The Sciende Of Dreams Essay, Research Paper

The Science of Dreams -Good morning.+ 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. Dreams have fascinated mankind throughout all of recorded history. The dreams of Nebuchanezzer, King of Babylon in the 6th century BC foretold the end of his rule and his demise into madness (Holroyd 48). The life of the infant Jesus was saved from Herod+s massacre when the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, urging him to flee to Egypt. Napoleon had a dream of a black cat before the Battle of Waterloo, correctly predicting his impending defeat. Robert Louis Stevenson stated that inspiration for many of his works came to him from his dreams. Dreams have always been mysterious, and civilizations have always striven to understand their fascinating properties. Dream research is a complex subject, but it can be broken down into three simpler areas – psychological dream research, physiological dream research, and the new developments in dream theory. Today dreaming is studied in labs, with high tech equipment such as computers and electroencephalogram (EEG) machines. But long before the days of three-dimensional computer models and EEG machines, humans had been attempting to make sense of their dreams. In ancient Egypt, temples were devoted to dream incubation, with resident priests who were known as -Masters of the Secret Things+ (Holroyd 51). These priests were charged with the task of interpreting the dreams of the ill, hopefully to indicate the cure the gods required. In ancient Greece, Plato put forth the theory that repressed aspects of the personality come through in dreams (anticipating Freud by some 2300 years). However, Plato+s student Aristotle did not agree with this; he believed that during sleep, when distracting external stimuli are absent, the mind is able to pay more attention to tiny internal sensations. He attributed apparently prophetic dreams to either coincidence or self-fulfilling behavior influenced by suggestions in the dream. One of the earliest dream researchers was the soothsayer Artemidorus, a Roman who lived in the 2nd century AD He traveled widely, visited dream incubation centers, consulted dream interpreters, and gathered together all the information on dreaming that was available in his day. He distinguished five types of dreams: symbolic, or advising; oracular, such as divine revelations; fantasies, or wish-fulfillments; nightmares; and daytime visions. He also distinguished insomnium and somnium dreams. Insomnium dreams are dreams influenced by physiological conditions or daytime concerns, while somnium dreams have profound meaning, often related to future events. Prior to Artemidorus, dream interpreters relied on a fixed set of symbolic representations, that indicated the same thing in all dreams. Artemidorus felt that this approach was worthless, and that the entire situation and personality of the dreamer should be taken into account. This approach is one of the foundations of modern dream analysis. The birth of modern dream research can be attributed to the two great psychoanalysts, Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. Freud and Jung worked together for over five years, but eventually parted due to differing opinions on dream interpretation. Freud believed that dreams were the result of repressed sexual energy, and all symbols in dreams could be interpreted as some indications of this repressed energy. Jung initially agreed with Freud, but came to view Freud+s beliefs as limited and obsessive. The main differences between Freudian and Jungian dream theory are in their ideas of the contents of the unconscious. Freud believed that the unconscious held only repressed material – thoughts and wishes that the individual does not wish to admit to his conscious mind. Jung had a more complex view of the unconscious. In Jungian belief, the unconscious is the repository of not just personal experiences but also racial memories and experiences. Just as humans have anatomical characteristics that relate them to primitive forms of life, so Jung believed, they have mental characteristics that are a throwback to prehistoric times – and that they are unconscious of. These characteristics have found expression in the myths of mankind. He noted that widely different cultures and ages have produced myths that are remarkably similar. He also found that these primitive and mythological themes have appeared in the dreams of people with no knowledge of mythology. While Freud believed that dreams were backward-looking and concerned with the fulfillment of infantile wishes, Jung believed that dreams are more often forward-looking, a message from the unconscious which seeks to order the dreamer+s life and help indicate the path he must follow. The most-focused-on area of dreaming today is its applications in treating the mentally ill. Modern psychiatry often involves both Freudian and Jungian dream interpretation, as well as newer interpretation theories and drugs. An interesting technique in analyzing dreams is called Gestalt dreamwork. According to Fritz Perls, who developed Gestalt therapy, the Freudian approach to therapy -barks up the wrong tree.