Psychology

January 13, 1997

DREAMS AND DREAMING
Dreams, a nightly gift and a part of the natural process of being alive,
are being rediscovered by our publisher.
The meaning and value of your dreams will vary according to what you and your so
ciety decide. Our society is changing.
We used to only value dreams in the context of psychotherapy. There are also a
few assumptions about dreams. One is
that you are always the final authority on what the dream means. Others can offe
r insight, suggestions and techniques for
exploration and expression, but no one knows what the final meaning and value of
the dreams will be for you, except
you. Another assumption is that dreams come in the service of wholeness and hea
lth. If you find an interpretation that
does not fit this, perhaps you need to change methods of interpretation. Dream i
nterpretations that lead you toward selfcriticism, depression or despair are simply wrong and if these conditions persis
t you may wish to seek help from others.
Finally, there is no such thing as a dream with one meaning. If you feel stuck o
n one meaning or feel another person is
pushing one meaning, it is time to reconsider your methods and approach. (Lemley
p. 17).
Clinical dream work is done within the context of psychotherapy and clin
ical and sleep research have different
approaches and goals than peer dream work. (Koch-Sheras p.16).
A dream is a period of spontaneous brain activity usually lasting from a
bout 5-40 minutes that occurs during sleep
several times a night usually about 90 minute intervals (Barret p.8).
There are also certain types of dreams. There are fantasy, daydream and
waking dreams. There are also lucid
dreams, nightmares and night terrors. There are also certain stages in the dre
am cycle. In the first stage, your body
temperature drops, your eyes close and your brain waves begin regular alpha rhyt
hms, indicating a relaxed state. Muscles
lose their tension, breathing becomes more even and your heart rate slows. Seco
nd, random images begin to float through

your mind mimicking the dream state. Jolting or involuntary movements will take
place at this time. Third, muscles lose
all tightness, breathing becomes slower, heart rate decreases and blood pressure
falls. At this point, it will take a loud
noise or disturbance to wake you up. You are now fully asleep. Finally, you ar
e in a deep sleep. This is the most
physically rested period of sleep and longest in duration. (Time-Life Books p. 9
7).

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Whether awake or asleep, one of the brain's most critical functions is t
he construction of the model of the
environment that we perceive as our conscious experience (Barret p. 9). While w
e sleep, very little sensory input is
available, so the world model experience is constructed from what remains, conte
xtual information from our lives, that is,
expectations derived from past experience, and motivations. As a result, the co
ntent of our dream is largely determined by
what we fear, hopeful and expect. From this point of view, dreaming can be view
ed as the special case of dreaming
constrained by sensory input (Koch-Sheras p. 15). Dreaming experience is common
ly viewed as qualitatively distinct
from waking experience. Dreams are often believed to be characterized by lack o
f reflection and inability to act
deliberately and with intention. (Barret p. 20).
Although we not usually explicitly aware of the fact that we are dreamin
g while we are dreaming, at times a
remarkable exception occurs and we become reflective enough to become conscious
that we are dreaming. During such
'lucid' dreams it is possible to freely remember the circumstances of waking lif
e to think clearly, and to act deliberately
upon reflection or in accordance with plans decided upon before sleep, all while
experiencing a dream world that seems
vividly real. (Time-Life Books p. 57).
As previously stated, lucid dreaming is dreaming while knowing that you
are dreaming. Lucidity usually begins in
the midst of a dream, when the dreamer realizes that the experience is not occur
ring in physical reality, but is a dream.
(Lemley p. 3). A minority of lucid dreams are the result of returning to REM sl

eep directly from a awakening with

unbroken reflective consciousness.
When lucidity is at a high level, you are aware that everything experien
ced in the dream is occurring in your mind,
that there is no real danger, and that you are asleep in bed and will awaken sho
rtly. With low level lucidity you may be
aware to a certain extent that you are dreaming, perhaps enough to fly or alter
what you are doing, but not enough to
realize that the people are dream representations, or that you can suffer no phy
sical damage, or that you are actually in bed.
(Time-Life Books p. 58).
Lucid dreams usually happen during REM sleep. Research has been demonst
rated that most vivid dreaming
occurs in REM sleep. It is characterized by an active brain, with low amplitude
, mixed frequency brain waves, suppression
of skeletal muscle tone, bursts of rapid eye movements, and occasional tiny musc
ular twitches (Barret p. 20).

