| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 4/11/2008 5:49:13 PM | Okay, this is one for all you psych types. I find my dreams very interesting and entertaining but I'm just wondering if anyone out there holds any stock in them actually meaning something.
Sometimes I've had dreams that are clearly reflective, although somewhat metaphorically, of a particular situation in my personal life. Or of a particular thought process. But I've had some weird ones. I've also had some recurring themes, i.e. being on a boat or a ship.
So dreams. The royal road to the subconcious or just nocturnal mental meanderings? | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 4/11/2008 7:43:57 PM | Dreams can be a large variety of things to each person...
Some times peoples loved ones contact them through dream state. This phenomenon has been recorded through out history, and information that a person had wanted to know about the decedent have been revealed...
Reoccuring dreams can have meaning, if a person understands the meaning, and can attatch it to something in there life...
Then sometimes the brain just wants to work an issue out, or self entertain...
You can look up recurring themes, and there are studies that will say what it is supposed to mean.
However I personally haven't found as much truth to that as perhaps others...
What do they mean to you? | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 4/11/2008 8:35:16 PM | I believe dreams do have a meaning. The meanings aren't easy to interpret because they deal with a very primal element of human psychology which we outgrow (or suppress) at a very early age. Why is it that one is rarely detached in a dream? You tend to react very realistically in dreams. You are not conscious that "this is just a dream". You know? But anyways, I appreciate my dreams and nightmares.  | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 4/11/2008 9:10:04 PM | yes yes yes dreams have meaning. Not always an earthshattering one. But meaning? of course. We dream many dreams each night. Sometimes they are just a review of things we lightly noticed during the day and are still processing at night. Sometimes they reflect feelings from teh day (worry, anxiety, anger, happiness, etc). Sometimes they have a solution to a problem. There are practice dreams, where we practice something we do during the day.
Google Stase Michaels and dreams
She was a grad student I knew years ago. Wrote and published a great book on interpreting your dreams - using very basic tools anyone can learn. YOu should be able to find her website via googling where she explains the process in detail.
I'd do it now but I'm just too dang tired. ANd she explains it better anyway, since when i do it, it's just from my memory of what she said.
she's given dream interp seminars, talks, worked one-on-one w/ppl, etc. From Canada. Really neat person. Very much in touch w/her inner self.
Kaylie...dreamed about some POFers last night in fact...you know who you are... | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 4/12/2008 6:38:53 AM | | I think dreams have a meaning that is inspirational, when we wake up happy the day seems to go well. We are aligned then. If we fight in our dreams we are unrest and should see what is we need to deal with or with who, the pent up negative energy is something t reckon with. Dreams reflect moods let's face it. And the stranger the more we seek fantasy and escapism in our daily lives ,, but of course this is just my belief. | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 4/12/2008 7:18:43 PM | Freud said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
yeah, and sometimes its a c0ck. | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 4/13/2008 5:04:16 PM | | I'd recommend reading a book called "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" by Dr. Stephen LaBerge. Even if you have no intrest in lucid dreaming, I think it will answer alot of your questions about dreaming in general. | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 4/14/2008 10:34:46 PM | the messages of dreams used to be in times of old, the directions or will of the Divine.
Modern man has lost so much more ground in spite of all his claim to science and education: even the ancient native-americans had more wisdom than the educated lost college-grads these sad modern times in which we live.
We could learn alot from the primitives of our ancestors....
Dreams originate from the subconcious mind. If you are troubled about some particular matter, you may find that it shows up in your dreams at night.
The subconcious mind is far more emotionally-intelligent than the concious mind.
And is less inaccurate.....
If one is looking for self-awareness, one might learn so much from one's dreams.....:-) | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 5/20/2008 5:25:26 PM | So dreams. The royal road to the subconcious or just nocturnal mental meanderings?
Some native cultures believe the dream state to be reality. | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 5/20/2008 6:10:15 PM | Psychology is a science and as such it 'really does' examine how the brain functions, why it functions as it does. More modern brain imaging techniques have led to a better understanding of what causes dreams.
