Disclaimer: We know very few concrete aspects about dreams and dreaming, the information present in this blog is primarily theories placed forward by a combination of psychiatrists and scientists.
Despite popular belief, all babies and adults alike dream multiple times on average for 2 hours a night. A person claiming that they do not dream is not true, rather they simply do not remember their dreams when they wake up in the morning. Scientists theorize that this is due to the rapid shift the brain undergoes from transitioning from dreaming to waking up. Specifically, the portion of the brain responsible for memory is believed to be largely inactive during sleep, explaining why 95% of dreams are forgotten. But why do we dream in the first place? Theories range from claims that dreams are an essential cognitive function that help people work through stress and emotions, while others state that dreams are a meaningless phenomena that occurs during sleep just because it does. Below are 3 of the most popular theories by psychoanalysts, scientists and sleep experts.
Sigmund Freud championed the theory that dreams are a result of an individual’s personality. He stated that dreams are a result of one’s emotional, aggressive and sexual desires not being expressed in reality. As a result, these unexpressed feelings are presented in dreams because they have nowhere else to go.
Another theory popular among experts is that dreams are the brain’s way of processing information experienced in everyday life. The logic is that our brains are wholly stimulated during waking hours, and thus our brains are unable to react and process all of the information that it takes in during this time. Because of this, our brain uses dreams to further process thoughts.
The final theory I want to present is the one that I personally think is the most probable. The theory states that dreams essentially “clean up” stray thoughts from the brain, and serve to refresh the mind for when it wakes up. I believe in this theory due to the often random scenarios that dreams present. I think that dreams are reactionary thoughts to stimuli faced during waking hours that are not thought about in the moment. I think that dreams are thoughts that we did not necessarily think in the moment, and are released during sleep to clear these thoughts out and reset the brian for the next morning. Comment which of the three theories presented you believe in, and if you have your own theory on why we dream, let me know!
This was really interesting. There were so many interesting facts and statistics you weaved into this to make it very educational and yet entertaining. I think I agree with your final clean up theory about dreams, but it is very interesting to think about and discuss. Great Job!
I think it’s particularly awesome that you mentioned babies in this post, because cognitive psychologists have pointed out that babies are dreaming for most of the time they spend sleeping (which is a lot of time). Due to that, I agree with you that dreams are heavily influenced by stimuli, but I wonder if the purpose of our dreams is to create stronger connections between thoughts and emotions, because our conscious and surrounding stimuli are out of the way.
I really liked this post! I have always been interested in dreams and the unconscious. In my psych class we learned a lot about dreaming and you touch on many of the same points. I agree with dreams cleaning up the stray thoughts as well.