+ The physical setup for Freudian therapy, with the patient lying on a couch and the therapist out of sight behind him, creates an artificial situation, with the patient passively relating information and waiting for the therapist+s interpretation. By contrast, Gestalt dreamwork creates a real-life situation in which the therapist, the patient, and a group of interested participants work together on a dream. The function of a Gestalt therapist is to help a patient stay with and work through the material presented in the dream. Fragments of the dream are isolated, brought into focus, and worked with by being acted out. By helping the subject actively explore the incidents and meanings in a dream, Gestalt therapy also tries to resolve the dream with the dreamer. Gestalt therapists direct the -dreamwork+, much like a director guides a play, and help the participants understand their dreams. It was not until the mid-1950+s that sleep and dream research was able to become truly scientific. The stages of sleep were discovered, and experiments were conducted into many areas, including sleep and dream deprivation, correspondence between eye movements and images in the dream, and lucid dreaming. In 1953, Professor Nathaniel Kleiman, a world renowned expert on sleep, was conducting experiments on the sleep of babies. One of his student assistants noticed that periodically during sleep, the infants+ eyes darted rapidly back and forth beneath the eyelids. He drew Kleitmans+s attention to this observations, and together they began research to discover what these rapid eye movements, or REM, might mean (Holroyd 82). When Kleitman wired a sleeping subject to an EEG machine, with a separate channel to monitor eye movements, it became possible for all the fluctuations of the sleep cycle to be closely observed. During their research, they discovered that sleep is not one long, continuous state of consciousness, but consists of four distinct stages in addition to REM (Holroyd 84). The first stage, Stage 1, is indicated by a steady pattern of alpha waves emanating from the brain. These wave signify relaxation and are accompanied by deep and regular breathing. The sleeper continues through Stages 2 and 3, each marked by their distinct brain wave patterns. Finally the sleeper reaches Stage 4, which is characterized by delta brain waves. A sleeper normally reaches Stage 4 within 15 minutes of falling asleep, then ascends back to Stage 1 for a short period of REM sleep. After this period of REM, the sleeper descends and ascends through the stages, with smaller and smaller amounts of time being spent in the lower stages and larger and larger amounts being spent in the higher stages and REM until morning. The correlations between REM activity and dreaming was ascertained with a high degree of accuracy by waking the subject when the EEG shower the characteristic pattern.

. Experiments into dream deprivation began to indicate a clear physiological need for dreams. During one such experiment, volunteer subjects were awakened every time the fell into REM sleep over a period of ten days. Each night, the REM periods increased steadily, until the tenth night, the subjects immediatly fell back into REM sleep when they were awakened. When the subjects were finally allowed a night of undisturbed sleep, a much greater proportion of it was spent in REM sleep. Dream deprivation had a negative effect on the subjects+ waking lives, including fatigue, irritability, and memory loss (Holroyd 86). Another series of experiments discovered a direct correspondence between sleepers+ eye movements and the images that occurred in their dreams. An EEG machine indicates both horizontal and vertical eye movements. One sleeper, whose eyes had been making very rapid horizontal movements, reported having a dream of people throwing tomatoes at each other when he was awakened (Holroyd 86). Further experiments confirmed that the brain does not distinguish between the visual imagery in dream and that of real life. Dreamers really -see+ images in their dream, the same way they see objects in the real world. The same applies to the other senses – hearing, touch, and even taste and smell. Although the brain react the same way to signals coming from the dream world and the real world, it does not produce the same set of responses. It appears to have a mechanism that inhibits motor response, that tells the body no action is necessary. This mechanism does not always work, however, as indicated by twitches, talking, and even walking in sleep. Lucid dreams, or dreams where the subject knows that he is having a dream, have been especially fascinating to modern researchers. Celia Green, of the Institute of Psychophysical Research in Oxford, England, is the most influential researcher in this area (Holroyd 88). She explains that lucid dreams differ from normal dreams in that they do not have the same elements of irrationality and discontinuity with waking experience. During lucid dreaming, subjects often retain their regular cognitive functions and the memories they have in real life. Some characteristics of a lucid dream are indicated in the following example. I dreamt that I stood at a table before a window. On the table were different objects. I was perfectly well aware that I was dreaming and I considered what sorts of experiments I could make…. I took a fine claret-glass from the table and struck it with my fist, with all my might… yet the glass remained whole. But… when I looked at it again after some time… it broke all right, but a little too late, like an actor who misses his cue. This gave me a very curious impression of being in a fake world cleverly imitated, but with small failures. (Holroyd 88-89) Lucid dreaming has spawned a large, almost cult-like following of fans. One company, the Lucidity Institute, has even found a way to capitalize on this fascination with lucid dreaming (Colt 37). They sell devices