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The sleep stages cycle throughout a night. The first REM period normall
y happens after a period of delta sleep,
approximately 90 minutes after sleep onset, and lasts from about 5-20 minutes.
REM periods occur roughly every 90
minutes throughout the night with later REM periods occurring at shorter interva
ls and often being longer, sometimes up to
an hour in length. Much more REM sleep occurs in the second half of the night t
han in the first. (Lemley p. 16).
Most of the muscles of the body are paralyzed in REM sleep to prevent us
from acting out our dreams. However,
because the eyes are not paralyzed, if you deliberately move your "dream" eyes i
n a dream, your physical eyes move also.
(Time-Life Books p. 61 ).
Referring back to the stages in sleep-the first stage is a transitional
period between waking and sleeping known as
hypnagogic state, the muscle relax and the person often experiences a sensation
of floating or drifting. The eyes roll
slowly and vivid images may flash through the mind-perhaps an eerie unfamiliar l

andscape, a beautiful abstract pattern or a

succession of face. As those sensations and visions come and go, a sudden spasm
of the body called hypnagogic startle
may momentarily waken the sleeper. Then as the subject slips into the first sta
ge of sleep, the EEG shows the spiky rapid
alpha waves of a relaxed but wakeful brain giving way to the slower more regular
theta waves of light slumber. Sleeps first
stage is short, lasting anywhere from a few seconds to 10 minutes. The theta wav
es soon decrease and are mixed on EEG
tracing which a combination of 2 different brain wave patterns-groups of sharp j
umps called spindles, which reflect rapid
bursts of brain activity, and waves known as K-complexes characterized by steep
peaks and valleys. Although this stage is
considered to be a true sleep phase, a person awakening from it may report havin
g had brief bits of realistic thought or
may even deny having been asleep at all. (Time-Life Books p. 97).
Between 15 and 30 minutes after the onset of sleep, large, slow delta wa
ves begin supplementing the K complexes
and spindles of stage 2. The change makes the deepest of sleeps, called stage 3
-4. Waking from stage 3-4 is difficult. An
individual typically feels quite groggy and disoriented and even if an emergency
demands alertness, must fight to
overcome the compelling desire to fall asleep again. Taking in one sleep, sleep
walking and bedwetting tend to happen
during this stage because of the brain's partial arousal from deep sleep (Time-L
ife Books p. 97).
After 90 minutes or so of sleep, most of it spent in stage 3-4, the spin
dles and K complexes of stage 2 briefly
reassert themselves. The brain then shakes off the rhythms of non REM sleep pas
ses into REM sleep-a condition so
distinct physiologically from both wakefulness and the non REM stages that some
experts call it a third state of existence.

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Blood pressure and pulse rate rise, and brain waves quicken to frequencies compa
rable to those of an awake, alert brain.
Despite this activity the body becomes remarkably still. The eyes begin their m
ovements, but otherwise, except for
grimaces and small twitches of the toes and fingers, the muscles are temporarily

paralyzed. A person awakened from REM

sleep may be unable to move for a few seconds. Scientists believe that nature ha
s evolved this paralytic interlude, which
seems to be controlled by nerve centers in the primitive brainstem, to protect t
he sleeper from the harm that might result if
dreams were physically acted out. The 2 antithetical conditions of the state-a
vigorously active brain within an
immobilized body-prompted French neurobiologist Michel Jouvet to name it "parad
oxical sleep". (Time-Life Books p.
99).
There are other physical characteristics of dreams as well. In adults a
nd infants alike, the head and chin relax so
completely that researchers can use the slackening of the muscle under the chin
as a reliable signal that REM sleep is
occurring (Lemley p. 19-20).
After training in neurology Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) began to practice
what later became a psychoanalysis.
Initially, following his colleague Josef Breuer ( 1942-1925), he used his hypnos
is to treat cases of hysteria. He then
replaced hypnosis with the technique of free association and began to explore hi
s patient's dreams for clues to their
problems (Barret p. 14-15).
Freud believed that dreams were wish fulfillment-in our dreams we repres
ent our deepest desires, which in an adult
are nearly always sexual. However, because these desires would be offensive to
our sleeping conscious minds, or censor
or superego, disguises our true intentions. The obscurity of dreams, Freud said
"is due to alterations in repressed material
made by the censorship." However this theory does not explain why we might have
a heavily disguised dream one night
and a straightforward dream of the same activity on another night. There are ma
ny problems with Freud's ideas but he
must be given credit for being one of the first modern thinkers to reexamine the
symbolism of dreams. However he must
also be criticized for seeing nearly every dream symbol in purely sexual terms.
Freuds detractors also complain that his
theories , based on evidence drawn from his psychologically disturbed patients,
were not universally applicable. Despite
these criticisms, Freud created psychoanalysis almost single-handedly, and built

