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A dream is the experience of envisioned images, sounds, or other sensations during sleep. The events of dreams are often impossible or unlikely to occur in physical reality, and are usually outside the control of the dreamer. The exception is lucid dreaming, in which a dreamer realizes that he or she is dreaming—being sometimes even capable of changing the oneiric reality around him or her and controlling various aspects of the dream, in which the suspension of disbelief is broken.^{[citation needed]} Dreamers may experience strong emotions while dreaming. Frightening or upsetting dreams are referred to as nightmares. The scientific discipline of dream research is oneirology.

Contents 1 History 2 Understanding dreams 2.1 The expectation fulfilment theory of dreams 2.2 Using dreams in therapy 2.3 Supernatural interpretations of dreams 2.4 Psychodynamic interpretation of dreams 2.5 Neurology of dreams 3 Other 3.1 Dreams of absent-minded transgression 3.2 Dreaming as a skeptical argument 3.3 Recalling dreams 3.4 Déjà vu 3.5 Dream incorporation 4 The Purpose of Dreams 4.1 See also 4.2 References 4.2.1 Cited 4.2.2 General 4.3 External links 4.4 Further reading

[edit] History

Dreams have a long history both as a subject of conjecture and as a source of inspiration (artistic or otherwise). Throughout history, people have sought meaning in dreams. They have been described physiologically as a response to neural processes during sleep, psychologically as reflections of the unconscious, and spiritually as messages from God or predictions of the future. It is said that if you have a dream that you are falling it is said that you are probably worried about something. Also if you have a dream about yourself winning the lottery it is said that you are unhappy with your financial status.(oneiromancy).

In antiquity, dreams were thought to be part of the supernatural world, and were seen as messages from the gods. Likewise, the Torah (known in Christianity as the first 5 books of the Old Testament) and The Holy Qur'an both tell the same story of Joseph, who was given the power to interpret dreams and act accordingly. In the Later Middle Ages, dreams were seen as temptations from the Devil, and thus were seen as dangerous.

The belief that dreams were part of the supernatural world continued into the Early Middle Ages. A story from Nevers, which is reproduced in the Golden Legend, states that one night the Emperor Charlemagne dreamed that he was saved of dying from a wild boar during a hunt. He was saved by the appearance of a child, who had promised to save the emperor from death if he would give him clothes to cover his nakedness. The bishop of Nevers interpreted this dream to mean that he wanted the emperor to repair the roof of the cathedral dedicated to the boy-saint Saint Cyricus.

Many tribal peoples believe that the human soul temporarily leaves the body during the dream-state, wandering in other worlds and meeting other souls, including those of the dead. These nocturnal journeys have provided a great deal of material for myth-making. In North America and Southeast Asia such voyages are thought to expose errant soul to the danger of abduction by a sorcerer or malevolent spirit; when this happens, local shamans are customarily employed to search for and retrieve the lost soul.” (Willis, p.33)

By the late 1800s, Sigmund Freud theorized that dreams were a reflection of human desires and were prompted by external stimuli.

[edit] Understanding dreams

[edit] The expectation fulfilment theory of dreams

Psychologist Joe Griffin, one of the founders of human givens psychology, has proposed the expectation fulfilment theory of dreaming. On the basis of a 12-year study, Griffin claims that dreams are expressed in the form of sensory metaphors.^{[1] [2]} In a New Scientist interview, Griffin stated that "...ordinarily dream sleep does a great housekeeping job for us [,] bring[ing] down our autonomic arousal level." Griffin's expectation fulfilment theory of dreams states that dreams are metaphorical translations of waking expectations. Expectations which cause emotional arousal that is not acted upon during the day to quell the arousal, become dreams during sleep. Finally, he holds that dreaming deactivates that emotional arousal by completing the expectation pattern metaphorically, freeing the brain to respond afresh to each new day.(New Scientist. April 12th pp44-47)

Michel Jouvet's research has suggested that instinctive behaviours are programmed during the REM state in the fetus and the neonate. This is necessarily in the form of incomplete templates for which the animal later identifies analogous sensory components in the real world. These analogical templates give animals the ability to respond to the environment in a flexible way and generate the ability to learn, rather than just react.^[3]

[edit] Using dreams in therapy

The expectation fulfillment theory of dreams has introduced a more practical way of using dream metaphors in therapy. Human givens therapists know that dream metaphors that clients bring to therapy have therapeutic value because they can often grasp through the metaphor what is worrying their patient. They can then help clients to see more objectively what is troubling them. Depressed people dream more intensely than non-depressed people, and the expectation fulfillment theory explains why Griffin also proposed that hypnosis is most usefully defined as a direct route to activating the REM state, and that all hypnotic phenomena can be explained with this insight. Since trance and suggestion play such an important role in psychotherapy, this fact is of great significance to psychotherapists and counsellors.

