Psychology - Mr. Duez Unit 3 - Part I Consciousness 3 - Dreams

Dreams A sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person s mind. Manifest Content: the remembered storyline of a dream. Latent Content: the underlying meaning of a dream.

Manifest or Latent Content?

Why do we Dream? Content of one's dreams may be affected by one's gender. Life events & external stimuli experienced during the dream. There are variations across cultures in dream recall, content, and interpretation. We may dream to help us deal with reality, threats, & organize information (memories).

YouTube: Vsauce - Why Do We Dream?

What do we dream about most often? 7. Dogs: Most dream of animal because of the characteristics they possess: loyalty & friendship. Dogs in dreams have come to represent our own loyalty towards someone as well as someone s loyalty towards us. When you have a dog dream it is always best to look at your relationships first, as well as the behavior you & the other person are exhibiting within the relationship. Do that &, odds are, you ll find that the condition & behavior of the dog in the dream is remarkably similar to the condition & behavior of the people in the relationship.

What do we dream about most often? 6. Cars: Can be a commentary on how you are maneuvering through or how well you are reaching a particular goal. It can also be reflective of your drive or motivation to continue down a certain road. It is always important to pay attention to whether you are the one behind the wheel or not as that points to who or even what part of you is in control of the direction your life is taking. The specifics of the dream, such as the type or condition of the car as well as the condition of the road & how well you are driving, will help you to zero in on what part of your life it is connected to. Crashing is the most common element to the car dream. It often means that some direction your life was headed in has come to a sudden & messy stop. Losing your car or having it stolen suggests you have either lost your drive to continue on with something or you are feeling directionless in some area of your life.

What do we dream about most often? 5. Tornadoes or Weather in dreams is connected to your emotions because your emotions are the weather of your mind. The tornado represents worry & anxiety that is beginning to spin out of control. People who frequently get the tornado dream are also proud card-carrying members of the worry-wart club! These dreams are a reflection of what is really going on inside their psyche & are showing the dreamer that just like a tornado worry and anxiety is a destructive force.

What do we dream about most often? 4. Teeth Falling Out Typically, anything having to do with the mouth in a dream can be connected to the way you communicate in waking life. It is a good indication that you have allowed something out of your mouth that should have remained in there permanently like your teeth! People who frequently have this dream tend to speak before they think and often regret what they say later. This dream is an example of that regret.

What do we dream about most often? 3. Back at School There are tons of variations to this dream: you can t find your class, you have to take your senior year all over again, there s a test you didn t know about, etc. The school dream is so common because it is most often connected to our job or career. School is your first job after all & it is where you learn the dynamics of what a job entails: You have to be on time, you need to be prepared (you need to have done your homework), you are tested & judged, you want to be liked & the goal is to keep moving up to the next level. Stress. So when you have the back at school dream, compare the frustration & the problem within the dream to what is going on currently at your job or in your career. You ll be able to connect the dots and find that they are eerily similar!

What do we dream about most often? 2. Being Chased The being chased dream means you are avoiding something in waking life. People who get this dream frequently tend to avoid confrontations, try to get out of obligations or run from their issues in hopes it will eventually go away rather than dealing with them.

What do we dream about most often? 1. Your Other is Cheating The cheating dream rarely means an actual affair is going on. It does, however, mean there is a 3rd wheel in the relationship but it s not necessarily another person but rather another thing. You re having this dream because you re feeling that your mate is giving too much time & attention to something else when they should be giving it to you. Usually, the culprit is work. But it could also be the XBox, golf, fantasy football, etc. For men, it could be the new baby. Whatever the case, this dream is showing you that you are feeling cheated out of your time & attention with your mate.

Freud s Wish-Fulfillment Theory Dreams are the key to understanding our inner conflicts. Ideas and thoughts that are hidden in our unconscious. Manifest and latent content Freud argued that the purpose of dreams was wish fulfillment.

Information-Processing Theory Dreams act to sort out and understand the memories that you experience that day. REM sleep does increase after stressful events.

Problem Solving Dream Theory Rosalind Cartwright s Dream Theory: dreamers sort through and accept emotions associated with yesterday's misfortunes. Cartwright conducted studies linking dreaming to the emotional state of waking life. A number of researchers think that dreams are for problem solving. One scientist in particular, named Fiss, claimed that our dreams help us to register very subtle hints that go unnoticed during the day. This explains why "sleeping on it" can provide a solution to a problem. Unfortunately, there are also arguments against this theory of dreaming. For a start, most people only remember a very small number of their dreams. So if our dreams contain important answers why don't we remember them better?

Activation Synthesis Theories During the night our brain stem releases random neural activity, dreams may be a way to make sense of that activity. Hobson & McCarley assert that dreams are side effects of the neural activation seen during REM sleep. hypothesis: When we dream, our brain is as active as while we are awake. We experience images, sensations, etc. that we synthesize into a dream. We create them, or synthesize them.

REM Rebound The tendency for REM sleep to increase following REM sleep deprivation. When people have been prevented from experiencing REM, they take less time than usual to attain the REM state. Common to those who take certain sleeping aids, it is also often seen in the first few nights after patients with sleep apnea are placed on CPAP. Alcohol can also have an impact on REM sleep; it suppresses it during the first half of the night, leading to a rebound four to five hours after sleep onset. What will happen if you don t get a good nights sleep for a week... and then sleep for 10 hours? You will dream a lot.

Teen Dreams Should school start much later? Instead of beginning the school day at 7:15 a.m., move it back to 8:40 a.m.? David K. Randall s book highlights the impact of a particular school that changed the start of the school day. Edina, Minnesota, in the mid-1990s: The lack of sleep affects the teenage brain in similar ways to the adult brain, only more so. Chronic sleep deprivation in adolescents diminishes the brain s ability to learn new information, and can lead to emotional issues like depression and aggression. Researchers now see sleep problems as a cause, and not a side effect, of teenage depression. In one study by researchers at Columbia University, teens who went to bed at 10 p.m. or earlier were less likely to suffer from depression or suicidal thoughts than those who regularly stayed awake well after midnight. Despite the fears of some parents, teenagers did in fact spend their extra hour sleeping, and reported that they came to school feeling rested and alert. At the same time, the number of on-campus fights fell, fewer students reported feeling depressed to their counselors, and the dropout rate slowed. Coaches pushed back practice times until later in the afternoon, and participation didn t suffer. The results were also quantifiable: The average SAT score for the top 10% of Edina s students rose from 1288 to 1500 out of 1600 following the implementation of the new schedule. Even the head of the College Board, that institution behind the ominously familiar standardized test, proclaimed the results truly flabbergasting.