if the pons happens to not stop the signals to the spinal cord, the dreamer will act out what they are dreaming. This phenomenon is known as REM sleep behavior disorder

In conclusion, even with all the research that has been put into the topic, dreams are still quite a mystery to the scientific community. There are many theories about dreams, but no one knows for sure why we have dreams. They could be a “threat rehearsal,” as some believe, or they could be repressed emotions making themselves known. They could be hidden desires or they could be a way to process and store our memories. Nevertheless, no one knows for sure. In short, dreams are images mixed with thoughts and feelings that play through our heads as we sleep, with no known reason as to why they happen.