Dreams are believed to be products of the lower brain stem. Neurotransmitters are inhibited which does not allow movement of the voluntary muscles. In other words, 'normally', while in the dream state your muscles will not react. At the same time the lower brain area is sending random signals to the cortex in which vision, hearing and other senses are interpreted.
In the waking state, the interpretations are from currently occuring perceptions. However, in sleep the cortex struggles to make sense out of the random signals because there is nothing to see, or hear, or smell or feel. So it takes parts of other random memories and puts them together in an attempt to explain (interpret) what it thinks it should be perceiving. In other words it synthesises a reality from subjective bits and pieces of memory.
Now there are other theories as to exactly how our brain determins what memory bits to process. A more current theory activation-infromation-mode model (AIM) is that people tend to use more current infromation from their recent daily life experiences and this is the time that the brain may also access suppressed information. Possibly bringing it to the forefront at a time when you are least likely to maintain it's suppression.
So that is usually why so many people believe dreams hold meaning. Because if you remember your dream and can be honest with yourself, you may be able to analyze stressors, or personality issues and make corrections.
Good luck? (oh, and by the way, it's also believed that some people have the ability to direct their dreams, I'm one of those people who believe that, because I've done it. Just as you have described. Those recurring dreams! Try controlling them, you will be amazed. ) If you can get it to work, you'll understand this whole dream thing much better. | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 5/21/2008 12:43:46 AM | I wonder sometimes if our mind is cycling and recirculating information bits for mental processing, where each layer of information processing has it's own limits on what resources it has access to and how buffered it is from our sensory perception.
When our sensory perception encounters identities whose behaviour is non-deterministic, it could packet that information and send it down to the lowest layer where it could be processed without interfering with sensory perception. It could use information resources available to that lower layer, such as long term memories, in order to more accurately process the information. I can sometimes have a smell immediately trigger a memory from a long time ago, and it could be part of the cycling process. As the packet of information travels up the layers it could be slowly resolved through pattern recognition, except in some cases where it still contains unresolved obscurities, it may need to be resent down to the bottom.
Overtime perhaps a person's mind might be flooded with these obscure bits of information and they might be overflowing into the layers of mental activity attached to sensory perception and could interfere with the information received from sensory organs, which could account for sleep deprived visual and auditory hallucinations.
Sleep could be putting a clamp on the layers of mental activity which have access to sensory organ input, in order for the entire process to be rerouted more efficiently without interference.
Dreams could be a further step, putting a clamp on the information sent from sensory organs, but leaving the clamp off of higher mental states allowing for more resources in information crunching. It might make us more vulnerable as we might not wake up so easily when in that state. I am not sure how easy it is to awake someone who is in full-on dream stage. But a question I would like to ask is 'Do animals/people who feel more secure in their environment dream more often?'.
It is all just my lame guess at the process. I really am not a brain scientist. | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 5/21/2008 12:46:04 AM | I believe that most dreams are just residue of the day. However there are some dreams which you just know your subconscious is trying to tell you something, which suggest it's a way for your subconscious and conscious mind to communicate and work out conflicts with each other.
I've experimented with lucid dreams a lot. Even made a device to plug into a pc which simulated light patterns to optimize the chance to have one (which isn't anything new, it's an old design). While you can control most of what occurs in a lucid dream there are still very abstract ideas occurring in them that you can't control. Those abstract ideas are what I focused on and try to figure out, in the dreams I treated them as a thing I could plug a pc in and hack into since encryption is one thing I know pretty well (read as well enough to crack). Never really worked, and most the time left me more tired than when I went to sleep, but it gave me a different view of the abstract ideas I do tend to come up with in my awake state.
I still have no clue what those abstract ideas in dream actually represent, looked at em from every conceivable angle, I know they have to be something as it's usually one of the same few ten or twenty. I've even painted pictures of what they look like in the dream, at least the ones I can remember when I wake up. Some are just objects that are slightly off, but enough off to where when other people look at the paintings they ask what's wrong with the object in the painting, even though I didn't tell them anything about it and it looks perfectly normal except the feeling that something isn't right with it. Others are so abstract that the paintings just look like I was trying to convey a mood with no real objective for how it looks visually. But the one thing always remains true, everyone has their own interpretation of them, even people who aren't art critics. Maybe I should publish some the paintings.
