Presentation

University: Universidad Católica Santo Domingo.

Faculty: Faculty of Health Sciences.
School: School of Psychology.
Career: Clinical Psychology.
Class: English of Clinical Psychology.
Section: 200.
Title: Dreams and their purpose.
Name: Luis Felipe Arias Soto.
Registration Number: 2015-1618.
Date: 8/10/2016.
 Introduction
Objective: to define and explore the mysteries and speculations about dreams and their effects in
humans.
Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur usually
involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are
not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, as well as a
subject of philosophical and religious interest, throughout recorded history. We will explore
more about this subject while trying to understand the motives and effects of dreaming.
 Dreams
We know well about various actions of our body: why we eat, why we breathe and even why we
need to rest from time to time. But there is without a doubt a very important action that tends to
take a great time from our lives, dreams.
“Why we dream is still one of the behavioral sciences' greatest unanswered questions.
Researchers have offered many theories (memory consolidation, emotional regulation, threat
simulation) but a unified one remains, well, a pipe dream. Nevertheless, people continue mining
their nighttime reveries for clues to their inner lives, for creative insight, and even for
premonitions. Why we dream is still one of the behavioral sciences' greatest unanswered
questions. Researchers have offered many theories (memory consolidation, emotional regulation,
threat simulation) but a unified one remains, well, a pipe dream. Nevertheless, people continue
mining their nighttime reveries for clues to their inner lives, for creative insight, and even for
premonitions.”
-https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/dreaming

And not only for the behavioral sciences, is a mystery that is the focus of other sciences (or in
this case, schools) like psychoanalysis and neurosciences. And that is no wonder, because
dreams are something so common, so inherent in the human form, that is impossible for us to not
look at it wondering: Why does it happens to us? What is its purpose? These, sadly, are currently
unanswered questions. As stated above, there are many theories about why we dream and what
we can accomplish with it. Dreams are definitely something that has intrigued many of his
investigator because of the strange and somewhat bizarre findings they have come across.
For example, in REM (Rapid Eye Movement), the face of sleep in which we tend to have dreams
(called like that because the speed in which the eyes start moving), there have been many new
findings that have bring new answers, as well as new questions:
-During REM sleep your entire body paralyses, and if this doesn’t happen, then your body will
act accordingly to what you are dreaming at the moment.
-During REM sleep is when we have the kind of dreams we tend to remember.
-It is said that dreams have to do with learning, because sometimes you dream with what you
have seen or with what you have done in the past.
-It is said that dreams have influence from our ancestors, because a kid can have nightmares with
wolf, dinosaurs, etc. Things that our ancestors were afraid of. So is said that dreams help us
remember that those things are dangerous, but it also helps us to remember what have we done in
the past.
-It is said that dreams give evidence of a connection between all humans. Not only because we
all dream, but because the images we tend to see can be very similar between us.
-Because of the hormones that are released while we dream and their hallucination effects, it is
possible that dreaming (with a lot of other functions of our body) is controlled by the effects of
hormones.
Dreaming also has a mysterious connection with the abstract believe in people, as stated in the
article below:
“Scientists disagree as to what extent dreams reflect subconscious desires, but new research
reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Vol. 96, No. 2) concludes that
dreams do influence people's decisions and attitudes.
Social psychologists Carey Morewedge, PhD, at Carnegie Mellon University, and Michael
Norton, PhD, at Harvard University, conducted studies to find out how people respond to their
dreams. Their study of people in the United States, South Korea and India found that 56 percent,
65 percent and 74 percent of respondents, respectively, believe that dreaming reveals hidden
truths.
The researchers then wanted to know whether dreams could influence people's decision-making.
They asked 182 Boston commuters to consider which of four scenarios would most likely change
their flight plans: the government raising the national threat level; consciously imagining a plane
crash; learning an actual flight crashed along your route; or dreaming about a plane crash.
Commuters said the dream would be just as unsettling as a real crash and more unsettling than
consciously imagining a crash or a government warning.”
- http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/04/dream.aspx
Is impressive how something so virtually abstracts and unpredictable can have such big effect on
people’s decision and even on their way of living. It also evidences that people have some kind
of trust in their dreams. They know it isn’t real, they know it might not mean anything, but when
the dream looks so similar to a possible outcome they might have in their future, they feel like it
was more real than before, almost… like premonitions. They feel that because they dreamed
about certain outcome, it might happen.
Maybe this explains why it such an important thing to interpret dreams. Dream interpretation is
present in many cultures on the planet, many which haven’t have contact with each other. It is
clear that trying to know why you dreamed about something is a question that has been in the
mind of humanity even before recorded history. As it also clear that it will still be in our minds
for generations to come. How something that is so relevant in our lives can be ignored?
Both the effects of dreaming and the fact that it exists make it so relevant for us, that it has his
own science to study it: Oneirology. The effect that dreams can cause on us is remarkable, the
wonders of this phenomenon keep scientist hypnotized day by day, to have such a mysterious
force have a big role in human development without a clear origin or purpose is something that
every scientist of the mind would want to investigate and study in depth. Maybe one day, we
might find the answer, it might surprise us… it might not, but something is clear as water, the
way we view ourselves and people around us will change, forever.
 Conclusion
Dreams are indeed one of the most interesting mysteries of the human brain. There exist many
explanations that try to bring light to what dreams really are and what they are for, but at least for
now, we cannot be certain when answering that question. But the importance of dreaming is
clear, is something that is inherently a part of us, and a key factor in our development as humans.
Is something that unites us, that gives us a unique perspective of who we are and what are we
made of. Humans are puzzles with many pieces that are required to be there for their existence,
and Dreams are absolutely one of the most intriguing and most mysterious of them all.
 Bibliography

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_QHWBGuM_8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMHus-
0wFSo&index=9&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6

https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/dreaming

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/04/dream.aspx