What do Dreams Mean????
Window to the unconscious
vs.
A simple biochemical reaction
Dream Lore
• Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Hebrews, Muslims, &
Assyrians:
• Saw dreams as messages from the supernatural beings or gods.
• Hindus
• dreams are prophetic, and the timing of the dream will indicate how soon
the prophecy will come to pass
• Japanese
• dreams are sought as visions to help answer questions that are plaguing the
waking self. Usually the answers come from ancestral spirits.
• Australian Aborigines
• The spirits from underground rise and wander in the land of the living, and
when they pass through a mortal being, a "greater vision" is momentarily
acquired… this would be what we call a dream
• North American Indians
• Hidden wishes of the soul are addressed and fulfilled in dreams. Visions
can also be sought after in the hopes of answering a question or resolving a
conflict.
DREAMING
• We dream about 4-5 times a night
• That is the same as 116,800 to
146,000 dreams by the time you
are 80 years old!!!
DREAMS
• REM sleep
= clear imagery and plots
make sense (even though
may be unrealistic)
• NREM
= plots vaguer & images
more fleeting
Warm-up
• What is a dream that
you vividly
remember from your
past?
• Pair Share &
Discuss
Dream Basics
• We all dream, at least if we are healthy,
though some never remember
• And even they can be taught
• The amygdala (emotion) often active
• REM can take place without dreaming
• We don’t need REM to dream, but such dreams
are usually much more mundane
REM Dreams
• Often quite bizarre
• Full of visual imagery, sounds and intense
emotion
• Prompted by brain structures associated with
motivation, emotion, and reward and then
spun through our potent visual association
areas
• No access to reflective thought or reality
What, if anything,
do they mean?
•
•
•
•
•
Do they foretell the future?
Do they reflect wishes unfulfilled?
Can they diagnose illnesses?
Do they have any adaptive value?
Should we ever be ashamed of our dreams?
The Victorian Zeitgeist
• Strict moral standards
• Repressed sexuality
• Extreme modesty in dress
• Verbal/written communication about
emotion or sexual feeling not allowed
(improper to even say “leg”)
1837-1901
Freud’s Methods
• Only worked with
adults, usually
middle and upperclass women
 Tried to be a neutral,
objective listener, a
blank slate
Perspectives on
dreaming
• Sigmund Freud, The
Interpretation of Dreams
(1900)
• Struck by how often clients
described them
• Viewed them as
indispensable to
understanding personality –
“The royal road to the
unconscious.”
Various theories about dreams
• After many books were published
about dreams and their meanings since
the 1970’s, many popular theories
arose about the reasons why we dream
and how we can understand the hidden
meanings within them
• Sigmund Freudo One of the most famous psychologists who believed that
dreams occur from repressed emotions that people cannot
express in a normal society
o The unconscious mind acts out the unacceptable
behaviors, ideas, and desires that, in the waking life, are
stifled
o He believed that dreams were most often based on
symbolism for sexual desires
Dream Interpretation
• Manifest Content: what a
person remembers and
consciously considers
• Latent Content: underlying
(symbolic) hidden meaning
(believed to be a
manifestation of the
unconscious)
Dream Interpretation
• “Royal road to the unconscious”
• What is important in dreams is the
infantile wish fulfillment represented
in them
• Freud assumed every dream has a
meaning that can be interpreted by
decoding representations of the
unconscious material
• Dream symbol = represents some
person, thing, or activity involved in
the unconscious process
Dream Interpretations
(common symbols)
Knife, umbrella, snake
Penis
Box, oven, ship
Falling
Staircase, ladder
Uterus
Anxiety
Sexual intercourse
Birth, mother
Water
Baldness, tooth removal
Left (direction)
Children playing
Fire
Robber
Room, table with food
Castration
Crime, sexual deviation
Masturbation
Bedwetting
Father
Women
Various theories about dreams
• Carl Jungo Carl Jung believed that dreams
served as time to reflect on
one’s self in the “waking world”
o Dreams could also help solve
problems and are used to think
about particularly difficult issues
Various theories about dreams
• Allan Hobson and Robert McCarleyo In 1973, these two researchers proposed an
entirely new theory about the origin and
purpose of dreams
o When sleeping, the brain pulls experiences and
imagery from the dreamer’s memory through
“random electrical brain impulses” that form
together as dreams
o The researchers also felt that the images pulled
from one’s brain do not actually form a story, but
the dreamer’s conscious mind creates a story in
