THE WORLD OF DREAMS “I do not believe that I am now dreaming, but I cannot prove that I am not.” Philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) Despite remembering those most fantastic and bizarre, most REM dreams involve the familiar details of life centered on and told from the perspective of our own coherent sense of self

THE WORLD OF DREAMS → dreams often mirror our previous days’ experiences and preoccupations; they may also often incorporate sensory stimuli experienced while dreaming into the dream story

THEORIES OF DREAMING Sigmund Freud’s wish-fulfillment theory proposed that dreams provide a psychic safety valve where people can satisfy their unconscious urges and unmet needs → Freud distinguished between the manifest content (the remembered plot) and the latent content (the hidden/disguised meaning of the plot)

THEORIES OF DREAMING → correctly interpreting dream symbolism was the key to understanding our inner conflicts, often stemming from childhood * Though generally still popularly embraced, Freud’s ideas have given way to other theories

THEORIES OF DREAMING Rosalind Cartwright’s cognitive problem-solving view suggests that dreams allow us to work out creative solutions to our real-life problems → sleep and dreams can enhance and reflect learning, but it is not proof we are solving our daily problems

THEORIES OF DREAMING J. Allan Hobson’s activation-synthesis model proposes that REM sleep triggers neural activity that evokes random visual memories, which our sleeping brain weaves into stories → critics point to the fact that we have dreams in NREM sleep and dreams are more meaningful than the model presumes

THEORIES OF DREAMING Other theories suggest dreams may help us sort out the day’s events and consolidate memories (information- processing) or they may simply serve the physiological function of regular brain stimulation, preserving neural pathways → dreams are up for grabs; all theories are still based on a mix of both scientific research and guesswork