An Attempt At Understanding Dreams Essay Research

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An Attempt At Understanding Dreams

A few months ago I watched a movie called ?The Candyman?. It was a

horror movie about this psychotic woman who massacres people around her but has

no idea what she’s doing. An imaginary creature called ?The Candyman? is

appearing to her and talking to her, and she actually thinks that he’s the one

who is doing the murdering. Anyway, it was a scary movie and I had a bit of fun

freaking out my mother that night by telling her that ?The Candyman? will appear

to her in her dreams (although I didn’t think about the consequences if he

really appeared to her and she killed all of us while we were sleeping!).

Fortunately for my mother (and the rest of us), she didn’t dream about him that

night. A few weeks later, I did, though! However, I didn’t get very scared in my

dream because thanks to a certain technique that I developed a few years ago, I

can somehow avoid any dangers in my dreams by knowing that I’m dreaming and that

nothing bad can happen to me. This helped me in a lot of annoying dreams before

because when I’m in trouble I sometimes just ?fly away? in certain situations in

the dream or I just ignore it and tell the bad guy that he can’t hurt me because

I know it’s just a dream. I have no idea until today how I’m able to do that,

but it really makes me wonder. I also don’t know why I had that dream a few

weeks after the movie and not the same night I watched it, especially that I had

completely forgotten about it until the night of the dream, at least consciously.

Anyway, I decided to use the chance of having to write a paper for

Psychology 201 (especially that I hardly write papers because I’m an Engineering

major), and I almost instantly knew that I was going to explore the world of

dreams and the process of dreaming. Before I go any further though, I think I

know from the start that no matter how much material I gather or people I

interview, I will not be able to explain the process of dreaming because I

believe that it is so complex and mysterious that no man can claim to really

understand it. The maximum that I wish to achieve is just to admire this

incredible phenomenon and to at least try to clarify some of the little details

surrounding it.

Some questions come to my mind immediately when I think about dreams:

What causes dreams? Does everybody dream? Do dreams have significant meanings in

reality? Why do some dreams seem so weird and out of touch with reality? What

causes nightmares? Can someone be aware that he is dreaming? Why are we unable

to remember most of our dreams? I decided to try to answer at least some of

these nagging questions. The problems with dreams, however, is that they are so

diverse in nature; I can spend the rest of my life interviewing people and

listening to their dreams and I still might not have something concrete. But

nevertheless, it’s worth a shot.

When I told my friend Mahmoud about the paper I’m writing, he

immediately elected his fiancee Safinaz as an interview candidate, because she

often has these bizarre dreams and nightmares. So I headed for my first victim.

Safinaz told me that she recently had this dream that she was a young girl and

that she saw another girl eating a watermelon, so she asked her to give her a

piece but the other girl refused. Safy kept crying until her grandmother went

down and bought her this huge watermelon that weighed 50 kg, and Safy cut it in

two pieces and started eating it. Now this seems like a fairly normal dream

except for one thing: Safy’s grandmother died when she was 4 years old, and the

event about the watermelon actually happened in real life with almost the same

details before her grandmother died, but Safy had no recollection of it. She

only became aware of it after she told her mother about the dream and her mother

told her that this incident actually happened about 18 years ago. I think that

this dream clearly shows that some information is buried deep in the brain and

we have no access to it, until it suddenly just presents itself in one of our

dreams.