order to try and decipher what happened in the
unconscious mind, and this theory is known as
the activation-synthesis hypothesis
Various theories about dreams
• Calvin S. Hallo Calvin believed that dreams are formed from
certain elements in a dreamer’s personal life
o After studying over 50,000 dream journals
to find various patterns and themes, Hall
devised a system that categorized the
content of a dream
o He believed that in order to understand a
specific dream, there are certain aspects that
are needed to do so: the actions of the
dreamer, the various objects and people, the
interaction between the characters, and how
the dream transitions as well as where the
setting is are all necessary when defining a
dream
Various theories about dreams
• Calvin S. Hallo It is called cognitive theory of dreams
and is based on the thought that ideas of
one’s self, family, friends, and environment
are expressed through dreams
o Through his many years of research, Calvin
discovered that dreams of people from all
across the world are generally more
similar than they are different
o With sleep journals that spanned through
generations, he concluded that dreams
remain pretty consistent, although the
changes corresponded with the changes in
waking life
Various theories about dreams
• G. William Domhoffo A colleague of Calvin Hall who studied at the
University of Miami
o Through extensive research, Domhoff theorized that
dreams were manifested based on the concerns,
thoughts, and emotions that a dreamer dealt with
when his brain was conscious
o He believed that dreams served as a great
“psychological portrait” of an individual
o “Give us 1000 dreams over a couple of decades and
we can give you a profile of the person's mind that is
almost as individualized and accurate as her or his
fingerprints.” –G. William Domhoff (the “Purpose”
of Dreams)
Carlos
castenada
• 70’s sensation
• A shaman’s apprentice?
• His best selling books focused
attention on the conscious
manipulation of the dream
state, done to gain personal
power
• Better known as lucid
dreaming
• Fact or fiction?
Dream Terminology
• Dream censorship• the issues of a dream are omitted to hide the true meaning
• Symbolism• the manifestation of an object, idea, or feeling, in some
"concrete" form that is in the dream.
• Condensation• taking large issues, or more than one issue, and representing
it is a dream with only one image
• i.e. fearing your new girlfriend, missing your mother and
personality fixations revolving around an oral fixation may
be represented in a dream with just a baby with a pacifier
• Displacement• replacement of issues (conflicts) by something remote or
nothing
• i.e. a big issue is only a small element of a dream, while a
small issue seems to get all the attention
Freud’s Dream Levels
• #1 Manifest
• The left over
remnants of the
day that the mind
uses as a stage to
hide the deeper
issues of a dream
• #2 Latent
(hidden)
• The unconscious
conflicts that the
dreamer is
experiencing
Freud’s Dream Interpretation
• Do not trouble yourself over
the manifest's meaning
• Free associate
• Hidden thoughts will appear
on their own, we can not
rush them along
Freud’s Dream Levels
Freud’s Dream “Generalities”
• a house = the human form
if the house is flat (no
balconies or things coming off
the house)- it is a man if the
house has balconies, awnings,
etc., then it is usually a women
• Kings/Queens,
Emperors/Empresses = parents
• little animals/vermin = siblings
• water = birth
• journeys/travel = dying
Freud’s Dream “Generalities”
• the #3, umbrellas, sticks, poles, trees, (things that
penetrate) knives, daggers, lances, sabers, guns, pistols,
revolvers, (things form which water flow) taps, water
cans, springs (objects that get longer) balloons, slide
rulers, (things that defy gravity) airplanes, and snakes,
etc.
• Represents: the male sex organs
• pits, hallows, caves (things that hold things) jars, bottles,
boxes, chests, coffers, pockets, cupboards, stoves, rooms,
(things that hold other things) mouths, doors, gates,
(things that represent breasts) apples, peaches fruits, and
(others) woods, shrubs, bushes, etc.
• Represents: female sex organs
• dancing, riding, climbing, or experiencing some violent act
• Represents: Intercourse
Freud’s Dream “Generalities”
• What would
Freud say about
the symbolism
in your dream?
• Pair Share
Dream Recall Techniques
• You have to want
to remember
• Reread over past
dreams
• Be patient and do
not force a
memory
• Keep a journal
Activationsynthesis theory
• Dreams arise when the pons sends random
signals to the cerebral cortex during REM
sleep
• The cerebral cortex than tries to tie these
together into some sort of a coherent tale by
comparing these neuronal firings with stored
memories
What do dreams REALLY mean?
