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Psychology-Dreams (Click to select text)
Dreaming Dreaming is a form of mental activity that occurs during sleep. The nature of dream activities has been characterized by many clinical and laboratory studies. These studies are more perceptual than conceptual: things are seen and heard rather than being subject to thought. Visual perception is present in almost all dreams, and auditory experience is 40 to 50%, but dreams are not necessarily visual imagery. Congenitally blind people dream in auditory and sensory-motor modes. One difference between waking and dreaming consciousness is that the latter tends to be an internal hallucinatory-like experience disconnected from the external world.. The senses of touch, taste, smell, and pain are not commonly experienced. Emotions are felt, but usually a single, powerful emotion is felt such as fear, anger, or joy, for example. Most dream content consists of memories, and are in the form of interrupted stories with frequent shifts of scene. One difference between waking and dreaming consciousness is that the latter tends to be an internal hallucinatory-like experience disconnected from the external world. Many dreams collected in laboratories are rather common, but some people tend to experience some bizarre dreams. Early in the 20th century, Sigmund Freud believed that dream content was composed of the mental processes different from that used in the awake state. He believed this was what dominated the dreaming mind. He described this "process" as characterized by more primitive mechanisms, by rapid shifts in energy and emotion, and by a great deal of sexual and aggressive content derived from childhood. (Hartmann, E. 1997) There are 4 stages of sleep. The individual goes from awake to stage 1, then to 2, 3, and finally 4, the deepest stage of sleep. After spending about 20 minutes in stage 4, they return to stage 1 and progress back to stage 4. The individual will continue to make these cycles throughout their sleep. Most individuals will experience about 4 to 5 cycles a night (Engle, 1984) (Snellgrove, 1984) American sleep researchers Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman proved through studies that dreams do not consist of fleeting imagery that occurs while a person awakens from sleep, as it was believed , but instead takes place during a biological state of its own. They stated that there are two clearly distinguishable state of sleep. The first state, called NREM-sleep (Non-Rapid Eye Movement) occurs in most of the slept period, and is associated with a usual low pulse blood pressure, little activation of the autonomic nervous system, and little to no reports of dreaming. The second type of sleep, called REM-sleep (Rapid Eye Movement sleep) during the sleep period in cycles and is characterized by the activation of the autonomic nervous system, rapid eye movement (usually side from to side), and dream "visits." It is also characterized by increased heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, muscle twitches, oxygen consumption, and gastric excretions. Usually, a fully grown person has about 4 to 5 cycles of REM sleep, consisting of about 25% of a night's sleep. A new born child's sleep can consist of as high as 50% REM type sleep. In adult humans, dreams begin about 90 minutes after the sleep process begin and recur about every 90 minutes, allowing about 2 hours of REM dreaming per night. With approximately 5 dreams a night, humans will have about 136 000 dreams in a lifetime, spending a bout 6 years in their REM dream state. Mentally retarded individuals or people with low I. Q.s tend to spend less time in the REM type sleep, but other mental disorders are capable of initiating more REM type sleep. Outer stimuli such as sounds or feelings can be incorporated into a dream if they occur during the REM state of sleep. These stimuli, however, have been shown to not be able to initiate a dream if one is not already in progress, and Freud had once suggested. REM type sleep is classified as paradox sleep because it is characterized by both light and deep sleep. In most dreams, individuals are paralyzed of using their voluntary muscles to prevent dreamers from physical damage. New knowledge of the biology of dreaming does not suggest that dreams have no meaning. Dreams are meaningful mental products because they express emotions of the dreamer. These emotions reveal different aspects of a person's mental functioning. It has been shown that animals dream. Studies have proven through testing that monkeys have dream periods throughout their sleep. Humans, and all mammals, except for the spiny anteater, and perhaps the duckbill platypuses dream every night. (Hartmann, E. 1997) (Haskell, R. 1996) Dreaming has always been a subject of controversy. Documents dating back to 2000 BC discuss dreams and their interpretations. In ancient Greece dreams were believed to be messages from the gods. In later centuries, Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen believed that dreams often contained physiological information that may be cause of future illnesses. Artemeidorus (AD c. 150) documented and interpreted thousands of dream reports in his book Oreiocritica (meaning "critical dreams" in Greek). His ideas were later abandoned, and no further progress was made in the study of dreams until the late 1800s. In 1900, Sigmund Freud led the way in modern dream research in his book called "The Interpretations of Dreams". The book explained that dreams are distinguished thoughts from the unconscious mind. He created a theory of how the mind functioned while the body was asleep. According to Sigmund Freud (1964), dreams represented the royal road to understanding the unconscious and, consequently, their significance within the field of psychotherapy is enormous. Carl Jung, a student of Freud, created his own theory based upon his belief that the surface content of dreams is the meaning and that deep symbolic interpretations has little importance, as what Freud had believed. The discovery of REM type sleep was a great advancement in the study of dreams because it gave scientists a basis of indication of dreaming individuals and animals. The discovery was made in 1953 by sleep researchers lead by