DrEaMs...
Images, Ideas, Emotions, Sensations...
Dreams occur involuntarily in the mind and the content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood. The scientific study of dreams is called oneirology. Before we go into trying to understand our dream let's understand our sleep.
Our sleep cycle consists of 4 stages that lasts about 90-120 minutes and repeats themselves throughout the night. This does not include the part when we are falling asleep or may I say getting into sleep.
Stage 1: Light Sleep - body preparing itself to get to deep sleep
NREM - Non-Rapid eye movement, muscle relaxation, lowered body temperature and slowed heart rate
Stage 2: Completely Asleep
NREM, further drop in temperature & muscle relaxation, immune system starts repairing the day's damages and endocrine glands secrete growth hormones.
Stage 3: Deep Sleep
NREM, and metabolic levels get extremely slow.
Stage 4: REM Sleep - restoration, revitalized and emotions being fine tuned
REM - Rapid eye movement, blood pressure rises, heart rate speeds up, respiration become erratic, brain activity increases, involuntary muscles become paralyzed.
Dream happens mostly in the REM Stage, if you are awakened during this stage, you are likely to remember your dream. A person can have several different dreams per night as this cycle repeats as many as 7 times. Some people believe that they simply do not dream, when in reality they just don't remember.
Dreams are seen as a connection to the unconscious. They range from normal and ordinary to overly surreal and bizarre. Dreams can have varying natures, such as frightening, exciting, magical, melancholic, adventurous, or sexual. The events in dreams are generally outside the control of the dreamer, with the exception of lucid dreaming, where the dreamer is self-aware. Dreams can at times make a creative thought occur to the person or give a sense of inspiration.
So what do our dreams actually mean???
Since 5000BC, people have tried to decipher them...
Dreams are direct messages from god or the dead and that they predicted the future!
Dream are manifestations of our deepest desires and anxieties!
Let's see what the experts has to say...
Alfred
Adler (1870 -1937) believes that dreams are an important tool to mastering
control over your waking lives. They are problem-solving devices. Dreams
need to be brought to the conscious and interpreted so that better understanding
can be shed on your problems. It is important to learn from your dreams and
incorporate them into your waking life. Adler believes that there is a
correlation between your dreams
and the problems in your daily life. The more dreams you have, the more problems
you are likely to have. Conversely, the less dreams you have, the less problems
you have and the more psychologically healthy you are.
Adler's
views on dreams are that they are an open pathway toward your true thoughts,
emotions and actions. In your dreams, you clearly see your aggressive impulses
and desires. Dreams are also a way of overcompensating for the shortcomings in
your waking life. For example, if you are unable to stand up to your boss in
your waking life, then you may find it easier to lash out at the boss within the
comfort and safety of your dream. Dreams offer some sort of satisfaction that is
more socially acceptable.
Considered
the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) revolutionizes the study
of dreams with his work The Interpretation Of Dreams. Freud begins to
analyze dreams in order to understand aspects of personality as they relate to
pathology. He believes that nothing you do occurs by chance; every action
and thought is motivated by your unconscious at some level. In order
to live in a civilized society, you have a tendency to hold back our
urges and repress
our impulses.
One
way these urges and impulses are released is through your dreams. Because the
content of the unconscious may be extremely disturbing or harmful, Freud
believes that the unconscious expresses itself in a symbolic language. Freud
categorizes aspects of the mind into three parts:
Id
- centered around primal impulses, pleasures, desires, unchecked urges and wish
fulfillment.
Ego
- concerned with the conscious, the rational, the moral and the self-aware
aspect of the mind.
Superego
- the censor for the id, which is also responsible for enforcing the moral codes
of the ego. When
you are awake, the impulses and desires of the id are suppressed by the superego.
Through dreams, you are able to get a glimpse into your unconscious or the id.
Because your guards are down during the dream state,
your unconscious has the opportunity to act out and express the hidden desires
of the id. However, the desires of the id can, at times, be so disturbing
and even psychologically harmful that a "censor" comes into play and translates
the id's disturbing content into a more acceptable symbolic form. This helps to
preserve sleep and prevent you from waking up shocked at the images. As a
result, confusing and cryptic dream images occur.
According
to Freud, the reason you struggle to remember your dreams, is because the
superego is at work. It is doing its job by protecting the conscious mind from
the disturbing images and desires conjured by the unconscious.
Calvin
S. Hall, Jr. (1909-1985) focuses his study of dreams on the content, aptly
referred to as content analysis. Because dreams are in essence thoughts,
it is a cognitive process. Dreams provide a map or route to the inaccessible
regions in your mind, otherwise known as the unconscious. Hall believes dreams
are the best way to discovering personal thoughts and to explain your behavior.
Dreams reveal things about yourself, not hide them. Hall
categorizes dreams into one of five principle areas of life.
1.
