- For other uses, see Dream
(disambiguation).
Dreaming is the subjective experience of imaginary images, sounds/voices, words, thoughts or sensations during sleep, usually
involuntarily. The scientific discipline of dream research is oneirology.
Dreaming is associated with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, a
lighter form of sleep that occurs during the later portion of the sleep cycle, characterized by rapid horizontal eye movements,
stimulation of the pons, increased respiratory and heart rate, and temporary paralysis of
the body. It can also occur in other phases of sleep, though this is less common. Hypnogogia, which occurs spontaneously during the approach to deep sleep, is thought to be related to
dreaming.
Dreams are a language of imagery. This imagery ranges from the normal to the surreal; in fact, dreams often provoke artistic
and other forms of inspiration. Forms of dream include the frightening or upsetting nightmare and erotic dreams with sexual images and nocturnal emission.
Most scientists believe that dreams occur in all humans with about equal frequency per amount of sleep. Therefore, if
individuals feel that they did not dream or that they only had one dream in any given night, it is because their memory of the
dream has faded. This "memory erasure" aspect of the dream state is mostly found when a person naturally awakes via a smooth
transition from REM sleep through delta sleep to the awake state. If a person is awoken directly from REM sleep (e.g. by an alarm
clock), they are much more likely to remember the dream from that REM cycle (although it's most likely that not all dreams will
be remembered because they occur in REM cycles, which are interrupted by periods of delta sleep which in turn have a tendency to
cause the memory of previous dreams to fade.)
True dreaming has only been positively confirmed in Homo sapiens,
but many believe that dreaming occurs in other animals as well. Animals certainly undergo REM sleep, but their subjective
experience is difficult to determine. The animal with the longest average periods of REM sleep is the armadillo. It would appear that mammals are the only, or at least most frequent, dreamers in nature, which
is perhaps related to their sleep patterns.
History
Dreams have always been featured prominently in literature; for example, the
Biblical book of Genesis features Joseph interpreting the dreams of members of the Egyptian
court.
Many historical figures were reputed to have been influenced by their dreams. Some believed that a god was speaking to them through dreams. (Joseph, for example, is given this view.)
Abraham Lincoln had a dream that seemed to predict his own
assassination, according to Ward Hill Lamon.
Psychology of dreams
Dreams are, according to some psychologists (most famously, Sigmund Freud), rich in symbolism and
offer a window into the unconscious mind. Interpretation of dreams is a regular part of psychoanalysis. Freud's 'The Interpretation of Dreams' is considered a classic.
He documented numerous dreams in detail and proposed four mechanisms at work in dream formation, namely condensation,
displacement, over-representation and secondary revision. Freud confessed that whenever he doubted the validity of psychoanalysis
he always found reasssurance from his work on dream interpretation. He even delayed the publishing his magnum opus, 'The
Interpretation of Dreams' by a few years so as to publish it in the year 1900, as a milestone in deciphering the workings of the
human mind.
It is said that one may control the course and content of dreams by a technique called lucid dreaming. However, this could distract one from the dream-matter provided by the unconscious mind.
Some mainstream academic psychologists do not believe that dreams have a coherent meaning. Carl Jung's view of dreams was this: that dreams have meanings, but their meanings are idiosyncratic,
complicated, and not susceptible to more than vague, uncertain, and sometimes superficial interpretations. In particular,
interpretation needs to be based on the thoughts of the individual dreamer, and not on any formula.
The art of interpreting dreams from a proto-psychological point of view is known as oneirocriticism. The usage of this now
obsolete word occurs at the conclusion of Sir Thomas Browne's 1658 Discourse The Garden of Cyrus:
- Besides Hippocrates hath spoken so little, and the Oneirocritical Masters have left such frigid interpretations from
plants that there is little encouragement to dream of Paradise itself.
Neurology of dreams
There are two competing stories as to the neurological cause of the dreaming experience. The state of REM sleep is known to be
produced by a brain region known as the pons. The activation-synthesis theory states that the brain tries to interpret
random impulses from the pons as sensory input, producing the vivid hallucinations we know as dreams. Sensory-based input
interpretation is in turn based on past experience. Perhaps this is the reason why our dreams contain many characters and scenes
from our regular lives. For some people, there are dreams that recur again and again over many years, sometimes with new
additions from new experiences during the waken-up life. However, research by Mark Solms seems to suggest that dreams are
generated in the forebrain, and that REM sleep and dreaming are two different brain systems. The debate between these two
theories is ongoing.
Supernatural interpretation of dreams
Oneiromancy is the art of divination by interpreting dreams.
Lucid dreaming
- Main article: Lucid dreaming
Lucid dreaming researchers often define lucid dreaming as simply "being aware in a dream that one is dreaming". Many others
define a lucid dream as a dream in which the dreamer has full awareness that the
situation he is in is a construct of his mind, and thus can analyse the situation logically and react accordingly. Such full
awareness adds numerous extra abilities to the dreamer. The dreamer usually has control of the direction of the dream and can
thus explore the dream world. This control is particularly helpful during nightmares, when the dream self can turn round and face the attacker to confront or destroy it. When lucid, the
dreamer usually has direct control of the dream environment, and hence can do things impossible in real life, such as making new
objects appear, polymorphing, or flying. Lucid dreams can occur spontaneously,
especially during youth, but for lucid dreams to occur more frequently, dedication and practice is almost always necessary.
Lucid dreams can be categorized into Dream-Initiated Lucid Dreams (DILDs) and Wake-Initiated Lucid Dreams (WILDs). DILDs start
as non-lucid dreams, but at some point in the dream the dreamer realizes they're dreaming. In a WILD, conscious logic and
reasoning is preserved while the dreamer transitions from waking to dreaming, and the dreamer is lucid from the beginning of the dream. These uses of "WILD" and "DILD"
have mostly fallen into disuse (or rather they mostly never came into use), though "WILD" is often used to refer to any technique
in general that happens to induce a wake-initiated lucid dream, by moving directly from conscious wakefulness to conscious
dreaming.
Lucid dreamers are those who practise lucid dreaming frequently for personal or spiritual gain. They usually induce lucid dreams through the use of one of many induction techniques. A common
technique, known as MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams) and developed by Stephen LaBerge, consists of remembering to recognize that they are dreaming the next time they have a
dream.
Books on Dreams
- 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).
- Jayne Gackenbach,
Stephen LaBerge, Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain: Perspectives on
Lucid Dreaming, Plenum Publishing Corporation, New York (1988).
- Carl Gustav Jung, Dreams, Princeton University Press,
Princeton (1974).
- Namkhai Norbu
Rinpoche, Dream Yoga and the Practice of Natural Light, Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, New York (1992).
- Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams , Avon, (1980).
- Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Yogas of
Dream and Sleep, Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, New
York (1998).
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