Joshua Bown

10/13/2016
Psychology 1010
Dreams
I have always found the concept of dreaming fascinating. Some of my favorite films like
The Matrix and Inception revolve around the dream world and make us ask ourselves, what is
real and what is reality? Dreams are a doorway to an entire new world with endless possibilities.
They allow us to escape the reality of our everyday lives and enter a different level of
consciousness full of mystery. Many times dreams can be great, full of vivid colors and strange
situations. Other times dreams can be terrifying and have a serious psychological impact on
someones mind. In this paper I will discuss dreams, nightmares, dream theories, and why I
believe we dream.
Sleep is a big part of our lives and for many of us dreaming is too. Typically a person will
sleep about one-third of their lifetime and have as many as four to seven dreams a night. Thats a
lot of dreaming! However, most if not all dreams we have in a night are forgotten by the time we
wake up. This is one reason why studying dreams is so difficult. We spend a great deal of our
lives dreaming, but nobody really knows what purpose dreams serve, if any. There are plenty of
theories out there about why we dream and I will discuss some of these theories a little later on.
On a typical night a person will experience five different sleep stages. When we lay down
and start to go to sleep our minds begin to wander and we enter what is called a hypnagogic
state. This is a pre-sleep state that our minds are in and it is not uncommon to experience a
hypnic jerk, which is a feeling of falling or a sudden jerk. I personally experience this all the
time. That feeling of falling or the sudden jerk that wakes me up just as I am about to fall asleep.

After the hypnagogic state there are five stages of sleep that we experience on a typical night. In
stages one and two we are sleeping lightly but getting harder to wake up. In stages three and four
we are at our deepest stages of sleep. The fifth stage of sleep and possibly the most important for
dream research, is the REM sleep stage. At this stage our eyes are moving rapidly side to side
and so this stage was named rapid eye movement or REM. Research has shown that people
awakened during REM sleep remembered having dreams much more than people awakened at
different sleep stages (Psychology P.195). However, this doesnt mean that dreams only occur
during REM sleep. Dreams have been recorded at various sleep stages.
Now that we have talked about when we dream, I want to move onto the theories about
why we dream and what purpose they may serve. There are many scientific theories about why
we dream. People have been trying to find a meaning or a purpose behind dreams for centuries.
Many ancient civilizations tried to interpret dreams and believed they may hold certain
prophecies waiting to be deciphered. Sigmund Freud believed that dreams represent some of our
most desired wishes, and that some of these wishes are so unacceptable and taboo that the mind
can only express them in a dream state (Psychology P.200). This is what Freud based his theory
on. He believed that our dreams are elaborately hidden wishes and sexual desires too taboo for
the waking world. The next theory I will discuss is the activation-synthesis model proposed by
John Hobson and Robert McCarley in 1977. This theory states that dreams are produced when
the brain attempts to make sense of random neural activity during sleep. Hobson and McCarley
believed that dreams begin randomly from random thoughts, but the mind can lend meaning and
interpretations in the process of dreaming (Psychology P.201). This theory basically states that
dreams are random and meaningless. I personally dont like either of these theories. I dont

believe dreams are completely random and I certainly dont believe dreams represent our most
unacceptable desires in hidden ways.
The theory I liked best and felt I could relate to most is the Contemporary Theory of
Dreaming by Ernest Hartmann. Hartmanns theory states that dreams are not random and that
they are guided by the emotions of the dreamer. Hartmann believed that dreams deal with our
emotions and emotional concerns by making a pictured metaphor of those concerns in the dream
(Hartmann 1998). Hartmann also believed that dreams serve a therapeutic purpose in our lives
especially in people who have experienced trauma. Nightmares can happen to anyone, but they
typically happen to children and people who have experienced a traumatic event or may have
PTSD. Hartmann believed that people are more prone to having nightmares if they are stressed
or if they have experienced a traumatic event. Out of the many theories I read I liked Hartmanns
the most. I like the idea that dreams serve some sort of purpose and are not just meaningless, that
they are guided by the emotions and trauma of the dreamer and are not just random.
When I was eighteen years old I had a traumatic event happen to me. I was in a dirt bike
accident that cost me my right arm and changed my life forever. It was the most stressful time of
my life and for a few weeks after the accident I kept having dreams about it. I would be back in
the desert riding my bike then out of nowhere I would start falling until I woke up. I couldnt
ever remember why I would start falling or what I was falling into but the dream eventually
stopped happening. Another thing I find interesting to this day is that most of the time I still have
two arms in my dreams. Very rarely I can remember only having one in the dream but I almost
always still have two. Its like my brain still hasnt figured out that I have lost an arm. I can even
still feel it and its not even there. I also used to have frequent dreams of falling, not turning in a
big assignment on time, and getting in fights but never being able to hit my opponent hard

enough to hurt them. Now that I have gotten a little older and quite a bit of time has passed since
my accident, I dont really remember my dreams. Ill have one every once in a while I can
remember but that is rare. These past experiences Ive had with trauma and dreams makes me
relate most to Hartmanns Contemporary Theory of Dreaming.
I personally believe that dreams are guided by the emotions of the dreamer and whatever
mental state they may be in at the time has an influence over what they are dreaming. I think
some dreams that may be perceived as random are just too obscure for us to put meaning to
them. In the future I hope research can shed some light on the many unanswered questions about
why we dream and what is really happening to our brains during REM sleep.

References
Gollnick, J. (2013). The Spiritual, Social, and Scientific Meanings of Dreams : What Do Our
Dreams Teach Us?. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press.
Hartmann, E. (1998). Dreams and Nightmares, The Origin and Meaning of Dreams.
Schacter, Gilber, Wegner, Nock. Psychology Third Edition.