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).

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