Dreaming•

Altered States of Consciousness

What are dreams?Dreaming permits each and every one of

us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.

Charles Fisher

• What are dreams?– Electrochemical events that involve the brainstem,

areas of the cortex, and the eyes

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Dreams

The link between REM sleep and dreaming has opened up a new era of

dream research.

Why do we dream?• Wish fulfillment (Freud)

– Manifest content– Latent content

• Activation-synthesis (Hobson & McCarley)– Activation: random neural signals firing in the brainstem that spread up

to the cortex– Synthesis: the brain then creates images and stories in an effort to

make sense out of these random signals

• So who’s right?

Why Dream? • During REM sleep, the cerebral

cortex is active, but it is largely shut off from sensory input.

• The brain’s activity then is not constrained by the demands of external reality.

• The recent experiences of the day are usually evoked, and they then arouse a number of previous memories and intermingle them.

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Freud’s wish-fulfillment Theory

• Dreams are the key to understanding our inner conflicts

• Ideas and thoughts that are hidden in our unconscious

• Manifest and latent content

Freud’s theory of dreams• Freud began with the assumption that at the root of every

dream lies an attempt at wish fulfillment.• While awake, a wish is not always acted upon because

considerations of both reality (the ego) and morality (the super ego)

• But during sleep, these restraints are drastically weakened and the wish then leads to immediate thoughts and images of gratification.

• The underlying wish touches upon some forbidden impulses/desires that might be associated with anxiety.

• Therefore, the wish is censored (cannot be expressed directly) – only allowed to surface within a dream in symbolic disguise.

• The dreamer never experiences the latent (underlying) dream that is the hidden wish Instead, experiences the manifest (obvious) dream emerging after the defense mechanisms have done their work.

• Latent Content: the underlying meaning of a dream.• Manifest Content: the remembered storyline of a dream.• This latent-manifest dreaming represents a compromise

between forbidden urges (id) and repressive forces (super ego) that hold them down.

• Essentially, according to Freud, dreaming is a symbolic process. True forbidden wishes are veiled in symbolic disguises.

Information-Processing Theory• Dreams act to sort out

and understand the memories that you experience that day

• REM sleep does increase after stressful events

Physiological Function Theories

Activation-Synthesis Theory: • during the night our brainstem

releases random neural activity, dreams may be a way to make sense of that activity.

What do we dream about?• Dream content

– Most common themes: falling, being chased/attacked, repeatedly trying but failing to do something

• What influences the dreams we have– Concerns of your

everyday life– External stimuli– Yourself

• Lucid dreaming

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What do we Dream?1. Negative Emotional Content: 8 out of 10

dreams have negative emotional content.2. Failure Dreams: People commonly dream

about failure, being attacked, pursued, rejected, or struck with misfortune.

3. Sexual Dreams: Contrary to our thinking, sexual dreams are sparse. Sexual dreams in men are 1 in 10; and in women 1 in 30.

4. Dreams of Gender: Women dream of men and women equally; men dream more about men than women.

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Why do we dream?1. Wish Fulfillment: Sigmund Freud

suggested that dreams provide a psychic safety valve to discharge unacceptable feelings. The dream’s manifest (apparent) content may also have symbolic meanings (latent content) that signify our unacceptable feelings.

2. Information Processing: Dreams may help sift, sort, and fix a day’s experiences in our memories.

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Why do we dream?3. Physiological

Function: Dreams provide the sleeping brain with periodic stimulation to develop and preserve neural pathways. Neural networks of newborns are quickly developing; therefore, they need more sleep.

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Why do we dream?

4. Activation-Synthesis Theory: Suggests that the brain engages in a lot of random neural activity. Dreams make sense of this activity.

5. Cognitive Development: Some researchers argue that we dream as a part of brain maturation and cognitive development.

All dream researchers believe we need REM sleep. Whendeprived of REM sleep and then allowed to sleep,

we show increased REM sleep called REM Rebound.

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Dream TheoriesSummary

Concluding Thoughts

• Are dreams special?– Freud says “yes”– Hobson, Foulkes say “no”

• Do dreams reveal personal information?– All theorists agree that they can, but this is probably

not a good question• Do dreams tell us something about

consciousness?– Yes, in different ways

Dream Forgetting

• Interference hypothesis– Other activity interferes with recall– Dreaming interferes with encoding

• Salience• Repression

– Active suppression of dreams• State dependent Forgetting• Encoding deficiency