Dreams and Dreaming
Defined in Webster's Dictionary as
• a "sequence of sensations, images, thoughts,
etc., passing through a sleeping person's mind"
Do we all dream?
• No non-dreamers, just non-recallers!
• Average 4-5 dreams per night
• Morning dreams more vivid due to longer
REM sleep
Oneirology
The scientific
discipline of
dream research
The most famous
dream researcher was
Freud
Two Parts of a Dream
(according to Freud)
Dreams of Unconscious Wishes
Manifest Content
– the remembered storyline of a dream
– who’s in the dream, what happens
Two Parts of a Dream
Latent Content
–the underlying
meaning of a
dream
The mc is the representation of the lc
thus disguising the real meaning of
the dream
Dream Interpretation
This type of therapy is
dangerous…why??
Types of Dreams
Daydreams
– a level of consciousness between
sleep and wakefulness.
– It occurs during our waking hours
when we let our imagination carry us
away
Why do we daydream?
• They can help us prepare for
future events
• They can substitute for
impulsive behavior
Lucid Dreams
• The conscious perception of one's state while
dreaming
– occurs when you realize you are dreaming
– "Wait a second. This is only a dream!"
– results in a much clearer ("lucid") experience and
usually enables direct control over the content of
the dream
Nightmares
• Dreams of particular intensity, with content that the
sleeper finds disturbing
– related either to physiological causes, such as a high
fever
– or to psychological ones, such as unusual trauma or
stress in the sleeper's life
Reoccurring Dreams
• Recurring dreams
repeat themselves
with little variation in
story or theme.
Have You had one???
Dreams of Absent Minded
Transgression (DAMT)
• Dreams where the individual
dreaming absent mindedly performs
an action that they have been trying
to stop – withdrawal dreams
• EX: a smoker trying to quit dreams
of lighting a cigarette
• Subjects that have had DAMT
dreams have reported awaking with
intense feelings of guilt
Fantasy Prone Personalities
• Someone who imagines
and recalls experiences
with lifelike vividness and
who spends considerable
time fantasizing
These are the types of dreams you will use
for your dream journal!
To Satisfy our own Wishes
“Wish-fulfillment theory”
•
•
Freud – “dreams are the key to understanding our
inner conflicts”
Dreams are our expressions of our wishes
To File away Memories
Information – Processing
Theory
– sorting and sifting through
information to aid memory
storage or memory removal
To develop and preserve neural
pathways
Physiological function theory
•
provides stimulation for our brain
To make sense of random activity
in the brain
Activation-synthesis Theory
•
•
The minds attempt to make
sense of random neural activity
This might explain why many
dreams do not make sense