Nathaniel Kleitman. There seems to be a biological and psychological need for dreaming, but it is not yet clear why. In lab studies, individuals who are deprived of REM sleep for a night constantly wake up when entering the REM sleep cycle the next night. This is known as the REM rebound effect. The loss of sleep the next night is not due to the loss of sleep the night before. No serious mental defects seem to result from mental deprivation. Drugs such as alcohol, antihistamines, and antidepressants are capable of decreasing the amount of REM sleep that an individual undergoes. Some theories that have attempted to explain the origin and functions of REM sleep include that 1 )REM sleep provides stimulation for the development of the brain, 2) that it performs a chemical restoration function, since during REM dreaming neuro-protiens synthesis occurs along with the restoration of other depleted brain cells, 3)that it provides oculomoter (eye movement) coordination, since in Non-REM sleep eyes move independently of each other, 4)that REM sleep provides a vigilance function, since REM sleep is similar to the awaken state, 5)that REM sleep acts as an eraser of past extraneous thoughts and information build-up in the memory system, and that REM dreaming enhances memory storage and reorganization by having some time at night for the conscious to, in a way, "think things over" and organize them. The Dreamwork -- the activity which transforms the latent dream content into the manifest content-- makes use of four mechanisms: condensation, displacement, symbolism, and dramatization (Zangwill, in Gregory (1989);Ellenberger (1970). Dreaming is not caused by eating certain foods before bedtime, or by environmental stimuli during the sleeping process. Dreams are caused by internal biological process, Neurological research indicates that large brain cells in the primitive brain stem spontaneously fire about every 90 minutes, sending random stimuli to cortical areas of the brain. As a consequence, memory, sensory, muscle-control, and cognitive areas of the brain are randomly stimulated, resulting in the higher cortical brain attempting to make some sense of it. This, according to the research, gives rise to the experience of a dream, but there is controversy of the question of whether dreams have intentional meaning. Many psychotherapists agree that dreams are stimulated by impulses from the brain stem, but believe that dream content is caused by non-conscious needs, wishes, desires, and everyday concerns of a dreamer. Neurologists believe that dreams have no intentional meaning, while psychotherapists believe that dreams are based on issues that are currently on our mind. Between these two beliefs is an approach called content analysis. Content analysis simply describes the content of dreams, but does not explain feelings or make any deep interpretations of the content. Current research indicates that dreams reflect on problems that the individual experiences in life, and that the function of dreams is to "act out" the emotional problem. Many researchers believe that knowledge is important for understanding waking imagination. Freud's later beliefs underwent modification with respect to viewing all dreams as wish fulfillment dreams in the sense of acknowledging a reflexive function of dreams. Freud obliges to concede that some repetitive dreams, in which the dreamer re-enacts a traumatic situation in his/her life, could be interpreted in terms of an attempt to resolve current emotional problems. This is particularly true for the sufferers of war neurosis (Haskell, R. 1996) Lucid dreaming is a type of paradoxical mental state in which the dreamer becomes aware that he/ she is dreaming and in some cases deliberately takes control of the situation. Lucid dreaming references date back at least 80 years ago, to the days of Aristotle, and the Dutch psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden. Modern surveys report that most adults are able to recall at least one lucid dream, and that roughly one person in ten have lucid dreams regularly, once a month or more. It was common belief in the past that lucid dreams where simply delusions occurring during the brief arousal from sleep and individual undergoes. In the late 70's, LaBerge, a graduate student from the Stanford University, discovered that lucid dreaming occurred during the REM type stage of sleep. LaBerge asserts that with practice, anyone can learn to have Lucid dreams, and even control their own dreams. LaBerge believes that Lucid thinking is a way of tapping into the mind's creative powers, and many artists, musicians, and writers find inspiration through their dreams. For example, the British poet Samuel Coleridge claimed to have composed his great poem "Kubla Khan" in a dream, and chemist Friedrich Kekule said to have discovered the structure of benzeve while dreaming (Horgan, J., 1994) LaBerge (1988) believes that lucid dreaming is a way of delivering self-confidence, and believes that the ill may be healed by simply envisioning themselves as being well in a lucid dream. LaBerge believes his theory to such a point that, in the 1990's, be began to market a device to let you realize when you are dreaming so that can then "take control" of the dream. REM behavior disorder (RBD) can cause individuals to act out their dream in their sleep. Individuals who are experiencing the REM sleep stage tend to not be able to move because their muscles are actively paralyzed. Some individuals will dream after the transition between wake and sleep, characterized by hypnomipic hallucination. Others start dreaming before they fall asleep, leading to hypnagogic hallucinations. Sleep polygraph devices that monitor brain waves and eye and muscle control can prove this "blending of states". In the extreme cases, some patients even display all three states at once. The sleep polygraphs will show no signs of sleep even though the individual appears to be asleep. The region of the brain that control the deactivation of the muscle controls is locate on the brain stem, just above the spinal cord. In that region is deactivated, as it normally is during the sleep period, the muscles will be suppressed (J. Siegel) (Nadis, S. 1994)
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