A beginners guide to the Psychology of Dreams.
What are dreams?
The definition of dreams is a 'series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep'.
From a basic perspective dreams are an experience that occurs during sleep. This experience often simulates real life in the images and sensations that are felt. However, boundaries which would not be surpassed in real life are in dreams for they are imaginary.
Most of our dreaming occurs during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep- a stage in our sleep cycle where we our brains are more active.
The science of dreaming.
Skip if you don't want to know the more complex stuff.
In a study, research was conducted into the relationship between deep brain structures and dreaming. The study found that intense and strange dreams, that are often remembered, are linked to parts of the amygdala and the hippocampus. The amygdala (in a simplified sense) is involved in emotion and behaviour, particularly in processing fear. The hippocampus, on the other hand, is involved in learning and memory.
Further research has also proposed where it is likely that dreaming occurs in the brain. A very rare clinical condition called the “Charcot-Wilbrand Syndrome” was found to cause an inability to dream, alongside other neurological symptoms.
One particular patient who had this condition was found to have lesions (injury) in the right inferior lingual gyrus. This is an area of the brain located where visual processing occurs as well as having a role in emotion and visual memories.
This suggests that dreaming is related to this area of the brain.
Why do we dream?
There are several theories about why exactly we dream. Below I will briefly go over a few.
1. Dreams reveal our suppressed desires and wishes.
According to Freud, though many of his theories have been debunked, dreams are a product of suppressing our deepest desires, thoughts and motivations. He suggests that the purpose of dreaming is to bring all of this to the surface in order to deal with it. Freud says that in our dreams, what we see often has symbolic meaning.
Therefore, according to Freud, our dreams contain our repressed desires and wishes and by dreaming it our brain is forcing us to acknowledge them.
2. Activation Synthesis Hypothesis:
One explanation of dreaming is a neurobiological theory called the “activation-synthesis hypothesis". This suggests that dreams don't actually have a purpose but they're just electrical brain impulses that pull random thoughts and images from our memory. This is because of the brain trying to find meaning in the electrical impulses activated by different areas. (Quite a boring theory.)
So, dreams according to this theory, is just our brain making sense and mixing together random information from different areas.
3. For the processing of emotions:
Some have suggested that the purpose of dreams is to process our emotions by constructing memories of them. Although the dreams themselves are not real, the emotions linked to them are. Therefore, we dream in order for the brain to process these emotions and store them so that they get dealt with and are no longer active.
So therefore, this theory suggests dreams are a way of attaching an experience to an emotion in order to process it. This way they don't overwhelm us.
To read more theories of why we dream, click here.
Interesting dream facts:
Around 12% of people dream in black and white.
Around 8% of the population experience sleep paralysis- a state between sleep and wake where you're unable to move.
The little jolts you feel that wake you up from sleep are called hypnagogic jerks.
You are paralysed during your dreams (to prevent you from acting them out).
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