Dreams

  You are worried about losing your job to a company downsizing. You might dream you are a shrunken person living in a world of giants or you are wondering aimlessly through a dessert. The reasons why humans dream are still a mystery but scientists have came up with several theories. Some theories are, dreams reflect our emotions; desires, they “clean-up” clutters in our brain, and help us cope with stress or depression.

  Sigmund Freud’s theory of dreams suggested that dreams were a presentation of unconscious desires, thoughts, and emotions. For example if something is weighing heavily on your mind during the day chances are you might dream about it either specifically or through obvious images. Freud used dream analysis to interpret languages of dreams and came up with the conclusion that when we sleep we make up our on world and dream of desires we wished to have in the real world. Another example of how dreams represent our emotions is dreaming with a person you never met before, Freud’s psychological view of dreams people are driven by instincts that are presented in our awareness via dreams. Meaning without you even knowing who you dream of your brain’s instinct do and they find their way in our awareness via dreams.

    Dreams serve to clean-up clutters preparing the mind for the next day. Your mind has seen hundreds of thousands even millions of objects throughout the day. During sleep the brain works to plow through all of this information to decide what to hang on to and what to forget. Researches felt like dreams play a role in this process. Also dreaming is a way to file new information your brain receives during the day, it keeps our brain organized and optimizes our learning. This theory hasn’t been proven by dream research if scientists were hundred percent correct, our entire day would be replayed to us during our REM sleep.REM sleep is rapid eye movement sleep, usually the cycle where we dream.

    According to Ernest Hoffman director of The Sleep Disorders Center at Newton Wellesley Hospital in Boston suggests that “A possible but not proven function of a dream to be receiving new material into the memory system that helps us cope with further stressful events or trauma.”For example, if you escape from a house fire and the experience shakes you up, chances are you will dream about it that night. The more traumatic the event the more emotions are felt, and the more important it is to get over it. Dreaming about the fire will help you come to terms with what happened and prepare you it ever happening again. But this theory is only reasonable for nightmares.

   Lastly humans interpret dreams differently in every culture for example The Ancient Egyptians used dreams to predict the future. They thought that dreams were messages from the Gods that contained wisdom and prophecies. In the Western people in the1900s used dream to predict the weather and tell the future. In addition Shamans used dreams to diagnose illnesses they believed the brain knew when the body was going through malfunctions.

   The reasons why we dream are still a mystery but scientists have come up with several theories like dreams reflect our emotions and desires, they clean up clutters from our brain, and they help us cope with stress and trauma. Probably one day we would have a reasonable explanation why we dream.