Dreams (Pysch. View) Essay, Research Paper

The powers of dreams have always been underestimated. There is a whole new world in the sub conscious mind that helps us in a subtle way. Nightmares can be partially good for you, you will also be given a background on dreams in general and details on interpreting your own dreams. I was not aware of all the different types of dreams. For example there are nightmares, night terrors, lucid, and much more dreams.

Everybody dreams but not everybody can remember them. We usually don’t remember dreams when we suddenly wake up and move about. This happens when you are usually in a rush, when your alarm clock goes off or you are pressured to get up quickly. You remember dreams on such occasions as you lie in on the weekends when you wake up slowly and gradually change from the sub-conscious mind to the conscious mind. This is called lucid dreaming. With this you can take partial control of what happens during a dream. Since you can do this you don’t have to be restricted to do all the things you do in real life but you could do whatever you like because it’s your mind that’s controlling you not your body and gravity. For example, you could fly or walk through walls.

Imagine this: You cheerfully greet your study room teacher as you walk in the door. As you take your seat, you casually notice that you are…nude. Naked as a jaybird. As you glance about the room in horror, wondering what to do, you notice that your teacher has mysteriously transformed into Mr. Rogers. He is chomping on a cigar and laughing cruelly at your predicament. Suddenly you feel dizzy, and the room begins to spin wildly. You fall to the floor. After a few moments, you open your eyes to find yourself safe in your own bed, in your own room, in your own house. You are still breathing heavily, but with relief now that you know – it was only a dream. How many people have had this dream? I m sure most people would answer yes. The reason we have dreams that humiliate us. It is because it shows us our fears and how to overcome them. Every persons dream has a meaning.

Furthermore many people haven’t got the skills of understanding what exactly their dreams mean. For somebody to interpret other people’s dreams they need to know a lot about the person they’re interpreting for as well as the dream itself. To explain this, for example, seeing a elephant might mean totally different things to different people such as a zoo keeper who’ll probably see it as a harmless and a beautiful mammal whilst another person might see the elephant as a ugly, dangerous animal. With this example it tells us that everybody is different and the same dream with an elephant could be differently interpreted to everybody. Because everybody is different, and the same dreams mean different things to different people, books, which contain the guide to interpreting dreams, cannot be always correct but they could still remain useful to provide a stepping-stone to interpreting your own dreams.

The history of dreams is strange. There are many different opinions on dreams. For example it was originally thought in the Medieval times nightmares were known as a supernatural spirit that came to haunt you in the night. These spirits that haunted you were usually female and this was shown by the word “mare”. They came to suffocate you during your sleep. One theory that is prevalent today is that dreams result from the physiological “exercise” of the synapses of the brain. There is no proven fact on why we dream, which is why there are so many theories on the topic. There is Freud’s theory that dreams carry our hidden desires and Jung s theory that dreams carry meaning, although not always of desire, and that the dreamer can interpret these dreams. After these theories, others continued such as the Cayce theory in that dreams are our bodies means of building up of the mental, spiritual and physical well being. Finally came the argument between Evans’ theory and the Crick and Mitchinson theory. Evans states that dreaming is our bodies way of storing the vast array of information gained during the day, whereas Crick and Mitchinson say that this information is being dumped rather than stored. Whichever theory is true, we may never know, but from these following theories we can decide for ourselves what we believe to be true and further help us into understanding our dreams.

A dream in my opinion is nothing more than a chemical reaction in the brain. In laboratory tests, when people were awaked during the RAPID EYE MOVEMENT (REM) stage of sleep and asked to report what was on their mind just before awaking, about 90% reported an experience termed TRUE DREAM (peters). When a true dream is experienced is seems as if it were an actual event rather than one thought or imagined. True dreams often involve a series of such experiences woven together in a somewhat bizarre story. Even those people who claimed to rarely dream or only remember fragments of dreams in the mornings were able to give detailed accounts of a true dream experience when awakened during REM sleep.

Nightmares occur when somebody is under stress or is having problems. In nightmares the victim is usually on his own against the supernatural spirit that’s attacking them. When the person eventually wakes up from the nightmare the person still thinks that they are being attacked. This leaves the person crying for help, trying to get the creature off themselves and gasping for air after suffocation. The person who’s just had the nightmare needs reassurance that everything is okay because they still feel that there’s an unnatural creature ready to get them.

There are also certain types of dreams. There are fantasy, daydream and

waking dreams. There are also lucid dreams, nightmares and night terrors.

There are also certain stages in the dream cycle. In the first stage, your body

temperature drops, your eyes close and your brain waves begin regular alpha

rhythms, indicating a relaxed state. Muscles lose their tension, breathing

becomes more even and your heart rate slows. Second, random images begin to

float through your mind mimicking the dream state. Jolting or involuntary

movements will take place at this time. Third, muscles lose all tightness,

breathing becomes slower, heart rate decreases and blood pressure falls. At

this point, it will take a loud noise or disturbance to wake you up. You are

now fully asleep. Finally, you are in a deep sleep. This is the most

physically rested period of sleep and longest in duration. (Time-Life Books p.

97).

In conclusion I feel that dreams are a part of our life that should take more notice of. The powers of dreams have been expressed by many examples of dreams you have read. Dreams can give us clues about how we are feeling and what the future will be like. It should be known that even the most feared kind of dream, nightmares, cure problems and not cause them. It takes the job of a trained dream interpreter to find out the true meanings of life. To conclude I feel that the sub-conscious is too powerful to be ignored.

1. Edgar Cayce On Dreams by Dr. Harmon H Bro and edited by Hugh Lynn Cayce. Published in 1989 by The Aquarian Press

2. Living with Dreams by Dr. Roderick Peters.

Published in 1990 by Andre Deutsh Limited

3. Jones, Richard m., the new psychology of dreaming . published 1970

4. www.sleeps.com/analysis.html, Dream analysis and interpretation, doing it!

5. Pagel, J.F., Nightmares and Disorders of Dreaming . American Family Physician, 04/01/2000, Vol. 61 Issue 7, p2037, 7p