Embodied Imagination is a therapeutic and creative form of working with dreams and memories pioneered by Robert Bosnak and based on principles first developed by Carl Jung, especially in his work on alchemy, and on the work of James Hillman, who focused on soul as a simultaneous multiplicity of autonomous states. From the point of view of the dreaming state of mind, dreams are real events in real environments. Based on this notion, one can “re-enter” the landscape of a dream and flashback to the images, whether it is a memory from waking life or from dreaming. One enters a hypnagogic state—a state of consciousness between waking and sleeping--and then, through the process of questioning, images are explored through the perspective of feelings and sensations manifested in the body, enabling new awareness to develop.

[edit] Supernatural interpretations of dreams

Oneiromancy, prediction of the future through the interpretation of dreams, holds great credence in ancient Judeo-Christianity: in the Tanakh, Jacob, Joseph and Daniel are given the ability to interpret dreams by Yahweh; in the New Testament, divine inspiration comes as a dream to 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. The story of Saint Patrick and his conversion of the people of Ireland also features dreaming. When Patrick was enslaved in Antrim he was told by God in a dream that there was a boat waiting in Wicklow to bring him back to his homeland.

In Islam, good dreams are considered to be from God and bad dreams from Satan [1].

Western philosophers of a sceptical bent (notably René Descartes, although he was in fact attempting to disprove scepticism in his meditations) have pointed out that dream experiences are indistinguishable from "real" events from the viewpoint of the dreamer, and so no objective basis exists for determining whether one is dreaming or awake at any given instant. One must, they argue, accept the reality of the waking world on the basis of faith.
Scientific evidence on lucid dreaming provides a counter-argument to this theory as in the 1980s lucid dreamers were able to demonstrate to researchers that they were consciously aware of being in a dream state by using eye movement signals[2][3].

[edit] Psychodynamic interpretation of dreams

Main article: Dream interpretation

Both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung 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. One aim of gestalt dream analysis is to accept and reintegrate these. The dream needs to be accepted in its own right - not broken down and analysed out of existence.

[edit] Neurology of dreams

There is no universally agreed-upon biological definition of dreaming. The dogma states that dreams are associated with REM sleep but the evidence for this is not strong. 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 but it could also mean that this is a state from which dreams are most easily remembered. During a typical lifetime a person spends about 6 years dreaming^[4] (which is about 2 hours each night^[5]). It is unknown where in the brain dreams originate — if there is such a single location — or why dreams occur at all.

Eugen Tarnow suggests that dreams are ever present excitations of long term memory, even during waking life. The strangeness of dreams is due to the format of long-term memory, reminiscent of the Penfield & Rasmussen’s findings that electrical excitations of the cortex give rise to experiences similar to dreams. During waking life an executive function interprets long term memory consistent with reality checking. Tarnow's theory is a reworking of Freud's theory of dreams in which Freud's Unconscious is replaced with the long term memory system and Freud's “Dream Work” describes the structure of long term memory.^[6]

The activation synthesis theory developed by Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley asserts that the sensory experiences are fabricated by the cortex as a means of interpreting random 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.^[7] Memory, attention and the other features lacking in the dream state are taken to depend on the neurotransmitters, norepinephrine and serotonin, which are present in reduced concentrations during REM sleep. This chemical change is hypothesized to produce a psychotic state, as well as a lack of orientation. On the other hand, research by Mark Solms suggests that dreams are generated in the forebrain, and that REM sleep and dreaming are not directly related.^[8]

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, and 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 the "consolidation". NREM sleep processes the conscious related memory (declarative memory); and REM sleep processes the non-conscious related memory (procedural memory).

Zhang assumes that during REM sleep, the non-conscious part of brain is busy to process the procedural memory; in the meanwhile, the level of activation in the conscious part of 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 brain. Zhang suggests that this pulse-like brain activation is the inducer of each dream. He proposes that, with the involvement of brain associative thinking system, dreaming is, thereafter, self maintained with 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 scene changes (between two dreams).^[9][10]

[edit] Other

[edit] Dreams of absent-minded transgression

Dreams of absent-minded transgression (DAMT) are dreams where the individual dreaming absentmindedly performs an action that they have been trying to stop (a classic example being a smoker trying to quit having dreams of lighting a cigarette). Subjects that have had DAMT have reported awaking with intense feelings of guilt. Some studies have shown that DAMT are positively correlated with successfully stopping the behaviour compared to control subjects who did not experience these dreams.^[11]

[edit] Dreaming as a skeptical argument

Main article: dream argument

While one dreams a non-lucid dream, one will not realize one is dreaming. This has led philosophers to the idea that one could be dreaming right now (or at least one cannot be certain that they are not dreaming). First formally introduced by Descartes in Meditations on First Philosophy, the dream argument has become one of the most popular skeptical hypotheses.