Edit (Hit post to quick): For me the abstracts come as visuals, probably because I work mentally with visual concepts much more than anything else (photographic memory and the like). For others it may be something else, smells, sounds, feelings, it really depends on what your major thinking mechanism is if I'm right about them. | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 5/21/2008 12:50:58 AM | chrono1985, I heard entering into the lucid dream state is different for everyone, but for myself it seemed to be sound related.
If I made it so I was more aware of sounds in my dream, it was easier for me to identify I was dreaming. Sounds seemed to create logical conflicts in my dreams. Such as very loud music playing when I couldn't identify the source, no ambient sound at all in the area, or the acoustics of the sound not making sense.
It seems my dreams aren't very good at accounting for the nuances of sound. | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 5/21/2008 1:03:12 AM | | OP, the key to understanding dreams is "states of mind", not content. With that understanding in mind, you should be identifying "states of mind" that you experience while dreaming and see how those relate to real live experiences in which you had the same "states of mind". Something about those experiences needs to be reviewed. | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 5/21/2008 9:12:58 AM | Hell ya. And I have proof of it. At least.... proved it to myself. At least on the academic level.
Back in school I was in my third year of math and I just didn't know what I was doing. Math always came hard for me. I was always told that to "get" math, you had to practice it. Like you would need to do if you studied music, sports, art, etc... Well I busted my ass and was always in a huge panic. Two weeks before finals, I'd cut the world off and would bury myself in it, still not understanding it. How I passed those first two years I'll never know. But my story is about the last two weeks of my third year!
As usual, I wan in a panic, then one night something amazing happened. I had a dream where I was in this large room with very low walls. The walls were about 6" high, and in every one of the segments were a bunch of numbers and equations. From simple 1+2 to Set Theory. There were thin lines connecting every box, but they weren't even in the way, but you could easily see the connections if you wanted. Well, I was walking around in my box with the equations for the topic I was studying. How everything fit together, and how they affected each other was soooooo clear. Swear to God, I was doing the stuff in my head. I didn't even have to plug in numbers to solve ANY equation. Literally child's play. But an amazing child's game nonetheless. I realised, in my dream, why some people could call Math beautiful. It really was.
When I woke, I knew it. Ingrained and simple. Aced it and was out of the final in 30 minutes. That's when I really started to "get" it. I did it a few times in school, and a few times at work trying to solve big problems. A wet dream doesn't even compare. 
Now if I could only induce that state when ever I wanted to. | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 5/21/2008 11:37:54 AM | Are dreams the royal road to the subconcious or just nocturnal mental meanderings?
I'd have to say that dreams are a combination of both. But my teachers through my spiritual studies and readings of Theology have taught me differently. Dreams are our communication between the living world and the spirit world. A connection to our ancestors and of things to come. I've had many precognition dreams over the years, and other unexplainable dreams of deceased relatives, friends and people I've never met. In Shamanic journey work, we are taught to explore our subconcious and many messages from our spirit guides (normally animals) present themselves or messages in our dreams.
In one of my dream books, a passage states that if you dream of lines, colours, random lights that don't make sense, it is your subconcious (or you) dreaming of something that is to come, but because your mind hasn't seen (it) yet, the mind is not able to translate the image into actual thoughts, words or what have you.
If you listen to your dreams and intuition, you can learn a lot about yourselves and others around you. Pay attention, sometimes keeping a dream log or diary is beneficial as well. | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 5/21/2008 1:29:19 PM | Hi Sam, I know exactly what you're talking about. I had a very similar experience when I was taking a college course in accounting. I was having a helluva time with some of the concepts, the difference between my credit and debit accounts, whathaveyou. But, one night, I dreamt that I was doing accounting and damn if the next morning I didn't know what I was doing, at least on a very basic level.
Can you imagine what would be possible if it always worked that way? | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 5/21/2008 1:34:52 PM | Hi Gypsy. I understand what you are trying to say and agree with it for a large part. However, the idea that dreams of lines and flashing lights being a glimpse into the future doesn't quite work for me, though. But I have had some experience with precognition, etc. And my family was "new age" even before Shirley McLain started up so no worries.