Another person I interviewed was Ranya Abdel Hamid. Her dreams are no

less bizarre than those of Safinaz. She dreamt recently that she was being

chased by this mad cow in a dark, long alley where there was no exit. The cow

had almost reached her, but fortunately she woke up in the right time. Mariam

Farrag is another one I interviewed. She keeps dreaming that her boyfriend

travels away without telling her and she never sees him again. Actually Safinaz

had a similar dream where she dreamt that her fiancee traveled somewhere where

there was a beach without telling her, and as it turns out, Mahmoud – who was

taking a summer course at UCLA at the time – did go to Santa Barbara for the

week-end (without taking his fiancee’s precious approval from Cairo!). Off the

subject, Mahmoud and I once decided to go to Alexandria for a day, again without

him telling her, and the tire exploded on the way and we almost died! I hope it

was just a bad coincidence and not her magic powers. By the way, Mahmoud is very

loyal to her although he goes some places without telling her sometimes, but she

is just too jealous. But this is really off the subject now! Anyway, dreams such

as Ranya’s, Mariam’s , and Safy’s seem to reflect the inner fears of these

people; whether it’s fear of catching the mad cow’s disease, fear of loosing a

loved one, or any other form of fear for that matter.

Freud suggested that dreaming is an excellent chance for our inner fears

and desires to come to surface and present themselves clearly – or perhaps less

clearly sometimes – before us. Everybody, at some point or another, must have

had some experience with dreams that supports this argument. I know I have when

I dream of being turned down by the girl I like, failing a course, loosing

someone, getting my dream girl, becoming successful in life, etc. All these are

feelings inside of me that reflect my fears and desires and somehow try to

predict my future by setting up a certain scenario that takes place in my dreams.

My mother keeps dreaming up to this day that she is sitting in the classroom

taking an exam she is not prepared for, and that she fails it. Obviously my

mother finished school some time ago (and she never failed exams) but the fact

that she has this dream might reflect her fears, not of failing exams, but

perhaps fear of failure in general.

Some dreams are very controversial when it comes to trying to interpret

them. For example Nadine, whose father has died five years ago, had a dream once

where her father appeared to her and wanted to take her with him somewhere, but

her grandmother, who is also dead, tells her father that Nadine is still young

and that she can’t go to where her father wants to take her yet. Dreams like

this have always been controversial, and some people suggest that when someone

dreams of a dead person it is the dead person who is actually trying to contact

them. However, no proof exists on either side of the argument.

Another common dream category is when people dream that they are falling.

Teymour Ghaleb mentioned this as one of his dreams when I interviewed him. He

dreams that he is falling down from a high cliff, but he wakes up before he

reaches the ground. This particular type of dreams is quite controversial and I

saw Dr. Moustafa Mahmoud, the famous Egyptian writer and philosopher, talking

about it once on his TV program. He said that when someone dreams that he is

falling down, it is in reality his spirit trying to escape from his body or in

other words, that person is dying. The body usually clings on to the spirit and

does not allow it to escape when it is not time for him to die, and that is why

the person never hits the ground. If he did, he would actually die in his sleep.

Dr. Mahmoud goes on to tell the story of this young man who dreamt that he was

falling down and he hit the ground. That person was rescued from a severe stroke

that he got during his dream. This is just a theory, however, and I don’t think

there is enough concrete evidence to support it.

One thing I realized in my interviews is that there are hardly any guys

that shared their dreams with me. I don’t know if it’s because the ones I asked

really have no interesting dreams to share or if they are more reluctant than

the girls to talk about their dreams. Perhaps this is an observation that

provides a topic for another research paper! The interview that I learned the

most from was with a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Farouk Hassan, whom I had

the great fortune of meeting in Abu Talat, a beautiful beach at the northern

coast. Dr. Hassan, to my great luck, is our neighbor there and my father knows

him a little bit. This was a great opportunity for me to interview him and I

went to his villa one evening with certain questions and goals in mind. He was

very friendly, and I think the information he provided me with proved to be

essential for this paper.

Dr. Hassan told me that there are two extremes as to the actual cause of

dreams. One extreme is the Freudian idea that dreams are caused by the

subconscious thoughts and desires, while the other extreme holds that dreams are

caused by random ?noise? in the neurons without any special meaning. The answer

is probably somewhere in the middle, with the idea that small parts of memory

and imagination combine to form dreams, at conscious and subconscious levels.

