Sweet Dreams: Understanding your private dream world

Starter Questions: True or False? Are all dreams unconscious wishes? Are most men’s dreams sexual? Is it always helpful to remember your dreams? Do dream symbols have universal meanings that can be found in dream dictionaries? Are most dreams in black and white?

Top five most common dreams for teenagers (boys/girls): 1. Being attacked or chased-78%/83% 2. Sexual experiences-85%/73% 3. Falling-73%/74% 4. School, teachers-57%/71% 5. Arriving too late-55%/62% The 12 “universal dreams:” http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03341/248376.stm

How much time do we spend in our own private dream world?

Non-REM sleep and dreams

The content of dreams

The emotions of dreams

Day residue The content of dreams is often similar to events in your waking life.

Stimulus incorporation Stimuli that occur during sleep can be incorporated into dreams either directly or in altered form.

Can we learn while we sleep? No.

Dream interpretation So… what do dreams mean? Here are brief summaries of all of the different viewpoints.

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud--The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)

Freud’s two levels

Carl Jung Dreams are the key to our collective unconscious: our shared human memory

Crick and Mitchison: Information processing theory Dreams help sift, sort, and fix the day’s experiences in our memories, getting rid of useless connections, clearing space for new information

Hobson and McCarley: Activation synthesis theory The pons dispenses random bursts of electricity during REM, and dreams are your cortex’s attempt to make sense of it.

Rosalind Cartwright: Problem-solving theory Dreams are the brain’s way of working things out; they exist to help us

Lucid dreaming A state of dreaming where the sleeper can direct the dream or is aware that she/he is dreaming Check these out in the remaining time, and take notes on the next slide. http://dreaminglucid.com/fivetechniques.html http://www.lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFAQ2.html http://www.dreamviews.com/ http://www.lucidity.com/novadreamer.html http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/lucid-dreaming-techniques.html http://www.wikihow.com/Lucid-Dream