DREAMS Why we dream Understanding dreams
Nightmares
Why we dream... Last night, while you slept, you went into the REM state and dreamed. You probably don't remember because, for a very good reason, we evolved not to. However all normal humans go into the REM state and dream every night and most mammals show evidence of this brain pattern too. Dream interpretation Dreaming seems such a strange thing yet it is one of our regular everyday (night!) biological functions. Since time immemorial people have puzzled over the meaning of dreams, these often bizarre night-time visitations that can seem so intensely real and full of meaning whilst we experience them, but so unfathomable to our conscious mind when we wake up. In all historical periods, right up to the present, dream interpretation industries have flourished to satisfy our natural longing to understand the mysterious 'messages' that dreams seem to carry. Even today the influence of the idiosyncratic confabulations and fantasies of Freud and Jung permeate our culture and illustrate the continuing virulence of the fanciful dream interpretation industry.
and explain many previously mysterious phenomena, including the symptoms of depression and psychosis, and hypnotic states. His research first showed that all dreams are expressed in the form of sensory metaphors. The reason for this is found in the biology of dreaming and the REM state itself, which all mammals go into. Research indicates that instinctive behaviours are programmed during the REM state in the foetus and the neonate. This is necessarily in the form of incomplete templates for which the animal later identifies analogous sensory components in the real world. These analogical templates give animals the ability to respond to the environment in a flexible way and generate the ability to learn, rather than just react. We can see this process beautifully when a baby seeks out and sucks on anything similar — analogous to — a nipple, like a finger or rubber teat. Once an instinct-driven pattern is activated and becomes an expectation, it can normally only be deactivated by the actual carrying out of the programmed behaviour by the central nervous system, and this clearly does not give us the flexibility we need to survive. So, dreaming is the deepest trance state we go into.
The three essential points to understand about dreaming are: • Dreams are metaphorical translations of One of the founders of human givens psychology, waking expectations. psychologist and scientist Joe Griffin, was the first • Expectations which cause emotional arousal person to review all the available scientific evidence that is not acted upon during the day to dand conduct research that resulted in the discovery of arouses the arousal, become dreams during why we evolved to dream. The new insights he had are sleep. at the heart of the human givens school of psychology. • Dreaming deactivates that emotional arousal They have a richness that helps transform our by completing the expectation pattern understanding of consciousness. metaphorically, freeing the brain to respond We can easily see this in our own lives. If we feel afresh to each new day. angry and let off steam it usually dissipates the anger. But if we were to act out our emotions every time we Why did we evolve to dream?
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