Narrative Qualities

Dreams have long fascinated the human race. This alternate reality, separate from the conscious world we see around us, has captured the interest of many people throughout history. In fact, mankind has been studying dreams since the invention of the written word. Perhaps the lure of dreams is that there seems to be some significance behind them. Most reject the idea that dreams are just random meaningless fragments of data. The vivid sensations that dreams create are just too powerful to ignore. The world of dreams is filled with peculiar phenomenon and unexpected events that beg our attention. Consider the following example of a dream:

Dream content reflects aspects of waking-life experiences. After memories are made, they are often fragmentally merged with other information to construct larger, holistic dreams. Autobiographical memories are predominantly represented in dreams in comparison to episodic and semantic memories. Among various characteristics from waking-life experiences such as places, people, and events, emotions are highly incorporated into dream content. There is also a decreasing relationship between the cognitive demand of an activity and the frequency in which that activity occurs in dreams. Dreams tend to include material from experiential memories and events from the preceding day as well as experiences from 5-7 days prior. The recurrence of memory content in dreams seems to support the hypothesis that dreaming helps with memory consolidation, or particularly the content which is reflected in dreams.

The humankind throughout history has tried to learn and figure out the meaning of dreaming. The interpretations and true meanings of dreams has expanded and has varied over centuries and cultures. Many of the earlier studies were based on culture’s and the interpretation of dreams, but also used as a form of prophecy, inspiration, and guidance. Many people still believe this such, people today beliefs and theories have opened up to a more vast interpretation, they are made up of; dreams are rare brain activity, dreams allow people to reflect on themselves, or that dreams are too massive to be correctly interpret. Although, not a single theory has been proven to this day, science as of why dreams occur is still a mystery.

A series of thoughts, images, and sensations that occur during a person’s mind during the time that they sleep is known as a dream. Dreams go way back until the beginning of mankind, even to the BC era during the time that Egyptians and Greeks were the leading force! The Egyptians examined the meanings behind the dreams we have and analyzed the symbols. There are a numerous amount of reasons behind our dreams. People must ask all the time, what is the reasoning behind dreaming? Why do we dream? What is the meaning behind the dream I had? In an average lifetime, approximately six years is spent dreaming. Every single person on this planet dreams and just because one might not remember doing so, it was still done. One might have several dreams occur throughout a normal night of sleep that lasts from about seven to eight hours. Everyone has dreams and each experience is distinctive and personal. Some can contain vivid pictures or memorable illustrations of reality and others can be unreal or abstract. In a way, they all have certain meanings to them and there can be messages hidden that are trying to tell someone something. An abundant amount of people are always curious as to why they dreamed what they did and spend time looking for those answers.

To many people, dreams are the thoughts that occur while sleeping, having almost mystic qualities. For millennia the significance of dreams has escaped even the brightest of philosophers and intellectuals. Many people have speculated about why people dream and what meanings the dreams have but in recent times two theories have gained credibility in answering those questions. The first theory is Sigmund Freuds and the other is known as the cognitive theory of dreams also known as biological determinism.

As a lead in to psychoanalysis, as part of my journal I kept a daily dream log for a week (Appendix A, p. i). Although enjoyable, I did find myself questioning the validity and lack of scientific support. There seems to be too much room for different interpretations or misinterpretations. This

     An individual’s unconscious mind combines bits and pieces of information and places them together. Dreams are almost always visual. “Forty to fifty percent of dreams have some form of communication present in them and a very small percentage of dreams give the dreamer the ability to use his or her five senses”(Encarta). Dreams allow one to take a closer look into their mind in a quest for self-discovery. In ancient Greece dreams were believed to be messages from the gods. Hippocrates and Aristotle believed that dreams contained physiological information that may be cause of future illnesses. Dreams can be used to solve a number of different types of problems. In The Interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Freud he states “As regards the dream, all the troubles of waking life are transferred by it to the sleeping

