-24th October, 2020
Arohi Sachar
This article is based on a survey conducted the past week with responses collected from adolescence and adults from different parts of the world as well as some insights and stories about dreams written by Khushi Bedi, Edha Singh, Eesha Gorti, Neel Mulay, Sam Verma and anonymous.
"Do you suppose that someday a marble tablet will be placed on the house, inscribed with these words: 'In this house on 24 July 1895, the secret of dreams was revealed to Dr. Sigm. Freud'? At the moment I see little prospect of it."
This was from a letter written by Sigmuend Freud to Wilhelm Fliess. Apart from his psychosexual and psychoanalytic theories, Sigmund Freud was the pioneer when it came to interpretation of dreams in Psychology. The unconscious mind is a scary place-it’s a reservoir of your deepest feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that are outside conscious awareness. As the name suggests, you are not actively thinking about them. Imagine the mind to be an iceberg. The conscious is just the tip, the subconscious is the matter above the surface and the unconscious is the part of the iceberg below the sea-usually the largest part no one actually knows about unless we go near it.
Dreams arise from there too. They are one of the most ambiguous parts of the human psyche. Are they just parts of the sleep cycle or do they have some meaning? Is the meaning different for everyone? Can two people have the exact same dream? These questions have bothered both dreamers as well as psychologists for years but unfortunately, we have not made as much progress as we would have liked. Everyone has their own theories and their own scientific, philosophical, religious and psychological interpretations for why our mind makes up these familiar yet unknown scenarios when we sleep.
Let’s start by answering the most basic question- what are dreams? Dreams are usually a succession of images which usually occur involuntarily when we are in a certain stage of sleep. A dream can be influenced by what we’re thinking about before we go to sleep, or what we’ve experienced in our waking day. Dreams can also bring to light what we’re avoiding thinking about or our anxieties. Our most vivid and often remembered dreams happen during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.
The survey on dreams was conducted on over 50 people residing in different parts of the world and the responses brought out some already existing standard features of dreams:
Dreams are mostly visual- 100% of the participants have visual dreams. They see dreams in pictures rather than sounds or smells.
Everyone dreams 3-6 times every night- We tend to forget but we all dream every single night. 52% of the participants remember dreaming a few times a week making the category a majority. 7% feel they rarely dream.
Dreams usually have one or more characters which can be you or people around you- Again, 50% of the participants dream about people- both real and fictional. There are dreams only about specific places or settings as seen in the dreams of 17% of the participants.
We dream more when we are stressed- 72% believe they dream more when they are stressed. Stress causes hyperarousal which disturbs the balance of sleep and may trigger intense dreams relating to stress-inducing situations.
The reasons for why we dream have been a matter of debate. In this article, I’ll be taking you through the two most widely accepted theories- the psychoanalytic theory and the self-organization theory of dreams. They are both pretty different from each other. The psychoanalytic theory proposed by Freud states that dreams are formed as the result of two mental processes. The first process involves unconscious forces that construct a wish that is expressed by the dream, and the second is the process of censorship that forcibly distorts the expression of the wish.
In Freud's view, all dreams are forms of "wish fulfilment" or what he later called “pleasure principle” He advanced the idea that an individual can differentiate between the manifest content and latent content of a dream.
The manifest content refers to the remembered narrative that plays out in the dream itself. The latent content refers to the underlying meaning of the dream. During sleep, the unconscious condenses, displaces, and forms representations of the actual dream (latent content) which is often unrecognizable upon waking. This is why we fail to remember most of our dreams.
The Self Organization theory of dreaming is relatively new. This was proposed by Kahn and Hobbson in 1993.
It proposes that the sleeping brain is a self-organizing system that can combine different elements of dreams into a relatively continuous narrative during sleep.
By contrast, Freud regarded dreams as a royal road to the unconscious as we have seen. The self organization theory believes that dreams occur after the extraction of important information which goes for further processing. In this state, the brain develops new connections between different elements. They are combined to construct a relatively concordant “story,” No analogous symbols exist in dream content because the elements presented are just memory fragments and other components of information processing.
