BBB - Dreams Lesson

Dreams

Get an introduction to dreaming by watching the video below.

Dreams have been described as an unfolding episode or story of mental images during REM sleep. On average twenty-five percent of our night's sleep is devoted to dreams. That is two hours a night if you are maintaining a healthy amount of sleep. Over the course of our lifetime, we will have spent approximately six years dreaming! Psychologists have always been interested in explaining dreams and, once they discovered the link between REM sleep and dreaming, this process became much easier.

Dreams tend to share some basic characteristics: emotions are intense; content and organization are illogical; sensations are bizarre; bizarre details are accepted, and images are often difficult to remember. Studies have found that negative events are often dreamt about over positive ones and aggression is a theme more common than friendliness. Men have more aggression in their dreams than women, while women dream about being the victim more. Psychologists have produced several different theories aimed at explaining why we dream.

Dream Theories

Freud's Wish Fulfillment

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis believed that dreams are the "disguised" fulfillments of repressed "wishes". According to his theory aggressive human instincts that motivate, and drive behavior is pushed into our unconscious to align with societal standards. Through dreams, these unacceptable wishes, and desires surface in a safe manner. He believed that dreams were key to understanding our inner conflicts.

Activation-Synthesis Theory

Dream researcher J. Alan Hobson in the late 1970s proposed a new theory on dreaming called the activation-synthesis model. This theory describes dreaming as a way of the brain continuing to try and make sense of activity during sleep. During REM sleep the cerebral cortex continues to try and interpret random electrical activity. To do this the brain synthesizes memory fragments, emotions, and sensations into dreams. This theory describes an attempt to make sense of neural static.

Please take a moment to watch this short presentation on these first two dream theories.

Information-Processing Theory

Behavioral psychologist Calvin Hall added yet another theory on dreaming. Hall studied the cognitive structures of dreams rather than "hidden meaning". He saw dreams as a projection of the mind's visual concepts. After studying thousands of research participants, he began to see common themes in our dreams: money, exams, relationships, and jobs. He determined that dreams are a way to deal with everyday life.

Review dream theories in the activity below.

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