Dr. Hassan also explained that everybody experiences dreams; in fact, not only

humans, but also all kinds of mammals. People that say they never dream probably

just don’t remember their dreams. Dreams occur in a period of sleep called REM

(rapid eye movement), where the brain becomes very active and our eyes move back

and forth very quickly. REM sleep occurs up to 30 times in one night, and their

periods become longer as the night progresses. The last period can last up to 40

minutes. That’s why people usually just remember their last couple of dreams. In

order to remember the dreams, one should concentrate hard right after waking up.

Sometimes keeping a pencil and paper handy helps because you can write down the

dream upon waking up. Some times people suddenly remember their dreams later in

the day, without even thinking about it.

I managed to get some more information about REM sleep from Rita

Atkinson’s Introduction To Psychology. It says in the book that there is a

period of REM sleep where we experience dreams, but there are also four other

periods of non-REM (NREM) sleep. During those periods the brain is very relaxed,

and the dreams that we have are not really dreams, but rather thoughts and

stimuli from the outside world. This means that our senses are operating

normally and we can hear different noises around us, and our brain is thinking.

This is the time when several great inventors solved their problems and

discovered solutions and ways for great inventions and ideas, as we often hear.

During REM sleep, on the other hand, the brain is very active but isolated from

outside stimuli, and the body seems to be paralyzed. Giant neurons that come

from the brain stem drive the brain and fool it into thinking that the motor

neurons are active. That’s why we think that we are actually seeing or moving,

although the body itself is not doing anything (Hobson, 1989).

I now return to the interview with Dr. Hassan. On the question of the

possibility of dreams having significant meanings in our lives he said that this

is really up to the individual and we cannot generalize. In other words, it is

nonsense when someone dreams of something and goes to someone else who tells him

what his dream really means. The reason for that is that each human being has an

individual character, and an outsider cannot jump into his brain and tell him

what his dreams mean for him. Everyone must decide for himself what his dreams

mean for him and what they indicate in his daily life. I asked Dr. Hassan if

dreams can predict the future, and he told me that this has been reported in

several cases, but this might be due to coincidence, or maybe the unconscious

tying together of known information. A few laboratory studies have been made to

study predictive dreams, but the results were varied because these kinds of

dreams were difficult to study in laboratory settings.

According to Dr. Hassan, some people keep getting the same dreams over

and over again. This is a sign that there are certain thoughts that occupy the

dreamer much, either consciously or unconsciously. Sometimes these dreams are

quite unpleasant, and they indicate that there is a certain problem that the

person should face soon. As for the case of the person dreaming that he is

falling down, Dr. Hassan has an explanation that is no less interesting than

that of Dr. Mahmoud. He attributes the feeling of falling down to a sudden

contraction that takes place in the big body muscles, which is known as a

myoclonic jerk. The exact cause is unknown, but it is probably some disturbance

in the brain’s functions in the first stage of sleep. The heart rate goes down,

the breathing slows, and the brain might interpret this as the body dying, so it

sends an electrical pulse to the muscles. He does not believe that if the

dreamer actually hits the ground he will die.

The part of Dr. Hassan’s interview that was of great interest for me was

when he started explaining to me about being aware that you are dreaming,

especially that this is something that happens to me personally. This phenomenon

is known as lucid dreaming. Lucid dreamers can achieve a certain degree of

control over their dreams. For example, they can decide to face the dream figure

that is intending to harm them, instead of just running away. They know that

they can’t be harmed because they are dreaming, so they just relax in the dream.

Lucidity is a technique that can be developed by hard concentration in the dream

and by always trying to test the reality of the dream, and by testing the

environment to see if you are awake or dreaming. Some people achieve very high

levels of lucidity where they can create their own dream world in the dream,

take any actions, and live any fantasies that they can imagine. However, some

people would argue that it is nicer to just experience the dream as it comes,

without being able to control it by being lucid.

