Studying Dreams
Background on Dreams Dreams are universal experience that could bring bad or good memories. A dream has been very controversial during the ancient times. In Ancient times dreams were believed to be the people’s conversation with the Creator. It was also experienced when Angel Gabriel appeared to Joseph in a dream about the coming of the Messiah that Mary (Joseph’s wife) was bearing. Also, Dreams were exclusively for Religious setting during those times. It was when philosophers and physicians treated dreams as part of science. Dreams have different interpretation in the field of Science and Religion. However, despite of all this differences, it has effect in the lives of people with different domination and beliefs.
…show more content…
Thus, a mental activity occurs when a person sleeps. (no author, n.d) The great theorists; Freud and Jung opened the issues about the dreams in science context. It was when Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung put interest in the study of dream in nineteenth century that brought controversies to the people’s life. These theorists believed that it has a psychological importance and a hidden meaning on it. (Linden, 2011). The father of psychoanalysis, a great Neurologist, Sigmund Freud, categorized our minds into 3 major parts: The Id, The ego and the superego. The ego is our conscious self, the us that we are aware of. The superego is a consciousness that keeps our Id suppressed. Our Id, which is suppressed, consists of our primal instincts, impulses, desires, unchecked urges, thoughts and ideas and emotions. This can be considered as our nature, our true self. If dreams were outlets for these things, then what we see in our dreams are actually parts of our true self, the Id that we keep locked away. If so, then dreams are the key to unlocking some parts of us we never knew.
Carl Jung like Freud has three main interacting systems; the ego, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. Jung’s ego is somewhat different from Freud. Ego for Jung represents the conscious mind where thoughts, memories and emotions were
…show more content…
Dreams is something that is happening during a deep sleep. When a person is sleeping, she undergoes five sleep stages. First is a light sleep where a person is easy to wake it up. Second, the slightly deeper sleep, followed by the three and four stages that characterizes the deeper sleep. Throughout these stages our brain is slowing down into a deep sleep and then the brain activity is converting into a delta waves (brain’s slowest wave) which means a person is now in a deep sleep. With the helped of the discovered REM or the Rapid Eye Movement that characterized the movement of the eyes in which it represents the fifth stage and means that a person is now in her unconscious state. Rapid Eye Movement or commonly known as a REM sleep was first discovered by a Roman Poet named Lucretius. He first discovered it when he was watching his dog sleeping and the dog’s eyes were moving back and forth underneath its closed eyelids. He then concluded that the dog’s mind is chasing a prey. This was the first phenomenon that was documented about the REM observation. During the REM sleep, muscles were almost paralyzed except for the muscles in the eyes where the eye is in speedy movement. REM dreams is where the deep sleep is happening that shows intense and emotional
Rather than normal sleep, scientists decided they were in what is called REM sleep. During REM sleep, also known as rapid eye movement, is when one become sexually aroused, one becomes limp, eyes moved around, heart break and breathing
Our muscles begin to relax and occasionally twitch as well. The brainwaves at this time also begin to slow from their normal daytime patterns. The waves become very uniform and are typically categorized as alpha and theta waves. When we enter stage two non-REM sleep our breathing and heartbeat slow even more, along with the muscles relaxing even more than in stage one. At this time our body temperature decreases and eye movements come to a complete stop.
HISTORY According to some ancient societies, they interpret dream as supernatural communication or divine intervention which people with power only can unveil the meaning. Sumerians in Mesopotamia recorded the dream in a clay tablet and believed that one will leave his body and travel to another dimension which is dream world. In Eastern Mediterranean, people interpret dream as mantic or future predicting weather it is good or bad.
