DREAMS
Did you know?
• Dreams have been a mystery for philosophers,
poets, scientists, and many others for centuries
• Dreams can be in black-and-what or in full color.
• REM sleep normally produces clear dreams with
plot lines, while NREM sleep normally produces
vague dreams with unclear imagery.
• People who go blind after seven years of
age do report visual dreams in the same way we
perceive them. It seems the longer you
experience the world with sight, the longer you
will go on dreaming visually. Someone who
goes blind in their senior years can experience
vivid dreams for many years after losing their
Dreams
• Dreams are the by-product of the brain
reorganizing and storing the information
gathered over the course of a waking day.
When and How Long?
• We have our most vivid dreams during REM
sleep.
– These are usually the dreams that feel very
realistic, and we can sometimes recall exact
information
– Our REM dreams usually take place in real time.
• 10 minutes = 10 minutes
• During NREM sleep, plots are vaguer and
images are less clear/obvious.
Remembering?
• It is very difficult for humans to recall
their dreams because they are moving
between levels of consciousness. (moving
from sleeping to awake)
What if we could watch what we were
dreaming?
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgxJhpLo
FFU
Function of Dreams
• Dreammoods.com (for test)
– Phone app
• Freudian view (for test)
– Said to be the Father of Psychoanalysis
(what is driving our behavior)
• Francis Crick’s view
– Noble Prize winner and co-discover of DNA. _-
• Surrealist
– Subconscious mind through imagery
Sigmund Freud
• “Dreams are the royal road to the
unconscious”
• Freud was the first theorist in the modern era
to argue that dreams are an important part
of our emotional lives.
• Dreams contain clues to thoughts and desires
Freudian View
• Freud called the actual dream content the
MANIFEST content
• Freud said that the manifest content was used
to hide the actual deep, dark secrets of our
dreams. The manifest content is thought to
disguise the LATENT content. (hidden
messages from the subconscious)
How would…
• …….interpret this dream?
– Dreammoods.com (I looked it up)
• Identify SYMBOLS from your dream (manifest content)
– Every detail is a symbol that can be searched
– The more specific the details you look up, the more detailed your
interpretation may be.
– Example– Manifest content of my dream -A green goblin
• Search GOBLIN and GREEN separate and you’ll find the
Baird’s Dream Circa 2014
• **yes, this is what my dreams are like…**
– I was jumping from cloud to cloud, being chased
by a cute green goblin steering a hot-air balloon
right in my direction. The sky was streaked with
every color I could imagine, and in the background
I could hear a faint classical piano piece playing. I
looked down and saw outer-space, and realized I
was not even in motion, but simply running in
place.
Dreammoods.com
Manifest Content
Dreammoods.com App
Running from someone
Problem in your life
Clouds
Your life is clearing up
Goblin
Negative person
Green
Hope
Hot air balloon
Get over depression
Colorful sky
Romance
Piano
Harmony in life
Upside down
Need to straighten up
Outer space
Someone has shown up in your
life unexpected
Homework
• Using the dreammoods descriptions, interpret
Mr. Baird’s dream.
Putting it together
• I am running from relationship issues, while
being chased by an unexpected romantic
interested that I perceive to be negative
because of pessimism. The romantic interest is
trying to help me get over depression and
show me that relationships are not all bad, if I
just stop running I will find harmony…
• WOOOOAH. Dreammoods.com you need to
relax!
• All up in my business!!!
Freudian Way
• Manifest content is listed (actual dream)
• Dreamer associates the manifest content with
what they ACTUALLY believe the content
means!
– While thinking of associations the dreamer does
not sit and think hard about this, it’s the FIRST
thing that pops into their consciousness when
thinking of the dream symbol.
How do we tap into the latent
content?
• Free association
– Write down all the symbols from your dream in a
column
– One by one go through the symbols and picture
them each individually
– Right when you picture the symbol, write down
the FIRST thing you think of
• Freud said these free associations come
Baird Dream Circa 2015
• I was sleeping in my childhood house, but the
house was located at my current residency. I
woke up and looked out my window to see a
car (trucks) chase through the golf course. The
trucks were not on the grass at all but instead
on the gravel pathways. The trucks left the golf
course and the first truck got t-boned by a cop
car which then caused a big pile-up of cars.
Etc….
Tapping into your subconscious!
• Write down the first word you think of in
the LATENT CONTENT portion of your
notes.
• DO NOT HESITATE.
• Be ready to think right now
Unmasking Manifest Content
• Manifest Content
Content
• Childhood house
• Golf course
• Looking out a window
• Seeing a chase
• Trucks
• Gravel road
Latent
This is an example of
Which words from the examples were the
manifest content- the ones I wrote or the ones
your wrote?
Which words were the possible latent content?
Using the Latent Content
• Similar to how we used the Dreammoods
definitions of our dream symbols, we will now
use the LATENT CONTENT we have come up
with to interpret Mr. Baird’s dream.
• Please do so on the portion provided on your
notes.
Francis Crick
• mental house-cleaning.
• things that need to be forgotten are in
our dreams
• Crick claims if it were not for the helpful
effects of dreams, evolution could not
have produced the highly refined human
Surrealist view
• Surrealism is a view of arts and literature that
attempts to show subconscious
thoughts/desires through arts and literature.
• Dreams are images produced from the
subconscious mind
– No control of thought= pure experience based
thought= truth
Surrealist Paintings
Biopsychological
• Biology says that dreams take place out of
complete randomness.
• Neurons are triggered in the brain simply for
upkeep, completely random.
Controlling your dreams!!!
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYSX51xBk
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