Neurocognitive
theory
• Dreams are a type of thinking that happens
under special conditions
• Three factors:
cortical activity
little sensory stimulation
loss of control over thinking
• This combination leads to a situation where
emotions and imagination run wild
Neurocog ii
• Systematic studies reveal that people usually
dream about things they are concerned about
• Cognitive maturity facilitates dreaming
• Finally, this theory claims that dreams lack
any adaptive value, they are just a curious byproduct of our cognitive capabilities
Dream diaries
• To best remember dreams:
Every night tell yourself that you will
remember your dreams
Keep your diary right by your bed
Write them down immediately
Tell someone else
Keep track of life events
Record your interpretations
A dream before
dying
• Many have noted the profound dreams people
often experience shortly before death
• Rev. Patricia Bulkey, a chaplain for a hospice,
has collected a number of these
• Her work has noted common themes:
going on journeys
reunions with deceased loved ones
Before dying ii
• Strangely, although the dreams often point to
the inevitability and finality of death, they
usually soothe
• Part of family lore
• Sometimes they warn of unfinished business
• Lincoln, Yung
Why study dreams?
•
Although many people believe that studying dreams is pointless because dreams “don’t mean anything”, by
carefully observing someone’s dreams, a lot about the individual person as well as the brain as a whole
becomes clear
•
Freud believed that studying dreams can allow us to
possibly understand neurotic disorders more, and by using
dreams, we open the door into the mystery of the
unconscious mind.
o If many dreams from one person are analyzed, we
can use them to understand what is causing
abnormal behavior as well as what is altering the
person’s behavior
o “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a
knowledge of the unconscious” –Sigmund Freud
•
•
Overall, by understanding dreams, people can learn the
mysterious signals that their bodies and minds are sending to
them about their wishes, desires, and emotions
Some people believe that if someone
experiences a recurring dream, then
the unconscious mind is trying to
warn the dreamer that he is
continually making the same
mistake in his life
Top 10 common dreams
•
The Association for the Study of Dreams has done extensive research finding dreams that many
people of all ages and around the world have shared, and has studied the meaning and the feelings
behind the creation of those common dreams.
10. A car driving off a cliff or crashing
•
People of all ages can have this dream, not just people who can drive
•
This common dream includes the dreamer either being the passenger of the car or the driver
•
A few different scenarios could be involved in this dream: while driving, your breaks may fail, you lose
control of the steering, or you head over a cliff
•
Interpretation: The dreamer is feeling completely powerless over some situation in his life
9. Faulty machinery
• In dreams, many types of technology can show up, including
telephones that don’t dial, lose connection, or call the wrong number,
lost internet connection, or general broken machinery that does not
function as it should
• Interpretation: The dreamer is losing touch with reality or part of
his body is not properly functioning. Alternatively, the dream could mean
that he is worried about connecting with certain people in real life
Top 10 common dreams
•
The Association for the Study of Dreams has done extensive research finding dreams that many
people of all ages and around the world have shared, and has studied the meaning and the feelings
behind the creation of those common dreams.
