Our Dreams
When we sleep, we dream. During a lifetime, the typical person has literally thousands of dreams. But, why do we dream? And, is there any relation between our dreams and our psychological health? There are many ways to go about answering these two questions, but we might find it helpful to consult a psychiatrist. Perhaps the best known writer on dreams was Sigmund Freud, the Austrian psychiatrist.
Freud made a careful study of dreams in his book The Interpretation of Dreams published in 1900. He reached the conclusion that dreams were an important window into the psychological state of the individual. He called dreams “the royal road to the subconscious”. Freud felt that we could understand why people were psychologically disturbed by carefully analyzing their dreams.
Freud believed that all dreams are based on some inner desire or wish that needed to be fulfilled. In some cases, the wishes of the dreamer are easy to identify. One simply looks at the obvious elements of the dream. As an example, a boy might dream of a particular girl in class that he secretly likes. A student might dream that she has gotten an exceptional grade on a test or has won an important athletic competition.
All of this is quite obvious since we have all experienced such dreams at one time or another. But, what are we to think of dreams that are disagreeable or even frightening? Are we to believe that a scary dream is motivated by some secret wish? Do people have strange and disoriented dreams because of some special desire hidden in their subconscious? Why don’t we simply avoid unpleasant dreams? Freud of course understood that many dreams are undesirable. Such dreams do not ostensibly point to some wish fulfillment. Freud realized this, but claimed that unpleasant dreams needed to be interpreted more closely. As he stated in his book
The question arose, how dreams with a disagreeable content can be analyzed as wish- fulfillments. We see now that this is possible where a dream- distortion has occurred, when the disagreeable content serves only to disguise the thing wished for. (from Chapter 4 of The Interpretation of Dreams)
Thus, the wish that creates the unpleasant dream is to be found buried in a myriad of symbols and obscure signs. It is therefore the job of the analyst to help those disturbed by translating the real meaning of their dreams into plain and understandable language. Interpreting dreams is especially difficult because the objects and symbols used in dreams are often different between people and are greatly influenced by our environment and physical state. To address this difficulty, Freud hypothesized that the vast majority of our dreams are motivated out of some intense sexual conflict. This sexual energy he called the libido. It is a word often used in everyday conversations. For Freud, however, the libido was a powerful motivation in human action.
Freud’s theory of the mind involved three components – the id, the ego, and the superego. The id represents our primitive or perhaps animalistic desires. The id is a significant part of the unconscious mind. It is here that the libido emerges and struggles to influence thought and action. It seeks satisfaction. The ego represents our sense of self and helps the individual accommodate to our social development (including our parental relations). The ego is largely a part of the conscious mind and is what answers when we ask ourselves “Who am I?”. The super-ego is the part of the mind (both conscious and unconscious) which has been conditioned by our social relations and represents all of our feelings of right and wrong. It is what gives us the sense of proper thought and behavior. The id and the super ego are at war in every person. This conflict is mediated by the ego which stands between the two polar extremes of wanton selfishness (the id) and our sense of morality (the super ego).
Freud felt that it was during our dreams that the id could rush to the forefront and become central in the mind. The id, which is locked deep in the subconscious mind, cannot really distinguish between reality and a dream. The mind can therefore satisfy its wish-fulfillment without worrying about the consequences. The superego continued to repress the id, but only by distorting the objects and symbols in the dream. To understand this conflict in the mind, the psychiatrist must psychoanalyze the patient and interpret the dream in a practical way. This means slowly but surely talking to the patient. Over time the patient will reveal more and more about his or her dreams and the symbols and objects in the dreams will begin to tell a story. Not only would the patient reveal important clues in the dreams, but the act of simply talking would also be very therapeutic. People seem to feel better when they talk things out.
What other explanations for dreams are there?
A number of theories have been put forth to explain why we dream. These theories can be placed into large categories.
First, we may dream simply as an act of mental housecleaning. According to this strand of thought, dreams are composed of random elements of our recent personal experience. The brain needs space and therefore eliminates and reorders the information that has been recently stored there. We often do this with computers when we eliminate temporary files and defrag the hard disk. During the course of this process, the unconscious mind sees images and attempts to order them in space and time, resulting in a quite distorted view of things. The strength of this explanation is that it can provide a reason why that we usually dream about things that have recently happened to us. It also explains why highly disparate objects can be combined into one dream. It’s all random and has no inner meaning.
Second, dreams may be a way of releasing emotion. Researchers have found that some people, after having witnessed a traumatic event, will dream about the event afterward. This is their way of coping with the event. The dreaming experience becomes something of a cathartic or healing experience. Once again, this theory explains some, but not all dreams we experience.
Third, there are some that believe dreams foretell the future or act as a means of communicating with those who are no longer with us. These claims cannot be verified and belong more to metaphysics than to scientific inquiry. One will remember that the Bible has numerous occasions where dreams and their interpretations are ways of foretelling the future.
Finally, the subject of lucid dreaming has attracted the attention of many people. Richard Feynman, the famous Nobel physicist, experimented with lucid dreaming while an undergraduate at MIT. He discussed this in his bestselling book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman. Lucid dreaming is a process whereby the person slowly gets conscious command of their dreams. Normally, we are the passive slaves of our dreams. Many dreams we simply forget. Within our dreams, we typically cannot assert our will very easily, nor can we take purposeful action. Lucid dreaming occurs when we can do what we want within a dream. For example, if we are hungry we can actively search for food. Feynman experimented with his inner dream-like senses of sight, touch, and hearing. Some people claim that they can fly in their dreams. This type of dream is one form of lucid dreaming, especially when the flight becomes controllable and purposeful.
Dreams are a curious and thought-provoking part of our existence. They dazzle us at times and terrify us at other times. They give us the eerie feeling of other worldliness and beckon to join a different and peculiar existence each night. Perhaps it is as Freud said the "royal road to our subconscious".
Questions:
1. What dream have you had that was most remarkable to you?
2. Why do we have nightmares?
3. Sometimes our dreams are not logical. Why does this occur?
4. Suppose you could decide what you wanted to dream. What would you dream?
5. Do you think animals can dream?