There isn’t just one type of dream. We’ve all experienced it. There are the happy ones, the sad ones, the ones that feel so real that you wake up wondering what you are doing in your bed, the ones which aren’t a dream at all and of course, the recurring ones which just keep coming back to you on odd nights and leave you reflecting for days. Then, of course, we can’t forget the dream you feel like you have complete control over- lucid dreams. We dream for many reasons- 47.9% of the survey participants believe it's for fulfilling the unconscious desire to do something in real life which corresponds to Freud’s interpretation. Others believe it's a form of hero building or problem-solving. Dreams can be our minds piecing together old memories, helping us prepare for future events or even - nothing. They could mean absolutely nothing at all. The ambiguity is both frustrating and inspiring. You can either brush it off as your ‘midnight movie’ or come up with your own theories. Ironically, only one of them will help you sleep better at night.
1. Khushi Bedi’s Prophetic Dream:
I’ve always been fascinated with dreams, but I’ll never forget the one experience that changed this fascination to fear. When I was around 11, I had a heavily detailed dream, which was common for me and still is. However, this time I had this intense urge to write it down the second I got up. I filled up page after page about this one dream that had several transitions between surreal scenes. The one event within the dream that stood out was a scene of a small child, around 2 or 3 years old, running around wearing a slate grey coat and pants, kind of like something an adult would wear. His eyes were doused in anti-Nazar kajal.
You know how they say that you can only see people in your dreams that you’ve seen before? I don’t believe that because I had never seen this kid before. Around six months later, I was travelling with my mom, our flight got delayed, and we were moved to a different gate within the airport. The second I sat down I looked around and saw the same kid, with the same outfit, anti-Nazar kajal, everything. And it didn’t take more than a second for me to recognize him from my dream from 6 months ago.
While my mom was worried about our flight I was worried about how long we had to sit here with that kid around because it was the oddest thing to have happened to me. When I couldn’t take it anymore I told my mom, scared that she wouldn’t believe me. Being heavily into spirituality, she tried to explain to me that this is some sort of power which didn’t help me AT ALL, but it did get me interested more in psychology and eventually the scientific side of human behaviour, thoughts and emotions.
As you can tell, a prophetic dream is one where the dreams that have foretold a future event. If you dream of something happening and then it occurs later, you may feel you’ve had a prophetic dream. In some cultures today, dreams are still considered to be a way of receiving messages from the spirit world. Some believe that a prophetic dream is just your subconscious anticipating a particular outcome and having you dream it to prepare.
2. Edha Singh’s Healing dream:
A year ago I had a dream where I was living my best life. I was in a green forest, with tall trees, living like a gypsy and had spiritual roots. I was madly in love with this boy I considered my soulmate and would spend a lot of my time with him. We were young and believed in wanting to grow up together and live forever. So we both tried to get accepted in a place which trained you in the art of magic. Now, this was a wooden shed in the middle of a forest and the doors refused to open for me. It apparently only opened for the worthy. And my partner got in and we got separated. I spent days begging to get allowed, but it was sort of a cult and once he was in he couldn't leave and since I was not worthy I couldn't enter. I spent the rest of my life in the sadness of separation and died young. I did not get to harness my abilities to my potential but did practise whatever I could on my own. I still felt content.
This can be categorised as a healing dream. A healing dream can either bring you to balance or harmony, give you a sense of connection, meaning, or purpose, bring about reconciliation or leave you feeling joyful or at peace. In this case, all four are visible to some extent.
