Tuesday, October 20, 1998
Dream a little dream
DREAMS: What you imagine while you’re asleep can have hidden
messages, researchers say
By Meghan Ward
Daily Bruin Contributor
While most people do not take their dreams very seriously,
others religiously record, interpret and analyze their dreams each
day.
Not every dream seems worth writing down, but studies show that
the relation between dreams over a length of time is more telling
than one particular dream.
Although Anne-Marie Kanakis has never taken time out of her busy
schedule to write down her dreams, she does takes them very
seriously.
"I have these really profound religious and apocalyptic dreams.
Once I dreamed I was on a mountain top reading a book and these
angels came down and took me up to heaven. When I woke up, I knew
it wasn’t a dream, " Kanakis said.
"I knew I had been in the presence of God, " she added.
While some dream interpreters would say that Kanakis experienced
a visitation from angels and the Virgin Mary, other scientists
would attribute all dreams to the brain’s attempt to make sense out
of images produced in the forebrain by the random stimulation of
sensory neurons that occur during sleep.
Dreams have served many purposes over the centuries.
Today, shamans use them to enter the spiritual world and in
biblical times, they were used to predict the future.
Since the turn of the century, psychoanalysts have employed them
as a tool for understanding their patients’ unconscious fears and
desires.
Everyone dreams several times per night. As the night
progresses, rapid eye movement stage (REM) sleep, during which the
longest and most vivid dreams occur, lasts longer and longer.
Unless a sleeper awakens during the middle of the night, he will
most likely only remember the dream he was having when he woke up
in the morning.
Because most of dreams are insignificant and sleepers remember
so few of their dreams, some scientists deny dreams have any
purpose in our lives.
"The fact that we remember so few of our dreams – a few percent
at best – argues against any function of dreams. If they are so
important, why don’t we remember more of them?, " said G. William
Domhoff, a sleep researcher at UC Santa Cruz.
"The people who remember a great many dreams don’t seem to be
any different from those who remember few or none ", Domhoff
added.
Jeff Sommerville, a Los Angeles resident, remembers little or
none of his dreams, and when he does remember them, they are not
coded in symbolic imagery, but rather straightforward
representations of his thoughts.
"Sometimes I’ll have dreams that I’m at work and had some
deadline and didn’t finish on time, but I rarely remember my
dreams, " Sommerville said.
According to UCLA’s Sleep Research Institute, certain
characteristics of dreams are related to the sleeper’s waking
personality.
For example, a person who scores highly on tests of imagination
tend to have more imaginative dreams than those with lower
scores.
There is also a correlation between the dreamer’s mood and the
tone of his dream.
A woman who experiences mood swings due to her menstrual cycle
will undergo similar changes in her dreams. Likewise, a depressed
patient will tend to have depressive dreams.
Whether you exercise, relax, study or party before you go to bed
has little effect on the content of your dreams. Watching a
pornographic movie, for example, will not make you dream about
sex.
The effects of external stimuli during sleep, such as light,
sound and a sprinkle of cold water, also have little affect on
one’s dreams.
Sometimes, however, stimulus such as an alarm clock can be
incorporated into a dream.
Jason Hall, a Los Angeles-based actor, used to have
conversations with his brother while they were both asleep.
"People can talk to me while I dream. I don’t wake up; I just
talk back, " Hall said.
Like sleepwalking, sleeptalking is the attempt of the brain to
incorporate outside stimuli into one’s dream without waking the
sleeper.
Sleepwalking is frequently caused by fatigue and can allow a
dreamer to open doors and navigate around furniture without waking
up. During sleepwalking, the brain converts real objects into dream
objects.
Although sleepwalking and sleeptalking may seem relatively
harmless, there have been instances of sleepers throwing themselves
out of windows while running from a monster, or thinking they could
fly.
Although dreams are not usually affected by what a person does
before he goes to bed, they are affected by what one ingests before
he goes to bed.
The intake of caffeine and alcohol affects one’s dreams. Eating
before bed and taking certain medications like Prozac can affect
one’s dreams.
"Merely increasing brain levels of the neurotransmitter
acetycholine while a person is asleep will cause a person to dream,
" said psychology professor Nancy Woolf.
So what if dreams are caused by neurotransmitters set off at
random during the night? Does that mean they have no meaning? Not
necessarily.
Even if dreams do not predict the future and are not symbolic of
our unconscious hopes and fears, they are still representative of
our thoughts.
They are very revealing of what is on our minds, according to
the Association for the Study of Dreams, who reports that about 100
dream reports can provide a very clear psychological portrait of an
individual.
Psychology professor Dennis McGinty currently teaches a seminar
on sleep and dreams.
McGinty said those who don’t often remember their dreams can
increase their chances by going to bed early so they are alert in
the morning.
"Anything that makes you groggy will decrease the chance of
remembering dreams, including alcohol, " he said.
Antidepressant medications, like Prozac, tend to increase dream
recall, McGinty added.
Anxiety, too, increases dream recall. Someone who is under a lot
of stress will remember their dreams more vividly than usual and
are likely to have nightmares.
The best way to keep track of one’s dreams is with a dream
journal.
Keep a pen and notebook or tape recorder at your bedside and
tell yourself before you go to sleep that you want to remember your
dreams. Upon awakening, do not get out of bed, just write down
everything you remember.
"There is evidence that even the movement of getting out of bed
will interfere with dream recall, " McGinty said.
In order to interpret dreams, a voluminous dream dictionary is
not recommended.
An ordinary Webster’s dictionary or a simple dream dictionary
such as "The Dream Book: Symbols for Self-Understanding " by Betty
Bethards is best, experts say, because the meaning of each symbol
depends largely on the context of the dream.
For example, riding a motorcycle will mean one thing to a man
whose son died in a motorcycle accident and another thing to a
motorcycle mechanic.
There is evidence, however, that certain dream elements persist
across cultures and times.
According to one dream expert, death typically represents a
desire for change, and dreaming that one’s teeth have fallen out
symbolizes a desire for one’s voice to be heard.
Likewise, flying dreams signify freedom, and some theorists
believe that all of the people in your dreams are projections of
different aspects of your own personality.
You are the best interpreter of your own dreams, experts say,
and the best way to interpret them is to learn to make associations
between the words and images in your dream and the events in your
life.
For example, the image of the sun may represent one’s "son " and
so forth.
So if, like John Stevenson, of West Hollywood, you dream you
walk off to school without wearing pants, or that a blond man is
holding a gun to your head, don’t panic.
Instead, look for parallels in your daily routine. Are you
insecure about your looks? Have you been feeling under the gun
lately?
Henry David Thoreau once said, "Dreams are the touchstones of
our character, " so put your pen and notebook next to your bed,
relax, fall asleep and dream on.
Comments, feedback, problems?
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