a solid base for dream analysts to expand

(Barret P. 14-15).
Besides establishing the normal nightly course of dreaming and some of i
ts pathological aberrations, researchers
have categorized 2 distinct but equally frightening disturbances: the nightmare
and the much less common night terror

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(Time-Life Books p. 102). Everyone occasionally has a nightmare-a dream so frig
htening that he or she wakes up sweaty,
short of breath, and with a pounding heart. Such dreams usually occur during th
e second half of the night, when REM
periods are longer and dreams are more intense. Psychiatrists such as Stanley P
alombo of Washington, D.C. , believe that
a nightmare (mare means goblin in Old English) dramatizes problems or anxieties
one has recently encountered in waking
life, in addition, it evokes related unconscious memories and images, creating a
n emotionally powerful mix. The feeling
of utter helplessness that so often infuses a nightmare probably harks back to i
nfancy, some experts say, when a child is
indeed powerless and at the mercy of a world he or she cannot understand or co
ntrol. ( Time-Life Books p. 102).
According to Professor Hartmann, "the common thread among those who have
nightmares frequently is
sensitivity." For a Boston study, he solicited volunteers who experienced nightm
ares at least once a week. A large number
of subjects were involved in creative work, such as art, music and theater, othe
rs were graduate students, teachers and
therapists. (Time-Life Books p. 106). Many saw themselves as rebels or as "diff
erent from other people," and some overly
rejected society's norms. "They were all very open and vulnerable", he said, ben
eficial to their careers. But "most had had
stormy adolescence sometimes followed by bouts with depression, alcohol and suic
ide attempts". Hartmann concluded
that people who had frequent nightmares possessed a poor sense of their own iden
tities and find it hard to separate fantasy
from reality. Some have borderline or potentially psychotic tendencies, he beli
eves. (Time-Life Books p. 106).
Night terrors differ from nightmares in both content and timing, and oft

en occur in a deep slumber of stage 3-4.

The sleeper may rouse with a blood curdling scream and sit up in bed, terrified
and confused, heart racing. (Time-Life
Books p. 106). He may also walk or talk in his sleep. While people usually rem
ember specific and sequential details of
their nightmares, the victim of a night terror is short, lasting only a minute o
r 2. Night terrors seem to run in families, and
researchers suspect they are triggered by a faulty arousal mechanism: instead of
following the normal shift early in the
night from stage 3-4 sleep to a REM period, the sleeper partially rouses. Child
ren are more susceptible than adults to night
terrors, perhaps simply because they spend more time in stage 3-4 (Time-Life Boo
ks p.106).
Message dreams are dreams that convey some information you need about yo
ur current social, emotional or
physical life. These are teaching dreams in which someone is usually there to t
ell you something important directly: a
teacher, a news announcer or clergyman giving you new information to apply to yo
ur waking life. At times, a message
dream will come in the form of a disembodied voice; the dreamer may perceive thi
s voice as a voice of the spirit or soul of

God or an angel (Koch-Sheras p. 78).

