Dreams

Dreams 

subjectively experienced mental phenomena that occur periodically during natural sleep.

Throughout the history of human culture, dreams have evoked interest and a conviction that they have practical meaning for life and should be interpreted. However, the approach to dreams has changed fundamentally in the course of history. Many works of ancient literature provide evidence that the interpretation of dreams played an important role not only in religious rituals but also in everyday life and even in military and state decisions (in the ancient East and China, for example). Dreams were regarded as the revelations of gods, the intrusion of demons, and a means of contact with the “invisible” world. The oldest extant book of dreams, an ancient Egyptian work (c. 2000 B.C.), contains interpretations of 200 dreams and a description of magic rituals to “protect” the sleeper from harmful spirits. The interpretation of dreams to determine curative methods was important in remote antiquity, when medicine had not yet been separated from religious and magical practices, including dreaming in temples, or dream incubation.

The first attempts to interpret dreams rationally were made by the ancient Greek philosophers, including Democritus. According to Plato, dreams can be a source of creative inspiration. Aristotle was the originator of the psychological approach to the explanation of dreams, which he regarded as a continuation of activity during the state of sleep. In the second century A.D., Artemidorus systematized the Greek, Egyptian, and Eastern interpretations of the symbolism of dreams in his Oneirocritica, the source for many later books of dreams. A religious, moralistic interpretation of dreams prevailed during the Middle Ages, inspired by biblical ideas. During the Renaissance the interpretation of dreams was closely connected with occultism. The rise of rationalism pushed the interest in dreams to the periphery of culture.

During the 19th century the interest in dreams gradually revived, with the development of empirical research in psychology, especially on the problem of the unconscious. At the same time, anthropologists discovered the important role of dreams in primitive cultures, the connection between dreams and myths, and the universal character of a number of dream images and symbols. Beginning with the romantic period, the significance of dreams in the psychology of the creative process was emphasized.

S. Freud was the first to try to establish a systematic psychological theory of dreams (The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900; Russian translation, Moscow, 1913). He and his psychoanalytic school accumulated a great deal of clinical data characterizing the types of dreams, the regularities in their course, and their ties with archaic or infantile thinking, neurotic symptoms, and fantasies. However, in interpreting dreams Freud exaggerated the role of sexual motives and early childhood memories. According to Freud, dreams are the illusory fulfillment of repressed desires.

In depth psychology and psychotherapy special significance is attached to the analysis of dreams as a method for penetrating unconscious mental processes. Emphasis is placed on the function of dreams in compensating for deficiencies in real life (A. Adler). Dreams are seen as foreshadowings of future tendencies in the development of the individual (C. G. Jung) and as the reflection of the unconscious, collective “generic” experience. Among the diverse disciplines studying dreams are ethnology, cultural history, medicine (dreams as diagnostic means), and experimental psychology.

D. N. LIALIKOV

Dreams are characterized by coherent subject matter, emotionality, whimsicality, fantasy, and unreal events and relationships. Their sensory aspect involves the experiencing of lifelike, usually visual images. The sleeper may dream that he is either a witness or a participant. There are “passive” and “active” dreams. In adults, dreams do not usually include events of the preceding day. Consequently, dreams should be distinguished from subjective, thoughtlike sleep experiences, which may involve thinking over the events of the past day, but which are realistic in content and not very emotional.

Most dreams (80–90 percent) are recorded when the subject awakens from REM (rapid eye movements) sleep or within minutes after the end of REM sleep, because dreams are quickly forgotten. Several dreams may be experienced during one period of REM sleep. Their richness in events and emotions is usually associated with the strength of the phasal manifestations of REM sleep. However, research has not confirmed the supposition that eye movements and other signs of visual activity during REM sleep are connected with the perception of visual objects in dreams.

Dreams may also be experienced during non-REM phases of sleep. Thoughtlike activity is usually observed in subjects awakened from non-REM sleep. Because the REM and non-REM sleep phases alternate in regular cycles, dreams may be experienced several times during the night. As waking time or morning approaches, dreams become longer, in conformity with the increasing length of REM sleep. They also become more sensual, more saturated with events and emotions, more whimsical, and more fantastic, and they include events from the more distant past.

It is believed that the physiological mechanisms of dreams are determined by the complex interaction of limbic, somatic, and neocortical formations during REM sleep. The involvement of the brain’s mechanisms for memory and emotions apparently accounts for the unusual combinations of ordinary memories in dreams. Children typically have pleasant dreams more closely connected than adults’ dreams with the events of the preceding day and the fulfillment of wishes. Particular features of the dream experience depend on the individual’s nervous system, the state of his health, and physiological cycles, such as the menstrual cycle.

Sometimes, “creative” dreams have provided poets with rhymes or scientists with the answers to difficult problems, the solution of which has led to scientific discoveries. There is no entirely accepted theory of dreams. Research has led to the refutation of the ideas that dreams reflect the chaotic processes of a brain disorganized by sleep and that dreams are analogous to the pathological mental processes caused by brain injuries or intoxication. Dreams have a regular character, and their subject matter is coherent. During dreams the electrical activity of the brain is similar to that of wakefulness and unlike that of deep sleep. It is believed that dreaming plays an important role in adaptation to emotional stress by forming psychological defense mechanisms.

REFERENCES

Latash, L. P. “Neirofiziologiia sna i snovidenii.” In Klinicheskaia neirofiziologiia. Leningrad, 1972.
Woods, R. L., and H. B. Greenhouse. The New World of Dreams. New York, 1974.

L. P. LATASH