The Function of Dream

Patients deprived of rem sleep through disruption of the sleep cycle at the end of every deep sleep stage (just before rem sleep), began to dream during the day. They reported seeing images coming between them and the scene in front at times, sort of like hallucination. Since basically nearly all humans (even animals) dream, and rem-deprived individuals exhibit some sort of desperation to seek compensation for dream-loss, it seems logical to assume that dreaming has certain biological functions.

Professor Rosalind Cartwright posited that dreams ‘keep us safely sane, by allowing us to be crazy at night.’ Dreaming is seen as a way and an opportunity for our mind to come to terms with unresolved feelings and emotions during the day, by tapping on memory and similar experiences from the past. Tough problems that can’t be resolved return eventually as recurring nightmares. Coming from this point of view, by looking at the details of our dreams, we can possibly find out unknown facts such as our deepest fears and find means to counter them. 

Similarly, Sigmund Freud believed that dreams are infused with tons of symbols that could tell much about the psyche of an individual, though mostly sexual. And by reading these symbols analysing them and the connections with each other and the dreamer (psychoanalysis) the psychologist could find solutions to reduce trauma or cure the problem. 

Many ancient cultures believe on the other hand that dreams have prophetic powers. In Mesopotamia, Babylon, Assyria and Egypt, the dream is of heavenly origin considered ‘messengers of the gods’. The shift from the mythical-religious to scientific approach began in Ancient Greece when priests interpreted the dreams of sick men in temples, and through a mixture religious rituals and patients’ feedback, prescribed medication to them. Pythagoras believed that nightmares are caused by bad food. Many familiar symbols included animals and as with most cultures, birds represented freedom, the yearning for freedom etc. According to some, the dreams play out the exact opposite of reality and so a bad dream indicates the onset of something good.

Prophetic dreams are later given scientific and medical interpretations as the mind’s first detection of changes in the body that had yet to be resolved. For instance the dream of a dead baby being put into the freezer had been a ‘prophetic’ dream of a mother with a stillborn child. For me, this seems like a more convincing way to look at the prophetic function of dreams. I can’t believe that they occur on random. to me, it’s more like we have yet to rationalize the mystery of dreams (whether on a scientific level or personal).

Urban Myth

i was thinking about the way we record dreams, essentially based on our waking memories of these dreams, can’t always or entirely be truthful. i learnt that as our mind wakes up, the chemical composition in the brain changes quickly, thereby causing our memory of the dream to slip quickly away. if one is to wake up in the nrem stages, it’ll be less likely to remember the dream. doctor emmanuel mignot pointed out that the biggest difference between the state of rem sleep and wakefulness lies in our memory during these periods. hence more often than not, our memory of dreams includes some imaginary input on our part. the idea of trying to capture and memorialize the fleeting and intangible through a mixture of memory and fantasy seems in some ways similar to urban myths, based on ancient beliefs and personal experiences. for someone who hardly dreams or remembers her dreams, this is somewhat intriguing.

progress…

… i know i know i haven’t been very diligent lately. the translation of all this research for my hypothetical audience 1000 years away from now is seriously cracking my brain. really, i’ve been thinking and researching it just didn’t feel right about posting things before i sort of processed them in my head. still in the process.. 

watch these from discovery science, on the process of sleep, function of dreams, dream prophecies, sleep disorder etc. (in order of parts 1 to 5)