Why We Must Dream

Why We Must Dream

Over the ages there have been several theories of why we must dream. I have read that dreaming has to do with fulfilling our wishes, problem solving, memory consolidation, increasing your overall brain efficiency, physiological benefits, assisting your brain’s neural functionality, or we dream for no reason at all.

Let’s take a closer look at what several prominent psychologists, doctors, scientists and other serious dream researchers believe about why we must dream.

• Sigmund Freud (Austrian neurologist, 1856–1939): Sigmund Freud presents his study of dreams with his publication The Interpretation Of Dreams. Freud analyzed dreams in order to understand aspects of one’s personality. He believed that everything people do is motivated by the subconscious portion of the brain and does not occur by chance. He believed that we all hold back our impulses and desires during waking life, but many of them are released through our dreams. Freud wrote that dreams are “…disguised fulfillments of repressed wishes…” Most of us heard of the term “Freudian slip”. Freud’s theory still adds to the popularity of dream interpretation today, however, research has failed to prove that his theory disguises the real psychological meaning of a dream.

• Carl Jung (Swiss psychiatrist, 1875–1961): Jung stated that dreams serve two functions. One function is to compensate for imbalances in the dreamer’s mind. Dreams produce subconscious contents that the conscious mind has either ignored or suppressed. For example, if a person is very timid, dreams will work to balance this conscious pattern by bringing forth images of the mind’s more aggressive-oriented contents. When the dreamer recognizes and accepts these subconscious contents, greater psychological stability is attained. Jung believed that the other function of dreaming is to provide possible images of the future. Jung does not believe that dreams predict the future, but that dreams can suggest what might happen and what potentials the future might hold for us. Jung believes that dreams look forward to anticipate what the dreamer’s future developments may be. Jung believed that dreams occur to promote the combining of the subconscious and the consciousness in a harmonious state of wholeness. He considered this process to be the most important development of life.

• Edgar Cayce (American psychic 1877–1945):  Cayce believed that the dream state is an experimental playground which gives you a chance to explore and express emotions without the usual inhibitions you may display in your waking life. Dreams are the presentations of the experiences necessary for your personal development. Dreams provide an avenue of expression for the part of yourself that knows both your history and your potential as a spiritual being. Dreams are another way the universe provides guidance about relationships, careers, and health problems. Through dreams you may find answers to your spiritual questions and even receive encouragement to some challenge in your life. While some dreams may allow you to release bottled-up emotions from your day’s activities, others can lead to profound insights in a psychological or spiritual way. While dreaming, we experience different levels of consciousness and receive input from the different realms of the spirit world. Through dreaming, we have special access to our spirit within. According to the Cayce, there is not a question we can ask which cannot be answered from our sub-consciousness. Cayce believed that dreams may include the health status of our bodies, telepathy, clairvoyance, prophecies, astral projection, memory of past lives, communication with those that have died, spirit guides, angels, Christ, and even the voice of God.

• Deirdre Barrett Ph.D. (Author and psychologist who teaches at Harvard Medical School): Barrett believed that dreams are for problem-solving. Since dreams can be very visual and illogical it makes them the perfect state of mind for “out-of-the-box” thinking for solving problems and resolving confusing thoughts we may have while we are awake. Barrett stated, “Whatever the state we’re put in, we’re still working on the same problems.” Barrett has also conducted research on lucid dreams.
• Matthew Wilson (Neuroscientist at the Picower Institute at M.I.T.) In the early 1990’s, Wilson was recording neuron activity in the brains of rats with a sound recording device as they tried to find their way through a difficult maze. He left the rats connected to the sound recording device after they completed the task. After becoming tired, the rats fell asleep. Wilson then heard something extremely unanticipated. Although the rats were asleep, the sound produced by their brain activity was almost exactly the same as it was when they were in the maze. The rats were dreaming what they just had done in the maze. After more research it was concluded that the dreaming rats are consolidating their new memories, embedding these memory traces into their neural network. While we are asleep, the mind is filtering through the disorganized thoughts of the day and trying to figure out what we need to remember and what we can forget. Dreaming may be part of the process that changes important bits and pieces of the day’s experiences into long-term memories.

• Francis Crick (English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist 1916-2004) and Graeme Mitchison (Quantum computing researcher and computational biologist):  Crick and Mitchinson proposed that a reverse learning mechanism in REM sleep sifts through information gathered throughout the day and throws out all unwanted material in our brain. It removes certain undesirable modes of interaction in neural networks within the cerebral cortex of our brain. The cortex is made up of connected neural networks that have the ability to stimulate other neural networks.  It is believed that memories are encoded in these neural networks. When one point of the network is stimulated, a pulse travels through the network which prompts recall. If there is an overload of incoming information the network can malfunction. They believe that too many memories in one network can produce fantasies, obsessions, and hallucinations. To deal with information overload, the brain needs a mechanism to debug and tune the network. This method is REM sleep that is needed for the daily cleanup of the neural network. They claim that this is why if you don’t write down your dreams you will forget them because your brain is still working to clear these memories out.

• Jan Born (PhD in Neuroscience, of the University of Lübeck in Germany), Through a very tedious mathematical experiment with a group of students, Born discovered that participants that were allowed to sleep were more likely to resolve the math experiment. A well-designed shortcut was built into the math problem.  Less than 25 percent solved the problem with no sleep and 59 percent were able to solve the problem with sleep. Born argues that deep sleep and dreaming “…set the stage for the emergence of insight…” by allowing us to mentally represent old ideas in new ways.

Summary

As we can see, there is much research being done on sleep and dreaming. Several different ideas have been presented here and there are plenty more. This is only a sample of my research. I personally believe that sleep and dreaming are extremely important to our health and development, both mentally and physically. Since lucid dreaming is also directly tied into the brain during sleeping and dreaming it is most definitely worth the research it deserves.

Dream Lucid My Friends.

© 2010 – 2011 Gary Gardner, All Rights Reserved