3. Neel Mulay’s recurring nightmare:
I had a repetitive nightmare last year which was the scene of Hindu cremation. It all started one afternoon when I was alone at home and I heard some vague hymns being chanted outside. I looked outside and there were people dressed in white who were crying. It did not strike me, and moments later I saw a dead body being put in a funeral van. I was extremely disturbed by this sight and was scared to do anything that day. This scene was etched in my memory for a while and it became a trigger. I started getting dreams about bodies getting cremated on a funeral pyre. The dreams were recurring, and I figured out that whenever I came across a trigger- any talk of death/cremation or any images from a cremation ground I would get a dream around the same time. I was bored one day in the summer of 2019, and I was reading up about Kathmandu and my research led me to an image of a cremation ground outside a famous temple there. That was when I knew I was going to get a dream and a few days later I had a nightmare. All in all, there must have been 10 different instances over a 6 month period. The dreams were scary because they were recurring, and trying to avoid triggers was difficult. I sought professional help-a 15 minutes meditation session, and I have not had the same type of dream ever since!
This dream has taken place because of a real-life event/images/memory and was extremely tormenting. The three most common nightmares are death or dying, physical violence and being chased or hunted. Anything scary can induce a nightmare- Especially events one has never experienced before. A nightmare can lead to a night terror with panic attacks, sweating, rapid heartbeat etc. The best way to deal with recurring dreams is to find out the trigger as done by Neel.
4. Anonymous’s Vivid recurring dream:
This dream usually occurs on the nights that follows a day where I have had multiple panic attacks. It takes place on a beach. This beach is a part of a few of my core memories and is an important part of my childhood. I had a lot of fun on that beach as a kid. The dream begins with me waking up on the same beach, with the sand being all black and the sky, dark and occasionally characterised by thunder and lightning. I stand up and look around and I see that I'm the only one on the beach. There's a storm at sea and it's night-time so I'm alone. I turn around and look directly behind me where I see two eyes looking straight at me. I take a few steps back and that's when he stands up. A black wolf, about 15 feet tall with shaggy and unmaintained fur, chasing me down the length of the beach. The worst part is that it doesn't stop. I can feel myself going out of breath and losing balance and screaming but the wolf growls and howls and doesn't stop chasing me. I finally see the end of the beach, with my favourite restaurant at the end, and all my favourite people in it through the glass window. The light in there is warm and everyone is happy and having fun and laughing. They don't really seem to notice that I'm not there. I scream out all their names individually but they don't hear me. That's when I finally trip over a rock and fall almost at the entrance of the restaurant. But the wolf has reached me. And the dream always ends there.
Vivid dreams are almost always associated with waking up during REM sleep when your dreams are most vivid and more easily remembered. It's used to describe a particularly intense dream that felt very real. One may also remember your vivid dream a lot easier than a typical dream. If one is particularly stressed during the day, chances of a vivid dream at night are much higher.
5. Eesha Gorti’s DayDream:
I daydream a lot. Every Time I need a break, I can feel myself zoning out and making up scenarios in my head. I daydream about specific people, places and life in general. The most recurring daydream these days is life before the Coronavirus. I think about how different everything would have been - from school, to having the goa trip, meeting people without safety restrictions, going out. That was our normal and we never thought that this aspect of our lives would be taken away from us. Daydreams help me feel like I am in a safer place. I can make any scenario and I'll be the only one who remembers it. I have full control over the place, the events and the characters. My daydreams feel like a home for my thoughts.
Daydreams occur consciously, but you may still feel like you’re not fully awake or aware of your surroundings. Daydreams usually involve other people, whether real or imagined. Research has shown that daydreaming about people you know predicts positive well-being. One does not have to only dream when you sleep. You can be fully conscious and dream as well.
These are the five most common types of dreams experienced by almost everyone. Dreams are one of the most fascinating concepts of the human mind. When we are asleep in our world, we’re awake in another. And when we wake up in our world, we’re asleep in that one. That’s the beauty about dreams- once you wake up, they’re gone. Every incident, every character, every setting just vanishes from your memory. You try to piece it together- “what happened after I opened this door?” but you don't. You don’t remember what you did or how you felt. You just get out of bed, start your day and leave yourself wondering if it ever happened at all and if it didn’t then,
“where did the door come from?”
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