Dreaming And Sleeping Essay, Research Paper

Dreams and dreaming are an important part of our lives and cultures of

epopel around the world. They are a reliable source of insight, personal

enrichment, and life affirming revelations. Dreams are the language of a

person’s subconscious mind.

Before a person starts to dream, there are certain cylces or stages that

a person goes through in their sleep. Sleeping is important in our lives.

The ancient Geeks beleived that sleep was a grant. Manny people spend about

25 years in sleeping and dreaming.

There are four 90 minute stages of sleep that a person go through in

their sleep. Ot begins with stage 1. This is when breathing is regular,

heart rate slows down, and blood pressure decreases. A perosn could still be

awake during this stage. They are still concious. Slowly the person drifts

to stage 2. During this stage, the person is still realzed and they do not

know what is going on in the outside surroundings. As the perosn falls

deeper into sleep, the person falls into stage 3 and 4. It is harder to wake

soemone up when they reached this stage.

It takes about an hour for a perosn to go through all four stages. Yet,

not everyone goes through all of these stages a nioght. Throughout the

night, stages four and fivere repeated.

REM (rapid eye movement) takes place when a person is at the deepest

level of sleep. In REM, eyes move quicly under the eyelid. Dreaming takes

place at this stage. Dreams occur more often and they are more real at this

stage. These dreams are story like, intense, and passionate.

There are amny ways to look at dreams. The psychoanalytic, biological,

and cognitive views of dreaming are the three wyas theories to look at

dreams. THese theories has not been tested for researchers to find enough

information.

In psychoanalytic view, Freud came up with a theory called the

"wish-fulfilmetn theory." Wish-fulfilemtn throy is "Freud’s theory of dream

interpretation that emphasizes the roles of maiffest and latent content of

dreams" (Huffman, Vernoy, and Vernoy, 139). In a psychoanalytic view, they

say that dreams are hidden signs of supresses needs. In a biological

perspective, they beleive that dreams are not importatn- they are stimultaion

of brain cells. In a cognitive view, they beleive dreams is an important

part of information proecssing.

There is no proven fact on why we dream. This is why there are a lot og

theories on dreaming. There is amnu dream theorists that wrote theories on

why epople dream. Fruend was always nchnated by dreams. He belived that all

dreams are meaningful. In Frued’s theory, he wrote that dreams carry our

hidden desires. Jung, another perosn who wrtoe about therores on dreaming

wrtoe that dreams carry meaning and that these dreams can be interperted by

the dreamer.

There is many theories about dreams yet, Freud’s theory stands out the

most. He beleived that a dream portrays an ongoping wish wioth the previous

days activites. People mioght also deram about wihses that they had as a

child. Freud also beleived that nothing ismade up in a dream. They are

biologically determined and obtained from perosn’s needs and personal

ecperiences.

The most iunteresting ideas among his theroy is his theory of dream

occurence. Dream will occur when the unconscious wish is bound to the

preconscious instead of just being removed. If there is too much going

through a person’s ,ind-denial, regression, or repression, a dream will take

place.

Jung disagreed wiht Freud’s theory and developed his own theory that

contradicted Freud’s. Jung beleived the most effective method for a dream

interpretaion wa sthe use of series correlation. Freud did not beleive that

the dreamer could interpret theor own dream. He beleived that only trained

psychologists could interpret dreams.

Jung also categorized the mind into three parts- the collective

unconsciou, the personal unconscious, and the conscious. The collective

unconscious does not depend on personal expereinces. The personal

unconscious hold forgoteen assocation, unnoticed expereinces, repressed and

discarded thoguths and half thoughts. The conscious develops through

sensing, thinking, and intution.

A dream can also be traslated yet it involves sevreal stages. The first

stage involes clear understanding of dream structuvre. In every dream, there

is a dreamer. The dreamer represents consciousness and the psyche. The

person represent their awareness and perspective of life.

The second stage involvoes understanding the influences producing dream

content. Dremas infleunces affecting the person’s subliminally. These

inflerunces affecting the person’s life and consciouness. A person’s dream

is a product of subliminal infleince.

Understanding dream descritpion is the third stage of dream translation.

This stage is the most difficult to understand. Our social and cultural

diffreences affect dreams and how we perceive certain dream images when we

are awake. However, there are two rules of dream translation. The first

rule is that all dream images are representations. Words are not iused, the

subconscious mind has metaphoric images. The second rule is that all dream

images reflect seomthing mental. Dreams occur in mental domain. The objects

and epople in a person’s dream are not physical images. They are mental

images.

The final stage invovles the order of the process and teh context of

dream imagery. When a person is trying to remeber their dream they are

remembering series of images. All the images from the entire dream is needed

to traslate the meaning of the dream. Studying the whole dream is more

important to understand then studying only one image of a dream.

Review dreams is condtions and challenges of life and how we view

ourselves. These dreams show how we evolve through our life expereices.

Many people beleive that theoriues on dreaming is pointless. Some beleive

that dreams are meaningless to us and jsut another thing that is part of our

lives. Yet, there are otehr who say dreams are either the clearing of

fragments from our memory that was stored. However, there are other people

who do not beleive it and argue aainst it. These epople say the dreams are

important to live a full and complete life. It is difficult for us to study

dream and how it works while we are sleeping. People can only decide for

themselves and belive what they wa to believe in. Only the dreamer can

determine what is right or wrong.