10. A car driving off a cliff or crashing
•
People of all ages can have this dream, not just people who can drive
•
This common dream includes the dreamer either being the passenger of the car or the driver
•
A few different scenarios could be involved in this dream: while driving, your breaks may fail, you lose
control of the steering, or you head over a cliff
•
Interpretation: The dreamer is feeling completely powerless over some situation in his life
9. Faulty machinery
• In dreams, many types of technology can show up, including
telephones that don’t dial, lose connection, or call the wrong number,
lost internet connection, or general broken machinery that does not
function as it should
• Interpretation: The dreamer is losing touch with reality or part of
his body is not properly functioning. Alternatively, the dream could mean
that he is worried about connecting with certain people in real life
10 top dreams continued…
8. Lost or trapped
• When a dreamer is lost, he is most commonly lost in a forest, a large city, or a building that feels and looks
like a maze
• Being trapped in a dream usually creates terror when you are unable to move, you are buried alive, caught
in a web, or trapped in some sort of scary situation
• Interpretation: When the lost dream occurs, the feelings of trying to make a decision or react in a
situation are usually prominent within the dreamer, and when the trapped dream occurs, the person may
actually feel “trapped” in some way when they’re awake, or they can’t seem to make the right choice
7. Missing public transportation
• A common dream is running to catch some form of public
transportation such as a train, bus, or plane, but it leaves right before the
dreamer reaches it
• Another variation of this type of dream is when an event is occurring,
and the person has to participate in it but he comes late and the event has
already begun without him
• Interpretation: In real life, a missed opportunity or an emotionally
taxing decision can cause this dream to manifest
Top 10 dreams
continued…
6. Failing a test
o
This type of dream is most common in people who have been out of school for a long period of time
o A test is failed in this type of dream when the person is late to the test, he becomes lost while trying to find
the testing place, he did not prepare for the material, or he does not have the proper equipment
o Interpretation: A dreamer could feel that he is being tested in some way in his life, or he is unprepared or
is not playing the proper and correct part in his life
5. Ill or dying
•
•
This is a dream that includes seeing a loved one become ill or die, or experiencing it yourself
Interpretation: The person has been emotionally hurt recently or he is afraid something will hurt him
o If someone else is dying or is hurt in the dream, the dreamer is representing a part of himself in
that other person, and therefore he is watching a part of himself die or a part that he fears losing
4. Being chased
• The chaser in these dreams are monsters, a particularly frightening
person, or an animal
• This has been considered the most common nightmare theme
experienced in people
• Interpretation: Something in the dreamer’s life, whether it is a person
or even an emotion, makes the dreamer feel threatened
Top 10 dreams continued…
3. Missing or unhealthy teeth
• In this dream, when the dreamer opens his mouth, his teeth will be decayed and unhealthy or they will
begin to drop out of his mouth
• Interpretation: In a basic sense, dreaming about missing teeth can represent fear of becoming
unattractive or being found as ugly, but in a deeper sense, this dream could be manifested from
embarrassment or when the dreamer loses power
2. Dream nudity
• Despite what this type of dream is called, the dreamer is not always completed naked in them; instead he
can find himself partially undressed or wearing clothes that are inappropriate for his surroundings, such as
wearing a bathing suit to school
•
The most common feelings described with this dream are embarrassment or a sense freedom
• Interpretation: The person feels extremely vulnerable or awkward in his life, and he stays in a shell
instead of revealing who he is
1.
Falling or sinking
•
This is the most common type of dream that almost everyone has at some
point in their life
•
The scenario is usually falling through the air, but it can also be seen as
drowning in water
•
Interpretation: The person is insecure and does not receive the
support he needs, or the dreamer feels overwhelmed and almost wants to
give up
Differences between men and women
•
•
Research about the different types of dreams that people have has led to the discovery of how men and
women dream differently
Meno In one study, men were seen to have
more aggression occurring in their
dreams
o Men appear in a man’s dream twice as
much as women do
o Men are more likely to dream about
sex (85% of a male study claim to
dream about sex occasionally)
o The dreams are more frequently
located in an outside setting
•
Womeno William Donhoff concluded that women’s dreams
feature more details and characters than men’s,
and they usually last longer
o Women seem to dream about both men and and
women equally
o Seem to have more nightmares than men, which
can be broken down into three categories: being
chased, losing a loved one, or confusion
o 83% of women dream about being chased
o More likely to have a family member as a
character
Activationsynthesis theory
• Dreams arise when the pons sends random
signals to the cerebral cortex during REM
sleep
• The cerebral cortex than tries to tie these
together into some sort of a coherent tale by
comparing these neuronal firings with stored
memories
Neurocognitive
theory
• Dreams are a type of thinking that happens
under special conditions
• Three factors:
cortical activity
little sensory stimulation
loss of control over thinking
• This combination leads to a situation where
emotions and imagination run wild
Neurocog ii
• Systematic studies reveal that people usually
dream about things they are concerned about
• Cognitive maturity facilitates dreaming
• Finally, this theory claims that dreams lack
any adaptive value, they are just a curious byproduct of our cognitive capabilities
A dream before
dying
• Many have noted the profound dreams people
often experience shortly before death
• Rev. Patricia Bulkey, a chaplain for a hospice,
has collected a number of these
• Her work has noted common themes:
going on journeys
reunions with deceased loved ones
Before dying ii
• Strangely, although the dreams often point to
the inevitability and finality of death, they
usually soothe
• Part of family lore
• Sometimes they warn of unfinished business
• Lincoln, Yung