WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
We spend about one third of our lives sleeping and a substantial portion of that time dreaming.
It is now known that our minds are just as active when we dream as when we are awake. Dream activity is signalled by rapid eye movement (R.E.M.) which occurs in alternating cycles of 20-25 minutes and totals no more than 100 minutes a night in adults, as opposed to half the total sleeping time for a newborn baby. This much we know. However, the world of our dreams is still open to all kinds of interpretations as scientists can't agree on what purpose dreams serve.
what are dreams for?
In ancient Greece dreams were believed to be omens sent by the gods. Subsequently Aristotle was to reject this idea. It wasn't until the late 19th century that the first modern study of dreams was carried out by Sigmund Freud.
Freud was one of the first to recognise the importance dreams play in bringing together the conscious and unconscious worlds. He saw dreams primarily as being the fulfilment of wishes and was the first to use them in the therapy of his patients. Carl Jung believed that the purpose of dreams was to compensate for what was lacking in conscious life. He thought that the brain contained structures that underlie all human experience and behaviour, and that this is reflected in our dreams.
physchological v. waste product
Nowadays there are two opposing views on dreaming: on the one hand there are those who, in the Freudian and Jungian traditions, believe dreams to be meaningful psychological communications. On the other hand, there are those who see them as the meaningless waste products of the brain.
The latter view is represented by the British psychologist, Christopher Evans. He proposed that the brain functions like a computer and that dreaming represents 'off-line' time when it processes information and updates its programmes.
Then in 1983 Crick and Mitchison proposed a 'reverse learning' theory, that dreaming is merely a way of dumping useless information and modifying redundant connections in the brain. In other words, we dream in order to forget. Most experts agree at least that dreams feed on a mixture of external stimuli, distant memories and recent experiences, a vast amount of information that the brain orders while the body rests.
the creative potential of dreams
But dreams have also been recognised for their creative potential, and there are in fact, many examples of people finding in dreams solutions to real life problems, not to mention the list of artists who have used dreams as a source of inspiration. Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" was inspired by a dream. The surrealists also found inspiration in dreams; poets like André Breton, painters like Salvador Dalí and directors like Luis Buñuel all introduced the apparent illogical language of the dream world into their work.
Perhaps sometime in the future new research techniques will bring us closer to a fuller understanding of exactly what happens in our brains when we dream and why. But let's hope that science doesn't take away the mystery and the magic of dreams entirely.