Recurring dreams repeat themselves with little variation in story or the
me. They can be positive, as with an
archetypal visionary dream, but they are more often nightmares, perhaps because
nightmares depict a conflict that is
unresolved; also nightmares are more frequently remembered than other dreams. (L
emley p. 81).
There are many reasons why people forget their dreams upon waking. In o
ur culture, and therefore in our families,
dreams are generally thought of as unimportant or silly. Whether they are pleas
ant or unpleasant, your dreams are a vital
and expressive part of yourself, so don't discount them! Another reason why peo
ple might forget dreams is that they are
embarrassed by their content. In dreams, you might commit acts you would never
do in your waking life, and it is natural
to put those acts into the back of your mind rather than confront the issues the

dream scenarios might have raised. (KochSheras p. 113). Studies show that people who are good at recalling their dreams
are generally better able to confront their
own fears and anxieties; poor dream recallers are those who tend to retreat from
confrontation. Learning to remember your
dreams and discuss their meanings may help you to become a more assertive person
(Koch-Sheras p. 113).
If you yourself are a poor recaller, you may wonder who images manage to
stow away in a person's mind each
morning. The fact is, people who enjoy sharing dreams are more likely to rememb
er them. Any attention you pay to your
dream life can help to increase your recall: keeping a dream journal, making a d
rawing based on a dream, acting on advice
or insight gained from a dream (Lemley p. 113).
In ancient times, dreams were often-but not always-believed to be prophe
tic, and people of all cultures shared what
they had dreamed in hopes of catching a glimpse of the future or receiving a mes
sage of advice or warning (Lemley p. 26).
The Egyptians, for instance, relied on an elaborately constructed list of interp
retations, a kind of early dream dictionary.
Even the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates considered dreams to be prophetic e
manating from the Gods. For this
reason, dreams figured prominently in ancient cultures' religious rituals intend
ed to evoke the dream spirits of Gods who
would send these vivid messages ( Koch-Sheras p. 26).
In many ancient cultures, dream life and waking life were simply 2 diffe
rent dimensions of a single existence, a
viewpoint that shows itself in many modern cultures and that is shared by many c
ontemporary dream theorists as well
(Koch-Sheras p. 32).
It has taken centuries of interest to move beyond dream lore to a scient
ific understanding of dreams. Yet many
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myths are still taken as fact in interpreting our own and others' dream behavior
. Here are some myths and facts about our
dreams. Myth: Some people dream only a few times a year-or not at all. Fact: E
verybody dreams! While some people

may only remember a few dreams a year, they actually dream several times every n
ight. (Lemley p. 6). Myth: Babies
don't dream. Fact: Babies do show evidence of dreaming, although what they dre
am about is anybody's guess. Even a
newborn infant will have REM sleep. As people continue to age, studies show, th
e percentage of time spent dreaming
drops off to as low as 13% in some people (Lemley p. 7). Myth: Animals do not d
ream. Fact: As dog owners suspect,
animals do dream. Dogs sometimes move their legs, wag their tails and even bark
and growl while sleeping (Koch-Sheras
p. 7). In all mammals studied there is evidence of REM sleep. (Koch-Sheras p. 7)
. Myth: Blind people do not dream. Fact:
Blind people do dream. All dreamers becoming blind after the age of 7 see in dr
eams even after an interval of 20-30 years
(Lemley p. 8). Those who become blind after age 5, however, almost never see in
their dreams (Lemley p. 8.). A person
who cannot hear often has a specially vivid visual content in dreams, and a pers
on blind from birth distinctly remembers
sounds and tactile experiences in dreams (Koch-Sheras p. 8).
Even if our dreams are entirely random, they still have value. The conn
ections we make as we examine our dream
for images that have some symbolic meaning are valid, as points of curiosity, as
jumping off points for further selfexploration, and perhaps as insights into the inner workings of our own unique p
ersonality (Koch-Sheras p. 72).
Whatever your motivation-amusement, curiosity, self-growth, spiritually
or something else-as dreamers we can
pick and choose, using our dreams to guide and shape our own theory (Lemley p. 7
3). We have nothing to lose in
developing our own theory or body of recurring symbols with which to interpret o
ur dreams. (Koch-Sheras p. 73).

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Work Cited
Barret, David V. Dreams. New York: Dorling Kindersley Inc. 1995
Koch-Sheras, Phyllis, and Amy Lemley. The Dream Sourcebook. Chicago, Contempor
ary Books, 1995
Time-Life Books. Dreams and Dreaming. Virginia, Time-Life Books, 1990