Dreams Have Been an Area

Dreams have been an area that has been studied for centuries with little understanding. For decades when the area of dreams are discussed, people often think of the works of Freud and Jung, and their many followers as well, whom have taught us a great deal. Dreams are, as Freud states, the "royal road to the unconscious" a road to greater knowledge about a patient or about oneself. (Hartmann 3)

Dreams are viewed differently by each individual. However, Hartmann's opinion is clear. He reports that great things happen in dreams, great discoveries in science and in art. The French chemist August Kekule discovered the structure of the benzene ring in a dream. Elias Howe invented the sewing machine based on a dream. Robert Louis Stevenson reported that his novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde came to him directly from a dream. Mozart claimed that many of the themes for his music came to him in dreams, and Tartini wrote a well-known violin sonata that he says he simply transcribed from a dream in which he heard the devil playing it for him on a violin. Every morning we awake from an important state of our minds in which we spend a great deal of time and which can sometimes help us accomplish great feats. Yet we understand so little about it. Psychologists have learned much about the details of our waking thoughts and activities, but little about our dreams. Once we start examining dreams, they turn out not to be junk at all. (Hartmann i)

Dreams are a natural part of the sleep cycle, and they occur regularly in people of all ages" (Murray 303)

Many dreams are relatively dull one could say. The same kinds of things happen in these dreams as in waking life. Overall, however, a bit more can happen in dreams than in waking. We can occasionally fly. We occasionally find ourselves in houses that are an interesting mixture of different houses we have known. Once in a while, we build strange structures that no one has seen before. We meet people we know who live far away or who have died, or who are not known to us in our waking lives; in fact, sometimes we meet monsters or mythical creatures. In all these senses, dreaming makes connections in a broader fashion than ordinary waking thought.

For some, dreaming obviously makes beautiful and interesting connections. But even those who believe dreaming throws things together in a more or less random fashion must admit that a dream image somehow connects a great deal of material from our memories, imaginations, etc. Dreaming makes connections between recently experienced material and old memories; it often puts together or combines two different people, two different places, or two different parts of our lives. Freud refers to this process as condensation. Thus, we often dream of a setting that is a bit like our present home but also a bit like an older one. This tendency of dreaming to make connections very broadly or widely has been frequently noted. For instance, the existentialist Erik Craig writes, "While dreaming we entertain a wider range of human possibilities than when awake; the 'open house' of dreaming is less guarded. (Hartmann 3)

Though dreaming is broader and in a sense more exciting and wilder than waking thought, it only seems right to bring attention to the fact that it is only somewhat broader. We may at times fly in dreams, but we usually remain ourselves or creatures very much like ourselves. Hardly ever are we a mosquito or a hurricane though Hartmann does report hearing a report of such a dream from a client. Nor are we molecules of water, or mathematical formulas. We are usually ourselves or perhaps someone or something we can identify with easily. We experience a world roughly parallel to our usual visual-spatial one, though as noted, with some broader or wilder elements.

Furthermore, dreaming avoids the most "tightly woven," "over learned" portions of the nets. His research further shows that we dream very little of well-learned familiar tasks such as reading, typing, writing, or calculating, even when we spend hours per day of our waking lives on these tasks. (Hartmann 6)

Dreams contextualize emotion. Dreams notice similarities and produce explanatory metaphor. However, is this simply the way things are, or does it all have one or more functions? Is making broad connections useful in some way? Is picturing or contextualizing an emotional concern in pictured metaphor of use to us in some way? Perhaps not. Murray conducted research to answer these questions, which suggested that the biological state of REM sleep has a definite biological function for the body -- namely, restoration, or regulation of some kind and that perhaps that is all there is. Perhaps REM sleep plays its biological role in the body and dreaming is an epiphenomenon -- it tags along without any importance of its own. In this view, dreaming is simply what we experience consciously while REM sleep is doing its thing. In the 1950s, research with electroencephalograms (EEG) and electro-oculograms (EOG) at the University of Chicago provided evidence of a high incidence of dream recall in periods of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. During the 1960s, research on the correlates of REM dreams through sleep laboratories indicated the feasibility of studying children's dreams with awakenings during REM sleep. (Murray)

Research on human sleep is usually conducted in a sleep laboratory. The sleeper is prepared for electrophysiological measurements by attaching electrodes (a) to the scalp, to monitor the EEG and (b) around the eyes, to monitor eye movements, recorded as EOG. During wakefulness, the EEG of normal subjects shows alpha and beta activity. Alpha waves are more prevalent when the eyes (Murray 303)

Links between sleep cycles and dreams have been made; we also learn that as we age the amount of "deep sleep" one may obtain is substantially lower than when the individual is a newborn or even a small child. There is however, a strong relationship between intensity of dreams i.e. how vivid a dream may appear to an individual and that individuals dream cycle.