Do you ever wake up in the morning and remember your dream vividly? And the more you remember, the more bizarre it seems? And you wonder what it means? The thing is, we all dream, yet the reasons why we dream remain a mystery. Some experts suggest that dreams are a replay of the dayās events, so a clear memory can be formed, while others suggest dreams are simply the result of random activity in the brain.
Firstly, what exactly is a dream and when do they occur?
A dream can include any of the images, thoughts and emotions that are experienced during sleep. They usually occur during the fourth stage of sleep, known as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep which is also characterised by increased brain activity & respiration. Dreams can be extremely vivid, or very vague, can evoke joyful emotion or leave you feeling frightened, and the meaning can be clear or utterly confusing!
Despite being an area of fascination, and regardless of all the research, weāre no closer to knowing why we dream than Aristotle was when he studied dreams way back in 367 B.C. While many experts have studied dreams and come up with their own conclusions, none of them have been proven to be correct yet none of them are considered completely wrong. Below are five theories on why people dream. Read them, then enjoy a good nightās sleep
#1: TO FULFILL A WISH
Have you noticed that when you dream, youāre the star of the show? And youāre usually the good guy! This is because itās your brain thatās doing the dreaming and, according to Sigmund Freud (an Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis), our dreams usually reflect our deep desires or concerns. In his book, The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud states that dreams are a result of repressed emotions and urges that represent unconscious thoughts, desires or wishes. As these repressed urges need to be expressed somehow, our brain allows us to dream them. This means your dreams (or subconscious) may reveal a wish that your conscious mind has learned to ignore, or repress. For example, if you dream that youāre playing guitar on stage at Madison Square to thousands of fans, perhaps itās just your subconscious desire to seek fame or be the next John Mayer.
#2: TO COMPENSATE OUR WAKING LIFE
Are you often happy but your dreams are often bleak? Or do you worry about your finances but dream that youāre a millionaire? According to Carl Jung, (a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology), our dreams arenāt random. The dream reveals, in a symbolic way, whatās going on deep inside our mind. They give us an opportunity to compensate for events that happen while weāre awake. So for a person who has an unhappy experience during the day may enjoy a wonderful, blissful dream as compensation, so they donāt feel down and gloomy all the time. Jung also believed that dreams can reflect parts of our personalities that arenāt yet developed, which could explain why the ādream behaviourā of some people is very different to their āawake behaviourā. What could your dreams be revealing about you?
#3: TO SLEEP ON IT
You know the feeling, you canāt stop thinking about something. Perhaps itās a mortgage repayment or a job offer. Or perhaps a decision based on what school your child will attend. You think about it all day and all night. Some dream experts believe that dreams can help us dive into these problems and help us come up with an answer. It works like this. Even though we sleep, our brains donāt. So while we sleep, our brains continue to process and think about issues that are concerning us while weāre awake. It constantly tries to come up with answers and solutions. So, sometimes, after youāve āslept on itā, you wake up with a clear solution to that perplexing problem!
#4: A COPING MECHANISM
Ernest Hartmann, M.D., (Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and Director at the Sleep Disorders Center at Newton Wellesley Hospital), believes that dreams could help us deal with a troubling emotion weāre feeling like anxiety, worry or stress. While we sleep, these emotions cause the brain to create new material for our memory, so we can cope with the stress, worry or other types of psychological anxiety. In other words, if weāre dealing with a particularly stressful situation our dreams reflect these inner feelings by creating symbols and issues that relate to our waking life. According to Dr Hartmann, this helps us cope with the inner turmoil. His theory considers dreaming to be a broad making of connections guided by emotion