that consumers place on their heads before they sleep. When the sleeper enters REM sleep, the device flashes LED lights into the sleeper+s eyes through his closed eyelids, hopefully alerting him to the fact that he is dreaming and allowing him to take control of the dream. All of these new techniques and modern research have brought several new theories about the purpose of dreams and the functioning of the brain during sleep. Alternating REM and non-REM cycles of sleep have been solidly documented in experiments in humans and other animals, and psychologists, physiologists, and even computer experts have suggested theories as to why these cycles occur. Most theories agree that REM and non-REM sleep serve different purposes. During non-REM sleep, the blood is flooded with growth hormones, which do the work of renewing and repairing body tissue. But during REM sleep, this process is abruptly halted. In patients recovering from overdoses of drugs, and in babies who are born prematurely, periods of REM sleep are much longer than normal (Holroyd 94). According to one theory, this indicates that both the process of brain repair and brain growth are associated with REM sleep and dreams. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that senile people and people with mental deficiencies have very little REM sleep (Hunt 76). Another theory, proposed by Dr. Christopher Evans, a British psychologist, likens the functions of the brain and dreaming to computer processes (Holroyd 94). The brain and a computer both perform the functions of retrieving, processing, and classifying information. A vital part of computer maintenance is the sorting or -cleaning off+ of programs, and the deletion of information that is not needed. To effect this process, the computer has to be taken -off-line+, or placed in a state where all other processes are suspended. Evans suggests that the brain is taken -off-line+ during sleep, and that dreams serve the purpose of scanning and sorting through all the impressions and information gathered during the day, and rejecting those memories that are useless. The useless information may not be totally rejected, but relegated to some obscure area of the brain and sealed off. In this way the main channels of the brain are left uncluttered and programs can function with maximum speed and efficiency. Human brain -programs+ range from those that control basic routines such as walking and eating, to those that control decision meeting and social relations. Dreaming allows the brain to perform this daily task of adaptation and makes certain that the person is able to deal with the demands and challenges of situations in the waking world. If this cleaning process is delayed or neglected in a computer, breakdowns and loss of speed can occur. REM sleep deprivation experiments have shown that similar breakdowns can occur in humans who are prevented from dreaming. One of the newest dream theories is the one that has the psychoanalysts and dream interpreters most worried. Robert Stickgold, Ph. D., a Harvard neuroscientist, and colleague J. Allan Hobson, M.D., director of Harvard+s Neurophysiology Lab, propose that dreaming is simply the result of semi-random neural firing (Psychology Today 47). The bizarre plots and storylines of dreams are only an attempt by the brain to make sense of this chaos. Stickgold and Hobson contend that dreaming is a process initiated by one of the brain+s most primitive regions, called the pons. During REM sleep, neurons in the pons region begin firing wildly. Some of these firings reach the amygdala, the brain+s emotional center. Here an emotion is chosen for the dream from some mental menu. Meanwhile, electrical impulses from the pons also reach higher-level areas of the brain, such as the cerebral cortex. The cortex is the area of the brain responsible for such functions as memory and visual images. However, during REM sleep, the cortex is experiencing low-level chaos. Some neurons that receive an impulse to fire remain silent, and others go off for no apparent reason. The result of all this chaos is dreams. The brain is simply trying to interpret all the images and emotions being presented to it in a way that it can understand. Stickgold states that -[the bizarre images and plots in dreams are] all that the association cortex can do to cobble together some fantastic storyline to keep up this chaotic melange of images and feeling+ (qtd. in Psychology Today 38). There are almost as many dream theories today as there are dream researchers, and most researchers can find ample proof to back their theories. Every theory may help cast a little more light on this complex subject. From the King of Babylon+s prophetic dreams to your nightmares of a bad day at school, from Freud+s psychoanalysis to Evans+ -computer theory+ dreams, the magical world we enter when we sleep is a complex subject that can gives us vital insight into who we are as humans. Through the work of psychologists and dream interpreters, we+ve learned a wealth of information regarding human behavior. Further work by neuroscientists and others into the physiology of dreams has heightened our perceptions of thinking, learning, and memory. The many theories postulated about dreaming are a striking testament to our interest in dreams. Dreaming, like other human mental processes, will probably never be fully understood, but our quest for knowledge about our dreams will continue to have a profound impact on our view of ourselves. Pleasant dreams.

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