[edit] Recalling dreams

According to Craig Hamilton-Parker, [4] author of Fantasy Dreaming, many people find certain dreams extremely difficult to recall. According to David Koulack in "To Catch A Dream" researchers refer to these types of dreams as "no content dream reports." It is thought that such dreams are characterized by relatively little affect. According to Koulack, factors such as salience, arousal and interference play a role in dream recall and dream recall failure. According to Henry Reed, author of Dream Medicine, a useful technique to improve dream recall is to keep a dream journal. Stephen LaBerge, author of Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, also suggest that you must lie perfectly still as soon as you have awaken from a dream and do not let concerns of the day occupy your mind. It is quite common to not remember much of what you have just dreamt but if you concentrate you may soon enough be able to put bits and pieces together to retrieve the entire dream

[edit] Déjà vu

Main article: Déjà vu

It is also a type of dream, wherein someone dreams about a certain situation, and when that situation arises before them in "real life" that person recalls their dream and that they had already experienced this given situation. In such a situation, this person can recollect that they had had such a vision earlier; somewhere else. Tyler Coulson suggests that a long-term and short-term memory "glitch" is the explanation for Déjà vu, in which the mind plays "strange tricks."

[edit] 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 Dali that depicts this concept, entitled "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate, One 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 (http://www.asdreams.org/2003/abstracts/genevieve_alain.htm).

This is not the same as true deja vu, however, where no dream or actual event in the past, or any other explanation for the eerie sensation of having gone through this situation before, can be thought of by the victim.

[edit] The Purpose of Dreams

There are differing views on what the purpose of dreams may be. Some believe dreams serve no purpose at all, while others believe they can help people understand their subconscious thought possesses to overcome psychological difficulties. Carl Jung, for instance, believed that dreams help us compensate for the parts in our “total personality” that are underdeveloped in our waking life. This was proved otherwise by Calvin Hall’s two week dream series from students and ranging age groups’ dream journals showing that our psyche in dreams is the same as our conscious behavior.

There is a very popular theory that dreams help us solve problems we are currently dealing with in our lives, especially emotional problems. For this reason some people consult a dream dictionary and psychologists may question a patient about their dreams. However it is interesting to note that this may not be helpful even if you are trying to discover some intrinsic meaning to your remembered dreams. It’s been found that dreams correlate with age, gender, culture, and personal preoccupations, thus, given a large amount of dreams over a series of decades and you can get a profile of a person’s mind that is “almost as individualized and accurate as her or his fingerprints.” However, evidence also leads against this as, though a dream may reflect upon a problem you are having (and you may even come to a solution once you’ve woken and thought about it), they almost never present a plausible solution during the dream sequence.

Another theory is that dreams are a remnant of our Neanderthal past where they have served as a mental training ground for the daily life and death struggles. And yet, David Foulkes claims dreams are a “cognitive achievement,” or that we actually develop the ability to dream. Also, the amount of time spent dreaming while asleep, for any given species, is directly related to the degree of safety from predators. “The more dangerous life is, the less a species can afford to dream.” Dr. Ramon Greenberg and Dr. Chester Pearlman add that dreaming sleep “appears in species that show increasing abilities to assimilate unusual information in to the nervous system.”

There is also a theory that dreams serve an important role in brain development. Infants, who sleep sixteen to eighteen hours a day, will spend 50% of this time dreaming. It is thought that providing a internal source of “intense stimulation” helps the maturation of the infant’s nervous system as well as preparing the her/him to cope with the external stimulations it will have to face in the world. While this would suggest that we would no longer need to dream as adults it is also believe that dreaming changes functions to become a learning and memorizing tool, a kind of “housekeeping.”

Related is another belief that dreaming is a kind of “clearing out the software” or simply cleaning out the day’s accumulation of emotional stress, though, very little that we dream about has to do with our daily lives. There is the “day residue,” the tiny bit leftover from our waking moments and named by Freud, but other than that small section our dreams have no base in actual, and sometimes even possible/real events.