I'm still trying to figure out what the ship means, though. Travelling on water? Movement? It's weird but it's a theme that keeps coming up. Lately, though, I've also been remembering past dreams in my current dreams and "commenting" on them while in the new dream. | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 5/21/2008 3:15:07 PM | 
You know how I passed accounting?
Ok. Statement of Retained Earnings: First to rows go in the left column, then three right, two left, one right three left, etc.. (dear god get me through this and I'll never smoke another joint!) Worked!
Funny though, and I don't know if I just didn't remember dreaming about it, once it was over and looked back, I often wondered why I couldn't get such a simple thing. | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 5/21/2008 9:02:26 PM | sam-spade:
once it was over and looked back, I often wondered why I couldn't get such a simple thing What you truly understand will always become simple. It's only complicated when you don't fully "get" it.
Your maths dream interested me. I used to do maths in my sleep too. I also teach in my sleep -- sometimes I will be trying to figure out how to resolve a problem with a student or a group, or how to convey a concept and my dreams act as a kind of virtual reality for sorting this out. This applies for many other scenarios in my life. Pretty much every night, I fall asleep have some ridiculous or not-entirely-ridiculous problem thrown at me and during the approx 4hrs I can actually sleep I struggle to resolve the problem. I know that the dreaming stage happens in a very short space of time: once I thought I'd been asleep for hours because of the dream I'd had but my partner told me I'd just nodded off for about 5 mins.
On the positive side, I tend to be seen as highly capable and on top of things and there isn't much that phases me, possibly because I have all this extra practice in problem solving/coping with stuff. A lot of the time the scenarios are absurd, like: my leg has fallen off and no-one cares, but working through the scenario, whatever it may be, dealing with it etc does kind of fortify/prepare me against less extreme scenarios.
On the negative side, I am tired and I really want to get some rest without having to problem-solve in my dreams. I'd like to have a nice simple dream of lying in an orchard in the sunshine without the ground erupting and me having to round up and rescue a herd of bunnies that don't see the danger, when I'm going blind and someone is trying to set fire to my hair (haven't had that dream yet but it can only be a matter of time).  | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 5/22/2008 8:01:00 AM | The absolutely weirdest dream I ever had was about a loaf of bread. I only remember parts of it, but I was a loaf of bread, and I .... was.... LIVID. I mean royally pissed, because I wasn't name brand!!
Any takers? | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 5/22/2008 7:00:18 PM | Dreams...
How about this for all of you scientists?
I am a sleepwalker and a sleeptalker. What is unique about me is that I can do both and no one knows that I am asleep.
I was married for 20 years and my husband watched the late movie every night. At this time of night he was at his most talkative and congenial self. He was a night owl. I would go to bed by 10:30 at night. I am a morning person.
Anyways, I hadn't realized that I had always gotten up when the news was over and he started watching the late movie. Apparently we chatted, laughed, cuddled every night for 20 years!!!! And I didn't know any of this! He told me when we were divorcing that those times were the best moments of our marriage because it was our time.
When I told him that I didn't ever watch the late movies with him, he was stunned that I would say that. He was most insistant that I did. Then I caught on to what was happening. I told him that I had been sleepwalking and sleeptalking. I had been doing this since I was a child. He didn't believe me. He said we had real conversations in that I acted very normal. I told him that was my unique ability.
I have done this kind of thing on sleepovers, girl's weekends away, and even in the hospital when I was having my babies. My sorority sisters on the girl's weekends away got used to this after I made one lady sit up until 2:00 in the morning talking to me. I had actually been asleep since midnight! She was shocked to say the least. She said that I carried on a perfectly normal conversation with her.
Apparently, I still do this. There are many other stories....Some are pretty funny. | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 5/22/2008 9:26:39 PM | | Lately I've been dreaming of enormous battles between colonies of ants. | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 5/22/2008 10:06:19 PM | I figure my dreams are a side effect of my nightly use of the intra-cranial disk defragmenter. | |
|
| The psychology of dreams
Posted: 5/23/2008 8:27:00 AM | intra-cranial disk defragmenter??
Apparently a sleeping bad with mittens (so you can't get out of his sleeping bag I guess), is common for sleepwalkers. Some get into real trouble. | |
|
Home
login 
