Disclaimer: My brains most creative time to cook up the most bizarre stories you have ever heard seems to be when I am asleep. Practically every time I wake up I go to my sisters or friends to tell about my dream and I start off, “I just had the craziest dream…” They know that they could be sitting for a while to hear me out. So, much like them, buckle up and enjoy the ride!
I have always been able to remember my vivid dreams. Well, of course not all of them! But I can remember the details of dreams I have had over the years, the ones I have had as a kid and throughout high school and still now.
When I was in elementary school I had the habit of sleepwalking and even sleep talking. There was a time when my sleepwalking got me in serious harm’s way, but that’s a story for another time. While I grew out of sleepwalking (thankfully), I still at times sleep talk.
For a long time, I have been able to lucid dream. Lucid dreaming came in handy for times when I was having a nightmare (still have those), where I could realize that this was all a dream and force myself to wake up. I’m still trying to get better at learning how to dream about what I want to dream. I’ve never been able to fly in a dream. I’d really like to. Wouldn’t that be nice? To go to sleep and then dream of a life you wish you had or going somewhere fun and doing the impossible!
I’ve always been amazed of how my mind ever comes up with these dreams, but I have noticed a couple of things.
Sometimes I dream of things that are related to what happened in my day or even that happened in the previous week. If I watch a movie or a tv show, at times a character from the movie will pop up in my dream or the concept does. I’ve even had it happen where the last thing I thought about was incorporated in my dream.
I’ve heard before that sleep has more than just the importance than helping us rest, but to also process what has happened through the day and what new information we have taken in.
Now to dive in some research about whether what I’ve heard is true…
Kendra Cherry writes an article, “7 Theories on Why We Dream” that gives the readers some options behind the meaning of our dreams. Based off of the Psychoanalytic theory of dreams Sigmund Freud’s view is that our dreams are unconscious desires, thoughts, and motivations (Cherry).
If you wish to delve more into Freud’s thoughts on dreams, you should check out his book, “The Interpretation of Dreams.”
J. Allen Hobson and Robert McClarley proposed the Activation-Synthesis Model of Dreaming in 1977 (Cherry). They thought dreams occur because of our brains shooting signals. So, here is a possible reason to how dreams happen, but Hobson believes that dreams can hold meaning. In Cherry’s article, she says, “Hobson does not believe that dreams are meaningless. Instead, he suggests that dreaming is “…our most creative conscious state, one in which the chaotic, spontaneous recombination of cognitive elements produces novel configurations of information: new ideas. While many or even most of these ideas may be nonsensical, if even a few of its fanciful products are truly useful, our dream time will not have been wasted.”” I for one have to agree with Hobson here. My sleep time is when I am most creative and I’m not even consciously aware of the party inside of my head, which is incredible to me!
In addition, there’s the Information Processing Theories, which sound pretty likely to me, where sleep allows us to collect and process the information from the previous day.
I’ve also heard before that when we dream, our mind is unable to make up people. Apparently, anyone we see in the dream is someone we have seen before in real life (or viewed).
Lina D. wrote an article called, “15 Interesting Facts About Dreams,” the fourth fact is not exactly a fact because she doesn’t have any research supporting her claim, but at least I know I’m not in alone with my assumption. There’s plenty of people whose hackles get raised because they don’t believe in the above assumption. Whether these people are artists, who think the mind is capable of creating something out of nothing or people who don’t believe things without evidence, I think I found a substantial article that says, either way, it’s hard to know.
Writer Erica Seigneur answers a readers question on the site, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute—Stanford University. The question states, “Can the sleeping brain create unique people that the waking brain has never seen before?” Seigneur’s answer: it’s impossible to know from experiments. To test the theory, you would need two things, one you need an accurate image of the person you dreamed of and second, a reliable and accurate way to know if you have ever seen this mystery person when you’re conscious.
To conduct this experiment would be very difficult because dreams are typically not vivid enough for us to describe in great detail of what the dream person looked like.
For me I can remember a lot about what was going on in dreams, but I think the hardest thing to describe is what someone looked like from a dream.
Another problem is that we start to forget our dreams as soon as we wake up, so we could have dreamed of a knew face, but often we won’t be able to remember. Also, there’s the fact that we see tons of faces throughout our daily life like traveling to school/work to the people we see on tv shows or movies. Most people when asked, really have to think about what they did last week or what they ate for dinner last night. There’s so much that goes through us and on around us, that it can be difficult to take it all in and remember if it’s not of great importance.
Here’s a book suggestion from one curious mind to another that is a very engaging read, I actually have it on my book shelf, it’s called “Sleep Thieves” by Stanley Coren.
As you can tell I am particularly fascinated by dreams and how they come about. Please enjoy what I have for you!