As well as Freud’s view on what a dreams function could be. Lastly I will discuss how dreams sooth the soul before death. Flanagan’s reason for believing that consciousness is an adaptation stems from various questions in his book he starts my saying “what functions does consciousness serve” (Flanagan,
1. Introduction Starting from the ancient times humans has always been interested in strange phenomena of sleeping and dreams. Dreams can be explained psychologically as images of subconsciousness and feedback of neural processes in human's brain. For most of us, dreaming is something quite separate from normal life. When we wake up from being chased by a monster, or being on a date with a movie star, we realize with relief or disappointment that "it was just a dream."
Allan. Dreaming: An Introduction to the Science of Sleep. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.
A client needed to work with the therapist to ‘decode’ the dreams and gain access on one’s “repressed” information about self. Carl Gustav Jung (1875- 1961) was a “Neo- Freudian”. Though he agreed with some parts of Freud’s work, he rejected and modified other portions. Jung disagreed with Freud’s idea that dreams contained hidden meanings that needed to be interpreted, i.e. he rejected the idea of a “manifest content”. Jung formulated a new theory on dreams.
The “why we dream argument see dreams as only nonsense that the brain creates from fragments of images and memory” (Obringer). On this side of the argument dreams are viewed as tricks of the mind that just seem to happen. Other people believe differently. Some people believe dreams have meaning even if we don’t recognize it at first. “Many think dreams are full of symbolic messages that may not be clear to us on the surface” (Obringer).
There have been many times in my life where I have either woken up in the middle of the night from a horrible nightmare or woke up in the morning trying to recall my dreams. I have spent a lot of time researching what my dreams mean. Although we have experienced countless dreams in our lifetime, do we ever stop to think: how dreams occur? How dreams affect our lives? Do dreams even mean anything?
They both agreed on the belief of the unconscious mind but greatly disagreed on its role in a dream. Although they worked closely alongside each other, Jung does not believe that the unconscious is as primative or sexual but instead he views it as spiritual, with a very much more down to earth approach. He set out to explore his theory and began a new study, separate from Frued. Jung stated that dreams are how we familiarize ourselves with our unconscious (Hurd). Through our dreams the unconscious part of us can communicate with our waking life, unlike Frued that saw the unconscious just driving us toward desires.
My whole body was paralyzed and at that moment I was convinced that I was going to die. Daunting thoughts began to swell within my head and the yearning to cry was only thriving as the minutes passed. Sleeping had become a struggle ever since my parents had announced their divorce two months prior. Dealing with the consistent fighting of my parents during the day was enough to make me want to sleep eternally at night. However, after experiencing sleep paralysis for the first time I was then introduced to the enchanting world of lucid dreaming.
Freud’s perception of dreams are that they all occur in forms of "wish fulfillment" trials by the mind through some sort of struggle concerning something recent or something from in the past (Freud later explains this in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which Freud explains that dreams seem to not arise to be a wish fulfillment.). Since the information is in the mind and is an uncontrollable, often disturbing form, of a "censor" before the mind will not permit it to pass uninfluenced into the mind. Through dreams, the mind is more unconcerned in this duty than in its awakening hours but is nevertheless alert. As such, the mind must change and twist the meaning of its knowledge to make it through the censorship. Such a perception in dreams are
Today I first discussed when dream occurs. Second, I discussed theories of dream. Finally, I discussed the dream interpreter. Understanding when dream occurs, theories of dream and what they mean help us grasp what dreams actually
As a starting point, dreams are simulations that enact a person’s life concerns and interests. Dreams are recollections of immediate and past experiences. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, defines dream as the fulfillment of a wish. Sometimes, dreams appear to be an expression of wishes and the satisfaction of desires.
As you progress into the second stage of sleep you are on the borderline of light sleep to deep sleep. Once you are in third and fourth stage you are in your deepest sleep and are about to progress backward through all the sleep stages again. After starting back at your first sleep stage you enter then REM sleep stage. REM sleep is called “Rapid Eye Movement” and is the time when you dream (Lohff 2). REM sleep is very important in sleeping according to David Lohff, author of “The Running Press Cyclopedia of Dreams”, who says, “If you do not have