Concepts of Self refer to the types or
number of roles you play in your dreams.
2.
Concepts of other people are the roles
other people play in your dreams. Consider your feelings toward them and how you
interact with them.
3.
Concepts of the world represent the dream surrounding and landscape. The
adjectives you use to describe your dreamscape is how you view the world.
4.
Concepts of impulses, prohibitions and penalties
indicate your behavior and how it is ruled by impulses and punishment.
5.
Concepts of problems and conflicts symbolize
your struggles, issues and problems you are facing in your waking life. These
dream try to offer insight and resolution to your conflicts.
By
utilizing these five concepts, Hall believes that you will be able to analyze
the dream content and trace your way toward the inner workings of your
unconscious.
Like
his mentor Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1960) also believes in the
existence of the unconscious. However, he does not see the unconscious as
animalistic, instinctual, or sexual; he sees it as more spiritual.
Eventually, Jung split with Freud due to their differing views on dreams.
According
to Jung, dreams are a way of communicating and acquainting yourself with the
unconscious. Dreams are not attempts to conceal your true feelings from the
waking mind, but rather they are a window to your unconscious. They serve to
guide the waking self to achieve wholeness and offer a solution to a problem you
are facing in your waking life.
Jung
views the ego as your sense of self and how you portray yourself to the world.
Part of Jung's theory is that all things can be viewed as paired
opposites: good/evil, male/female, or love/hate. So working in opposition to the
ego, is the "counterego" or what he refers to as the shadow. The
shadow represents the rejected aspects of yourself that you do not wish to
acknowledge. The shadow is more primitive, somewhat uncultured, and a
little awkward.
Frederick
Perls (1893-1970) iss the founder of Gestalt therapy. Gestalt
therapy seeks to fill your emotional voids so that you can then become a unified
whole. Perls believes that dreams contain the rejected, disowned parts of the
Self. Every character and every object in a dream represents an aspect of the
Self. You are the hurricane, you are the attacker, you are the broken down
car, you are the bridge, and you are the dusty book. Perls rejects
the notion that dreams are part of a universal symbolic
language. He believes that each dream is unique to the individual who
dreams it.
In
order to discover what aspect of yourself is being disowned, Perls believes that
it is important to retell your dream in the present tense and act it out
accordingly. It is important to verbalize how each and every component in your
dream felt, even inanimate objects. Reenact the dream and take on the role of
the different characters and objects. Start a dialogue with the dream object and
express how you felt toward each other. By taking on a different
role within your dream and reenact it, you may then be able to acknowledge and
realize feelings that you may have overlooked or buried. Your dream literally
comes alive.
Now the best part...
Here are some
common recurring dream motifs and their interpretation:
Pursuit or attack.
The hunter represents
a part of ourselves we are afraid of. An extreme version of unacceptable part of our personality, which will benefit us if we expressed it appropriately.
Free fall.
Feel heavy, lack of support, worry about something? How to feel free, lightweight? Maybe we should ‘land’ in reality?
Car out of control.
Is
life too fast? Are we
losing control of things? How can we get things more slowly and just calmly enjoy the trip?
Unprepared, late, failure to test.
Feel
unprepared for an approaching event? Do we worry without reason or really want more preparation to feel more confident and do a good job?
Feeling unable to speak or move.
We feel that we are
trapped in our lives with no way out. It goes nowhere and we can’t act according to
our true feelings.
Shame of being naked in public, although nobody seems to notice it.
In which part of our life do we feel
lack of confidence and skills? The fact that others do not notice our shame means that only we see ourselves like this and usually are wrong about it.
Trapped, locked in.
When do we
feel trapped/stuck in life? How to create a new perspective and
explore new ways to act?
Unable to see people’s faces but knowing who they are.
This pattern may have several interpretations. It may refer to ourselves, symbolizing
the search of our identity, the process of exploring our own personality.
Also it may reflect
our relations with other people: feeling alone in the crowd, unable to reach understanding with other people, feeling different from them. According to
Sigmund Freud, faces in dreams represent
the individuality of people. Seeing the world without faces in our dreams, we deprive the others of their individuality due to
our fears, lack of confidence, problems we face dealing with people in our life. It works as
a defence mechanism which helps us avoid being hurt by others.
Being lost, unable to reach a destination or fulfill a task.
Dreams of being lost and unable to find the way somewhere speak of
frustration. Sometimes we want something or someone to go/act in a certain way, but they don’t. It certainly brings us
disappointment and frustration.
Moreover, such kind of dreams may have to do with
the feeling of ‘losing’ ourselves. Perhaps, it may be connected with
a significant change in our life (for example, a loss of something or someone important for us) or we just
feel ‘following a wrong path’. Sometimes our subconscious tries to tell us that what we do is not what we really want from life.
If you want more information on detail dreams, go to http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/
I wish I could remember my dreams... =D
