“I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?” ― John Lennon
Yes, dreams are real. When you fall asleep there are several cycles your brain goes through before waking up, and one of them is where you dream. This cycle of sleep is called the REM. 
This is a super important part of a good night sleep. During the REM cycle the back side of your brain is most active and this is where you have most of your dreams and also remember the most. At night your brain slows down, we do not have to focus on anything and this allows us to have dreams. When you dream, your brain sorts out everything that happened throughout the day. This is why if you had a stressful, chaotic, or sad day you are most likely to have a nightmare. A person that is enrolled in a language is more likely to have dreams than a person who is not. I.e. Spanish, French, ect. Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist who studied dreams. He said that dreams are “disguised fulfillments of repressed wishes” and said that there are two different components that make up dreams: The Manifest content and the Latent content. The manifest content is what makes up the images you see in your dreams while the latent content is what the dreams mean and the psychological meaning behind the dream. Freud’s theories on dreams and how they work, states that dreams are unconscious desires. Dreams are very important to a good night sleep, and they represent a good night sleep. If one dreams then they completed all cycles of rest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud
http://psychology.about.com/od/statesofconsciousness/p/dream-theories.htm
@Ha Young Kim
Wow!! I actually had no idea that men and women dreamed differently. That is probably the coolest thing I have heard in a long time. That makes me want to see other peoples dreams just to see how much they differentiate from mine. This article has some pretty cool information too. http://www2.ucsc.edu/dreams/Library/domhoff_2005c.html
The topic of sleep and dream always fascinates me. I wrote a blog last week about dreaming. The weird thing with me is that I used to dream all the time at home, but since I’ve been at Penn State, I have barely dreamed. I think I have dreamed or at least remembered dreaming only a couple times. This might point to the fact that I am not getting a good enough night’s sleep. I learned from writing my blog post last week that we dream usually due to previous experiences we have had in our lives or experiences we had that day. It actually has been proven from numerous studies that we dream because of traumatic or important situations we have been through in our lives, so you can check out my blog below if you would like! Nice post!
http://sites.psu.edu/siowfa14/2014/09/24/is-there-a-reason-we-have-nightmares/
Thanks so much for sharing. I’ve been having very stressful dreams for the past few nights and couldn’t figure out why, but it must be because of the stressful situations I am having during the day. It would be really cool if we detect if things we dream about have hidden, deeper psychological meaning or if they even predict what is going to happen. Often I have moments of deja vu when i feel like something has happened before and I wonder if somehow I have dreamed before of the moment in which I had deja vu. Here’s an article about dreams that people frequently have and what they could mean: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dreamscloud/meaning-of-dreams_b_4504512.html
Hi Olivia,
I read an article related to dreams recently and I want to add some more information.
The article says that, the content of dream can also differ from gender and age.
females are tend to see bright colors in dreams, while males usually see dark pastel colors.
And for those, who suffer from night mare are more likely to experience general anxiety in daily lives.
And lastly, although night mares does not give negative effects in daily lives, it could be more serious than we think. Here’s the article that I read! http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-brain-food/201102/sleep-and-dreams
When I was back home, I used to dream all the time! Needless to say my bed was much comfier there, so I guess even if I felt sleep deprived I completed all the cycles of sleep. Why dreams happen is pretty cool, but I’ve always been fascinated by what the dreams mean. Some generalizations have been made as to what common dreams correlate to, but much of it is related to a a person’s particular fears or hopes that many people have in common. I wish there were a better understanding of dreams in the psychological world. But cool post!