what is a dream and how does it work

DREAM

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

“It is an altered state of consciousness based on our emotions, fantasies or conscious experience.”

A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.

Early Stages

In early age, the philosophers and experts believed that the nature of dream is supernatural. So, at the time of dreaming, the soul travels away from the body. At this stage, whatever the soul sees or listen, there is a dream.

This is the reason that philosophers and experts think that the sleeping person should not take up suddenly or else the soul will not be able to enter the body, so that the person may die.

 After Stages

After that it was believed by some religious scholars that dream was a reward of  divine force, it is an supernatural event effected by the god, if they are happy on human being then he/she sees a happy dream and if god is rage, person see unpleasant dream.

 

Philosopher Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes and physiologist Galen believed that during sleep, organic changes causes in our body by external stimuli.

Some facts about dream:-

·        The scientific study of dreams is known as “oneirology”.

·        Dream mainly occur in R.E.M.(Rapid eye movement) stage.

·        Cicero’s statement - Nature of dream is meaningless.

·        Dream is a mental process, which is constant.

Characteristics of dream:-

·     Dreams are meaningful.

·     Dreams are symbolic.

·     It is hallucinatory in nature.

·     Dream are subjective and ego- centric.

·     It also hint towards future.

·     Dream express the repressed wishes of unconscious.

Types of Dreams

Mainly divided into two types :- simple and complex dreams.

But modern psychologist divided it into seven types according to that event or content see in dreams.

·  Wish- fulfilment dream.(person may see that their wishes comes true about which he/she thought in real life)

·  Anxiety dream ( person feel fear, sweating and sometimes crying in their dreams due to fear)

·  Punishment dream.(if somebody has done any fault and feel guilt about that then he/ she sees himself punished by someone)

·  Prophetic dream (person may see future hints)

·  Protest dream (person seeing himself to break social norms which he/she can’t did in reality)

·  Resolution dream ( people sometimes found solution of mental conflicts in dreams)

·  Kinesthetic dream (person who have strong imaginative power seeing himself doing extraordinary things. Like, flying, having super power and fighting with enemies e.t.c)

Freud’s theory of dream:-

According to Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) dreams are indirect, disguised and symbolical expressions of the repressed and unconscious sex wishes. The sex wishes are often banned by the society and not allowed adequate fulfilment in waking life. Therefore, they are represssed and become unconscious.

In the waking condition these unsocial sex wishes are not allowed by the censor or super ego to enter into the field of consciousness. So during sleep , the censor or superego relaxes but alert, so the repressed sex wishes put on a disguise form and appear as dreams.

According to Freud:-

·  “Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious”.

·   Dreams were the “guardians” of sleep.

·   Dreams are symbolical expressions of libidinous desires.

·   Freud give his dream theory in his book-“  The interpretation of dream(1900)”

        Dreams are of two types:- 1) Manifest content and 2) latent content.

1)  Manifest content:-  it is that content in which the basic dreams include as it appears to the dreamer.

2) Latent content:- it consist the actual meaning of dream which comes into disguised or symbolic form in dreams. All those unacceptable thoughts and desires repressed in unconscious and then those desires comes into symbolic or disguised form in dreams.

The process by which the latent content of dream is transformed into manifest content, known as “dream work”, or “dream mechanism”.

The latent content of sex wishes into manifest content is affected by means of ‘ condensation, omission, displacement, dramatization and secondary elaboration'.

·   Condensation:- it means that the dream may represent many needs and impulses simultaneously.

·  Omission:- it means that an event that expresses an unacceptable desire directly is admitted to give the dream an innocent appearance.

· Displacement:- of affect means the transference of feeling or emotion from an important element to an unimportant element of the dream.

· Dramatization:- means visualization and projection.

· Secondary elaboration:- means the attempt of the dreamer to make the manifest content coherent and intelligible.

Criticism:-

·  Dreams are not only motivated by sex- desire.

·  Not only direct or indirect fulfillment of repressed desires.

·  Wishes are not only by unconscious.

·  Freud only studied and analysed on abnormal person and formulate theory.

 

Jung theory of dream:-

According to Jung (1875-1960), dreams are a way of communicating and acquainting ownself with the unconscious.

        I.  Dreams are window to unconscious.

       II.  Dreams are the direct natural expression of the current condition of the dreamer’s mental world.

     III.   Dreams interpretation was built on,” collective unconscious”.

    IV.    Jung said, dreams are not sees the unconscious as animalistic, instinctual or sexual. He sees it as more spiritual. Eventually, jung split with Freud due to their different view on dreams.

      V.    Dreams work on present situation.

    VI.     Symbols are different from person to person.

   VII.    Collective unconscious- it means transfer from one generation to another.

 VIII.    He believed, nature of dreams is to present a spontaneous self portrayed, in symbolic form of the actual situation in the unconscious.

     IX.   Dreams Speak in a distinctive language of symbols, images and metaphors, a language that is the unconscious mind’s natural means of expression.

      X.   According to jung, dream express not just personal content, but also collective or universal content- that is archetype dreams.

     XI.  In archetype dreams- the symbols have some meaning universally.

·  The persona

·  The shadow

·  The anima/ animus

·  The wise old man

·  Divine child

·  The great mother

·  The trickster

Jung believed that the world’s religious and mythological traditions contain s wealth of archetypal images.

Alfred Adler viewpoint on dream:-

According to Adler, when we dreaming, our unconscious is creating a way for you to deal with a problem without having to face upset emotions and thoughts in waking life.

·  Dreams are problem solving device.

·  Meaning of symbols of dream depends completely on the individual separately.

·  Dreams have future content.