This leads to another theory that dreams are simply a made up story that have no purpose, physiologically or psychologically. Simply because we are thinking beings doesn’t mean that all forms of our thought have functions. This is upheld by the fact that the average person only remembers about 1% of the four to six dreams they have per night. Dr. Allan Hobson and Dr. Robert McCarely agree, saying that dreams are simple, meaningless biology and nothing more. They believe that dreaming is caused by a “dream state generator” in the brain stem where neurons are activated by random impulses, producing equally random sensory output within the nervous system. The forebrain then takes this information and produces the dream trying to make as much sense out of the nonsense it’s getting. Hobson theorizes that dreaming is simply a mechanism to stimulate the neural circuits which must somehow be necessary to normal conscious brain functioning.

Though there are many theories and beliefs on why we dream there are very few actual answers. The most logical theory right now is that our dreams have no function and are simply a by product of our brains regular functions. As studies and technology progress and research can be more precise this will surely change.

[edit] See also

• Daydream
• Dreamwork
• Dreams (1990 film)
• Dream Thin
• Dream art
• Hallucination
• Hypnogogia
• List of dream diaries
• Reality in Buddhism
• Dream yoga in Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen tradition
• Nightmare
• Nocturnal emission
• Premonition
• Circadian rhythm
• Lucid dreaming
• Sleep
• Dream interpretation
• Dream dictionary

[edit] References

[edit] Cited

1. ^ Griffin, J. (1997). The Origin of Dreams: How and why we evolved to dream. The Therapist Ltd.
2. ^ Griffin, J. = Tyrrell, I. (2004). Dreaming Reality: How dreaming keeps us sane or can drive us mad.
3. ^ Jouvet, M. (1978). Does a genetic programming of the brain occur during paradoxical sleep? Cerebral Corrlates of Conscious Experience. Elsevier.
4. ^ (2006) How Dream Works. Retrieved on 2006-05-04.
5. ^ (2006) Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep. Retrieved on 2006-05-04.
6. ^ Tarnow, Eugen (2003). How Dreams And Memory May Be Related, 5(2), NEURO-PSYCHOANALYSIS.
7. ^ Hobson, J.A., McCarley, R. (1977). The brain as a dream state generator: An activation-synthesis hypothesis of the dream process, 134, American Journal of Psychiatry, 1335-1348.
8. ^ Solms, M. (2000). Dreaming and REM sleep are controlled by different brain mechanisms, 23(6), Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 793-1121.
9. ^ Zhang, Jie (2004). Memory process and the function of sleep, 6-6, Journal of Theoretics. Retrieved on 2006-03-13.
10. ^ Zhang, Jie (2005). Continual-activation theory of dreaming, Dynamical Psychology. Retrieved on 2006-03-13.
11. ^ Hajek P, Belcher M. (1991). Dream of absent-minded transgression: an empirical study of a cognitive withdrawal symptom. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Retrieved on 25 Feb 2006.

[edit] General

• Crick, F. & Mitchinson, G. (1983) The function of dream sleep. Nature 304, 111-114.
• Tarnow, E. (2003) How Dreams And Memory May Be Related. Neuro-Psychoanalysis 5(2), 177-182 and also [5]

[edit] External links

• The Epistemology of Descartes (fulltext) Classic philosophy on the difference between the real and the dream world
• Newsweek Article exploring dreams
• The International Association for the Study of Dreams Research About Dreams and Dreaming.
• Dictionary of Ancient Dream Symbols Dream Interpretation: The UnScientific Aspect
• Dreams - the intelligent universe Dreams as part of the quantum physics universe
• The function of dreams Glimpsing the Multiverse
• [6] Dreams: The Case Against Problem Solving
• [7] Dreams
• [8] Dreams: The Purpose Of Dreams
• [9] Purpose of Dreams Text - Physics Forums Library
• [10]What is the purpose of dreams

[edit] Further reading

• Acharya, Pt. Shriram Sharma, Sleep, Dreams and Spiritual Reflections, pdf file, 2000
• Artemidorus, The Oneirocritica of Artemidorus, University Microfilms, New Haven (1971).
• Gerolamo Cardano, Sul sonno e sul sognare , Marsilio, Venezia (1989).
• Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming, Rayo, (1994).
• Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, Avon, (1980).
• Jayne Gackenbach, Stephen LaBerge, Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain: Perspectives on Lucid Dreaming, Plenum Publishing Corporation, New York (1988).
• Patricia L Garfield, Creative Dreaming (1974) ISBN 0-671-21903-0
• Clara E. Hill, Working with Dreams in Psychotherapy (1996) ISBN 1-57230-092-2
• Carl Jung, Dreams, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey (1974).
• Will Phillips, Every Dreamer's Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding and Benefiting From Your Dreams, ISBN 1-57566-048-2, Kensington, NY 1996, 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).
• Robert L. Van de Castle, Our Dreaming Mind, Ballantine Books, New York, (1994).