Concerning nightmares, Dr. Hassan explained that they are usually caused

by some serious problems that affect the person, possibly unconsciously. It’s a

phenomenon that is difficult to analyze because sometimes it is not clear in

nightmares where the real problem lies. Dreamers experience feelings of anger,

guilt, sadness, fear, or anxiety in nightmares, and they usually wake up very

distressed. Although children have the largest share of nightmares, many adults

experience them at least once a month. An interesting fact is that nightmares

can be caused by certain drugs or medications, or by illness and fever. Some

traumatic events and accidents also cause terrible nightmares that are repeated

over and over again. To get rid of nightmares is a very difficult issue, because

it depends on the dreamer and on the type of nightmare. Some nightmares can be

avoided by learning to become a lucid dreamer, and some nightmares just go away

with time. Sometimes the person has to deal with his problems that are causing

these nightmares.

This is where the interview with Dr. Hassan ended, and I must say that I

got much more than I hoped for. However, I’m getting the feeling that the more I

learn about the issue, the more I realize how incredibly huge and complex it is.

For my last source of information I decided to use the Internet. As I expected,

I typed the phrase ?sleep and dreams?, and in a matter of seconds I was

bombarded with hundreds of articles and links. I found several dream analysis

links where you share your dreams on the Internet, and sometimes you get them

analyzed. I also found some frequently asked questions about dreams and

nightmares, many of which are like the ones answered in my interview with Dr.

Hassan. I printed some articles offering dream interpretations, and I chose

three of them to attach with this paper. One is about the dream of being chased,

and the cause is attributed to outside pressures from a job or a relationship.

The second article interprets the dream of flying, and it explains it as the

dreamer’s feelings of freedom, glory, and success, that make him fly over cities

and hover around above all people. The last article interprets the common dream

of being unprepared for an exam, which my mother often gets. They say that the

people that get this dream were usually never unprepared for exams in real life,

but they tend to evaluate themselves very harshly in their daily lives and who

face up to challenging situations. When I think about this it makes sense, at

least where my mother is concerned.

In conclusion, I think that in spite of all the scientific material

available on the process of dreaming, it is far from being unraveled. Such an

attempt was made as early as 350 B.C. by Aristotle. He stated that ?the dream is

a sort of presentation which occurs in sleep? and that ?not every presentation

which occurs in sleep necessarily a dream. For in the first place. some persons

when asleep actually, in a certain way, perceive sounds, light, savour, and

contact; feebly, however, remotely. Nor should the true thoughts, as distinct

from the mere presentations, which occur in sleep be called dreams. The dream

proper is a presentation based on the movement of sense impressions, when such

presentation occurs during sleep? (Aristotle ?On Dreams’ ).This ingenious paper

by Aristotle managed to define dreams and to distinguish the thoughtlike dreams

that we encounter during NREM sleep from the real dreams that we experience in

REM sleep.

Nevertheless, even more than 2,000 years after this paper, our

information about dreams is still very limited when compared to other areas that

human beings achieved great success in, such as science and technology. The main

problem is the great diversity of the issue and the difficulty of conducting

physical experiments and analysis on such a phenomenon. It is a phenomenon that

defies the laws of physics and society, and the limits of dreams are stretched

as far as the human imagination goes. The best we can do is to give limited

explanations that we think might work with us, but the true secrets of dreaming

will never be uncovered. We can just share our dreams and try to understand some

events that happen to dreamers all around the world, which makes us appreciate

dreams more and more.

Works Cited

Abdel Hamid, Ranya, 22 yrs., Mechanical Engineering major at AUC.

Aristotle, ?On Dreams?, 350 B.C.

Atkinson, Rita L., ?Introduction To Psychology?, 1993.

Dreams Interpretation Services & Resources, ?http://www1.rider.edu/~

~suler/dreams.html?, 1996.

Farrag, Mariam, 20 yrs., Political Science major at AUC.

Ghaleb, Teymour, 23 yrs., Marketing Analyst at Daewoo Co.

Hassan, Farouk, Dr., Practicing Psychiatrist.

Rafik, Nadine, 17 yrs., student at DSB.

Shawky, Safinaz, 21 yrs., Economics major at Cairo University.

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