Theories of Dreams

"Dreams are the touchstones of our characters." - Henry David Thoreau

Dreams have fascinated philosophers over a thousand years, but recently dreams have been subjected to in dept research and concentrated scientific study. The thing is you'll get to be stuck in a corner puzzling your mind over a mysterious content of a dream, or perhaps you'll think why you dream at all.

First, let's start answering- What is a dream? A dream consist of images, thoughts and emotions experienced when asleep. It can be extraordinarily vivid or vague, some are joyful thoughts, most often frightening imagery; focused and understandable or unclear and confusing.

Why do we dream? What purpose do they serve? While many theories have been proposed, no one have ever proved its theory. Considering the enormous amount of time we spend in a dreaming state. However, it is important to consider scientific reason as still unraveling the exact purpose and function of sleep itself. Researchers suggest that dreams serves no purpose real purpose,but most of us believe that dreaming is essential to mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

Let's learn more about some of the most prominent theories of dreams:

Psychoanalytic Theory of Dreams:

Sigmund Freud's theory of dreams suggested that this dreams were representation of unconscious desires, idea, and inspiration. From his psychoanalytic view of personality, human being are driven by aggressive and sexual instincts that are repressed from conscious awareness. Since these thought are not expressed, they find their way into our awareness via dreams.

Activation- Functionality Style of Dreaming:

The activation-synthesis design of thinking was first offered by J. Allan Hobson and John McClarley in 1977. According to this way of thinking, circuits in our mind become triggered during REM rest, which causes regions of the limbic system includes feelings, feelings and thoughts, such as the amygdala and hippo-campus, to become active. The brain digests and thinks this inner task and efforts to find meaning in these signals, which results in dreaming. This design advises that dreams are a summary decryption of signals created by the mind during rest.

While this theory advises that dreams are caused by inner created signals, Hobson does not believe that dreams are useless. Instead, he advises that dreaming is "…our most resourceful mindful condition, one in which the chaotic, natural recombination of mental components generates novel styles of information: new thoughts. While many or even most of these thoughts may be absurd, if even a few of its fantastic products are truly useful, our wish time will not have been wasted.

Other Concepts of Dreams:

Many other theories have been recommended to accounts for the occurrence and indicating of dreams. The following are just of few of these offered ideas:

1. One concept advises that dreams are the result of our mind trying to experience exterior stimuli during sleep. For example, the audio of the stereo may be designed into the content of a dream.

2. Another concept uses a pc metaphor to accounts for dreams. According to this way of thinking, dreams provide to 'clean up' debris from the mind, much like clean-up operations in a pc, relaxing the mind to prepare for the next day.

3.Yet another style offers that dreams operate as a kind of therapy. In this theory, the dreamer is able to make contacts between different thoughts and feelings in a safe atmosphere.

4. A current style of dreaming includes some components of various theories. The activation of the mind brings to reduce contacts between thoughts and ideas, which are then guided by the feelings of the dreamer.

Stay tuned with different meanings of dreams for the next update.......