Dream Interpretation

Most people dream, some people chase and realize their dreams. Understanding dreams however is the key. A dream can be defined as experience of voices, events etc in our imagination or in mind. Oneirology is the study of dreams in humans. Human history is riddled with instances where dreams have been studied scientifically or have been a source of inspiration for artists as well. What is lesser known fact is that even animals dream.

What is dream Interpretation?

When meanings are assigned to dreams, this process is called Dream Interpretation. Different systems of dream interpretation have assigned meanings like in terms of future events, in terms of chance events during the night etc.

Many scientific researches have been made on dreams and these modern theories have more or less tried to explain as many facts found in scientific research like:

o The cause of dreams

o The purpose of dreams

o The content of dreams

o The varying frequencies of dreams

o The relationship between dreams and depression

o The possible evolutionary role of dreaming

Definition of dream:

Hall

Calvin S. Hall developed a theory of dreams in1953, in which he said that dreaming is a cognitive process. Dream was simply a thought or sequence of thoughts that occurred during sleep, and that dreams are just visual representations of your personal conceptions. According to his explanation, if you dream of being attacked by your friends, this may be a manifestation of fear of friendship.

Sigmund Freud

Freud first published his book "The interpretation of Dreams" at the end of the 19th century. He had a different concept. He said that the foundation of all dream content is the fulfillment of wishes, conscious or not and the schism between ego and id leads to censorship of dreams. He said that only an understanding of the structure of the dream-work can explain the dream.

Freud listed four transformations applied wishes in order to avoid censorship:

o Condensation - one dream object stands for several thoughts

o Displacement - a dream object's psychical importance is assigned to an indifferent dream object

o Representation - a thought is translated to visual images

o Symbolism - a symbol replaces an action, person, or idea

According to him these transformations help to disguise the latent content. Nightmares represented a clash between the ego and the id: the id wishes to see a past wish fulfilled, while the ego cannot allow it; he interprets the anxiety of a nightmare as the ego working against the id. Freud did a lot of research -self analysis and psychoanalysis on his patients before arriving to this conclusion.

Scientific American-theory:

Later many people also did a lot of research on dreams .A theory was put forth in 2003 on the Scientific American, according to which dreams provide sensory stimulation to the brain when the eyes, ears, etc. are still developing. Tests showed that REM-deprived cats developed visual problems. Analysis showed that there is a direct correlation between immaturity of an animal at birth and its required REM sleep like for example, the platypus, which is born without eyes cling to its mother for weeks and they need the most REM of all mammals; where as the dolphin, which at birth is a self-sufficient swimmer, gets almost none.

It also suggested that since humans wake more quickly from REM than normal sleep, dreams could have evolved to keep us alert for predators in the night. According to this theory nightmares could be a specialized form of this; a human makes a sudden, reflexive movement when he is woken up from a nightmare, which can collide with a beast that would otherwise have killed him.

Oneiromancy:

Dreams are also considered as a prediction of the future-oneiromancy or messages from the past and so people tend to interpret their dreams according to what they believe could happen or the object they see could mean of something. They look for signs to get their interpretations right.

Jeffrey Meier at Jam727 Enterprises at http://www.thearticlehome.com blog offers even more detailed information on a wide variety of topics.

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A Waking Dream, Through History - Part 4

This is Part 4, in an on-going study of dreams. Part 3 ended with the start of discussing the four different stages. In this Part, we'll look deeper into these four stages and also how our brain processes stimuli produced from our dreams and how our body keeps from actually acting out our dreams.

REM sleep is also known as 'paradoxical sleep', because during it brain activity, adrenaline levels, pulse rate and oxygen consumption come closer to those in wakefulness, yet muscle tone relaxes and the sleeper may prove particularly difficult to arouse. It is during the REM sleep that more dreaming takes place. It seems that physiological differences between REM sleep and the other three, deeper levels of sleep are as great as those between waking and sleeping.

A number of American dream researchers have even suggested that REM sleep warrants recognition as a third basic form of human existence, seeming to confirm the ancient Hindu tradition that consciousness consists of three distinct levels: waking, dreamless sleep and dreaming.

In the 1960's researchers found that REM deprivation appears to lead to daytime irritability, fatigue, memory loss and poor concentration.

Volunteers who were systematically deprived of REM sleep by being aroused whenever they entered the eye activity phase caught up on subsequent nights by engaging in more REM sleep than usual. If a subject is faced with total sleep deprivation, because of illness or other factors, the REM state has even been known to force its way into waking consciousness. It seems that we may badly need REM sleep, and this could be associated with a psychological need to dream.

Emotions are engaged during REM, causing heart rate and breathing to become erratic at times. Gastric acid production may increase by as much as ten times, asthmatics are more prone to attacks, and there is an increased tendency to cardiac arrest. Intriguingly, however, these extreme physiological changes do not necessarily have a direct relationship with reported dream content, but may instead result from what appears to be a total arousal of parts of the nervous system. Yet however, real such sensory experiences appear to the brain, something prevents us from performing in full actions and emotions that fill our dreams. There is a general loss of muscle tone during REM sleep and the eye muscles appear to be the only ones that are physically involved in acting out dream events. It has been shown that when dreams are most vivid, certain inhibitors are produced to prevent muscles from receiving the relevant impulses from the brain, thus ensuring that we do not act on sensory stimuli experienced in the dream. It is perhaps this effective paralysis that gives rise to the dream sensations of being unable to run, of attempting in vain to scream, or of trying to walk, but being stuck in sand or water. The brain somehow prevents us from moving physically when asleep with the power and agility possessed by the dreaming mind.

Join me for Part 5- where we'll continue to study together how dreaming effects our waking life. Information from: "The Secret Language of Dreams"; By David Fontana.

http://www.bonanzle.com/inspired

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