Contents
Dreams entertain, frighten and fascinate. But where do they come from and why? Mankind has been wrestling with these questions for four thousand years. Here are five theories about why we need them.
The very first dream known to the world was recorded by a Sumerian king around 2500 BC. At the same time, the first interpretation of the dream known to history appeared – the king’s sister saw in it a warning.
Since then, people have not changed much, they are still trying to unravel the secret messages of dreams, hoping to find a clue or prediction in them. And what options does science offer?
Dreams are practical predictions
Even if you have never opened the Bible, you must have heard the story about the dreams of the Egyptian pharaoh, which is described there. The ruler dreamed that seven skinny cows devoured seven fat cows, and seven skinny ears – full ears. Pharaoh called Joseph for help, who explained to him that Egypt was waiting for seven years of abundance and seven years of famine.
Psychologist Kelly Bulkley, author of The Science of Dreams and the Origins of Religion, says such miracles are at the heart of one of the most useful functions of dreams: to help people prepare: “We do this all the time in the waking state. We are prudent. It will be cold in winter, so it is good to stock up on food. Everything we do depends on our ability to foresee the future. The mind and brain are a continuously working system, and this “preparatory” thinking continues while we sleep.
Bulkley believes that the shortest definition of dreams is “imagination”, most often associated with the future: “Even Aristotle noticed that during sleep, when we are not disturbed by small everyday worries, fleeting impressions can give us a better idea of the future.”
Evolutionary psychologists claim that our minds visualize the potential dangers of the outside world in dreams. Thus, the psyche prepares for them – regardless of whether we remember this dream.
Dreams tell us what to do
Psychiatric historian George Macari, in The Invention of the Modern Mind, recounts a series of dreams by Descartes that made him realize that “problems of space can be reduced to algebraic ones” and that the natural world obeys mathematical rules. It changed the scientific conception of reality.
Freud’s dream on the night before his father’s funeral in October 1896 prompted the psychoanalyst to write The Interpretation of Dreams – he dreamed of a note with the message: “You need to close your eyes.”
Abraham Lincoln often had dreams. According to the memoirs of one of the colleagues, vivid visions visited the president on the night before each “great and important event of the war.” In the days before Lincoln’s assassination, he was rumored to have had several dreams of funerals at the White House.
Dreams are messages from the unconscious
At the turn of the XNUMXth century, Sigmund Freud thought that dreams are messages from our unconscious: “The interpretation of dreams is the main road to knowledge of the unconscious activity of the mind.” The purpose of dreams, in his opinion, is to realize repressed desires. Their meaning can be understood associatively.
His student and rival Carl Jung viewed dreams from a more perspective perspective. Dreams, he said, are the way to those parts of the mind that lie outside our consciousness.
They are designed to convey certain messages to us through universal yet personalized symbols. So a dream about a partner who left you can be regarded as a sign that you are missing out on some opportunity.
Jungian Maxon McDowell, who has been using the interpretation of dreams in his therapeutic practice for 29 years, believes that sleep is “messages to our consciousness about conjectures and insights that a person considers important and necessary, and an attempt to “understand oneself”.
Dreams are a set of data
Dreaming began to be studied in earnest in the 1950s, after Eugene Aserinski and Nathaniel Kleitman of the University of Chicago discovered REM sleep. Today, brain imaging scientists are beginning to determine the “essence” of dreams by training algorithms to recognize what brain activity looks like while awake.
The aforementioned Bulkley created the Database of Dreams and Dreams, in which he collected more than 20 dreams of volunteers from all over the world. According to him, characteristic psychological themes are already visible. For example, people are rarely alone in dreams, and most often we dream of those to whom we are emotionally attached: “Dreams reflect what worries us in our relationships. Dreams are a way to evaluate our relationships, to understand who is dear to us and what worries us. And encourage action.
Dreams are the work of our memory
Neuroscientists argue that the kaleidoscope of images in dreams is a by-product of the process of creating memories. When the different strands of our experience are tied together, the result seems both familiar and foreign at the same time.
“These fantastic, complex images are not related to consciousness,” says Sue Llewelyn, a researcher at the University of Manchester. “They are not ‘real’ because they have several different memories mixed in. During REM sleep, these images are perceived as dreams.
This same process helps learning. Scientists once conducted an experiment: participants were asked to figure out a virtual maze and then take a nap. Those of them who dreamed of the maze they had just completed were more successful in the repeated test.
Biologists at the University of Chicago, led by Daniel Margoliash, studied the brains of sleeping zebra finches. Scientists have found that its activity is the same as that of awake birds when they sing to attract a mate. Unfortunately, it will not work to ask the bird about what exactly she dreamed about, but it seems that in a dream they hone their abilities.