By Allie Lin
Alex sprung up in bed, drenched in sweat and out of breath, greatly disturbed by a nightmare he has just had about being chased by a bloodthirsty vampire. Turning on a bedside lamp for comfort, he started thinking about all the weird dreams that he has been having lately and wondered why he has been having them. What exactly is a dream, and why do we dream? Dreams are a communication of body and mind in a symbolic environmental state of being. Okay, now that I have you completely confused and staring blankly at the page and wondering what on earth I’m talking about, let me try to explain this in plain human language. While you sleep, your brain doesn’t just turn off. Quite the contrary, it keeps itself pretty busy going through cycles of several sleep stages. About every 90 minutes, your brain switches between REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and non-REM sleep. The term REM is pretty much self-explanatory. The REM stage is a period in which your eyes start to move in a rapid, jerky movement under closed lids during sleep. So why do we need to know this? Well, because it is also the period in which we drift off to Never-never land! The length of REM increases with each sleep cycle throughout the night, the longest one being toward the hours of morning. The average person goes through 4 to 5 REM stages during the course of sleep. This means, more significantly, we all have an average of 4 to 5 dreams a night. If you happen to wake during the REM period, the dream would appear to be more vivid and easier to recall. According to Sigmund Freud, dreams are products of various forms of stimulation. This stimulation can be either external, including events that happen during the day; or it can be internal, including physical and/or mental desires. Sometimes, the stimulation can even be a mixture of both external and internal factors. Freud’s notion of the function of a dream is wish-fulfillment. We may dream about winning the lottery or having sweet revenge on a cheating boyfriend. Another type of wish-fulfillment is “the wish to sleep.” Stimuli such as hunger, a full bladder, or noisy footsteps can intrude on our sleep; and against these intruders, dreams act as the guardians of our sleep. For instance, to keep from waking from hunger, the mind might create a dream of a big juicy hamburger. If we can succeed in appeasing our hunger by dreaming, then we would have no need of waking up to satisfy it. Noisy footsteps on the other hand, might turn into a dream of hammering nails, for the same reason of preserving sleep when encountering external disturbances. Putting aside Freud’s theories, many dream analysts believe that generally, certain dreams can be matched to certain symbolic meanings. For example, it is said that dreams concerning animals symbolize our own traits, good and bad. If you dream about being on a farm, watching a sow slurping away at its slop, this might say something about your own eating habits. Dreams about automobiles or vehicles usually symbolize two things: the direction you’re heading in life, and the condition of your body. For example, dreaming about driving in a beat-up old car going down a muddy road would be considered a pretty bad sign! However, if you dream about flying in a silvery white jet plane through clear skies, you should congratulate yourself when you wake up. Death dreams or dreams that have to do with death (e.g. attending a funeral) are symbolic of change, be it a physical change or emotional change. It might also be symbolic of itself, since most of us would agree that death is the ultimate change in life. Whether these speculations are correct or only entertaining assumptions awaits the test of time. Meanwhile, the essence of dreams has captured the imagination of poets and playwrights throughout time and space, not only providing us with glimpses of our creativity at work, but also an insight into its mysterious, wondrous realm. a
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May 2024
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