Confrontation of the dream begins with psychoeducation about Imagery Rehearsal as well as the role of nightmares in PTSD and how nightmares can create and exacerbate insomnia and other sleep disorders which may be co-morbid with PTSD (Krakow & Zadra, 2006). Avoidance of trauma-related nightmares is another aspect of PTSD nightmares which can be addressed through confrontation of nightmares through psychoeducation in treatment. In addition to psychoeducation, confrontation of trauma-related nightmares occurs through either verbal retelling of the dream or writing the dream down (Pagel et al.,

Dreams have a lengthy record of being a subject for debate and a source of motivation. In ancient Egypt, pharaohs had several interpreters to decipher their dreams as they believed they were messages from the gods (Lincoln, 1935, p.68). The ancient Hebrews believed that their dreams were tied to divine revelations as well. Native American tribes believed that dreams were a connection to their ancestors and used obtaining a vision from a dream as a rite of passage (Tedlock, 1981, p.324). In the present day, every night all across the world, people still experience sequences of imagery encompassed by sensations and emotions while asleep. The average person tends to dream up to seven times a night

The T-test looked at the null hypothesis that personality traits are not statistically significant when measuring peoples ability to recall their dreams. It was founded that from the sample Extraversion, Stability and Conscientiousness were not significant as all predictors were above the significance level of .05. Extraversion had had a moderate positive, non-significant correlation. Stability had a negative moderate non-significant correlation and Conscientiousness had a very peak positive non-significant correlation. The strongest predictor for the outcome variables was openness. The result is not surprising as hypothesized from previous literature if a person is open to the experience of dreaming they are more likely to remember their dreams.

While laboratory research is the most common way to collect data on dreams, Domhoff recognizes that dreams can’t be forced to happen and there is a risk is taking the accounts written in dream journals as 100% accurate. Many times participants may decide to omit certain information for reasons such as embarrassment.

The attachment style a person has will greatly influence their attitude about dreams through hyperactivating and deactivating tendencies. The authors of this piece did an online study of adults through Amazon. They hypothesized that anxiously attached individuals often experience more negative dreams, and they believe that dreams are significant and have some value. Also, these people believe that there is a strong link between life and dreams, and they allow their dreams to determine things that they do. While avoidantly attached people believe the opposite. They do not have very influenced dreams, and they often forget their dreams. These individuals see little or no link between dreams and daily lives, because they attempt to resist the possible connection that could be there. This information was recorded through multiple questionnaires, and the majority of the participants received a different survey. After this was completed, a dream coding was introduced; dream coding is a scale that was introduced for the attachment of dreams and its interpretation (the scale ranged from

There are fifty-five typical dreams Americans can have (Peter 2). These dreams are common among all people to have because these types are something people love or fear. Being chased or pursed is a very common dream people tend to have. Falling, leading to death, arriving to late, flying, or even being in school are other really common dreams (Peter 2). Researchers did a study on what type of characters show up in people’s dreams. The information recorded forty-eight percent of the characters that were seen in dreams could be named by the dreamer. Thirty-five percent of the characters could be identified by their social role or relationship like a police officer or a friend. The rest of the characters in a person’s dream could not be identified

DeCicco (2007a) used the method of content analysis to analyze both dreams and discovery from dreamers. Furthermore, this study made significant predictions about dream discovery from dream content categories. Content analysis has also been used to reveal gender differences (Krippner & Weinhold, 2002), differences in sexual content (King, DeCicco, & Humphreys, 2009), imagery in addictions (DeCicco & Higgins, 2009), for comparing dreams of students across cultures (Schredl, Ciric, Bishop, Golitz, & Buschtons, 2003), and for examining dream content of people in poor physical health (King & DeCicco, 2007), to name a few. It is an effective statistical method for scoring dream content and discovery and has been instrumental for advancing the knowledge base of dream

Analysts who derive their interpretations of dreams on preconceived notions or a one-sided theory and then proceed to push these interpretations onto their patients have to do so by suggestion. Suggestion is a valuable tool for short-term small fixes. When an analyst uses suggestion as the basis of the analysis it