What Is a Dream?

Dreaming is the subjective experience of imaginary images, sounds/voices, thoughts or sensations during sleep, usually involuntarily. Dreaming is associated with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, a lighter form of sleep that occurs during the later portion of the sleep cycle, characterized by rapid horizontal eye movements, stimulation of the pons, increased respiratory and heart rate, and temporary paralysis of the body. It can also occur in other phases of sleep, though this is less common. Hypnogogia, which occurs spontaneously during the approach to deep sleep, is thought to be related to dreaming.

Dreams are a language of imagery. This imagery ranges from the normal to the surreal; in fact, dreams often provoke artistic and other forms of inspiration. Forms of dream include the frightening or upsetting nightmare and erotic dreams with sexual images and nocturnal emission.

Most scientists believe that dreams occur in all humans with about equal frequency per amount of sleep. Therefore, if individuals feel that they did not dream or that they only had one dream in any given night, it is because their memory of the dream has faded. This "memory erasure" aspect of the dream state is mostly found when a person naturally awakes via a smooth transition from REM sleep through "delta" sleep to the awake state. If a person is awoken directly from REM sleep, e.g., by an alarm clock, he will much more likely remember his dream from that REM cycle. Although it's most likely that not all dreams will be remembered because they occur in REM cycles, which are interrupted by periods of delta sleep which in turn have a tendency to cause the memory of previous dreams to fade. True dreaming has only been positively confirmed in homo sapiens, but many believe that dreaming occurs in other animals as well. Animals certainly undergo REM sleep, but their subjective experience is difficult to determine. The animal with the longest average periods of REM sleep is the armadillo. It would appear that mammals are the only, or at least most frequent, dreamers in nature, which is perhaps related to their sleep patterns.

Dreams have always been featured prominently in literature; for example, the biblical book of Genesis features Joseph interpreting the dreams of members of the Egyptian court.

Many historical figures were reputed to have been influenced by their dreams. Some believed that a god was speaking to them through dreams. Joseph, for example, is given this view.

The Psychology of Dreams Dreams are, according to some psychologists (most famously, Sigmund Freud,) rich in symbolism and offer a window into the unconscious mind. Interpretation of dreams is a regular part of psychoanalysis. It is said that one may control the course and content of dreams by a technique called "lucid dreaming." However, this could distract one from the dream-matter provided by the unconscious mind.

Most mainstream academic psychologists do not believe that dreams have a coherent meaning. Carl Jung's view of dreams was more precise than this: that dreams have meanings, but their meanings are idiosyncratic, complicated, and not susceptible to more than vague, uncertain, and sometimes superficial interpretations. In particular, interpretation needs to be based on the thoughts of the individual dreamer and not on any formula.

The art of interpreting dreams from a proto-psychological point of view is known as "oneirocriticism." The usage of this now obsolete word occurs at the conclusion of Sir Thomas Browne's 1658 discourse, "The Garden of Cyrus:" "Besides Hippocrates hath spoken so little, and the Oneirocritical Masters have left such frigid interpretations from plants that there is little encouragement to dream of Paradise itself." Neurology of Dreams There are two competing theories as to the neurological cause of the dreaming experience. The state of REM sleep is known to be produced by a brain region known as the "pons." The "activation synthesis theory" states that the brain tries to interpret random impulses from the pons as sensory input, producing the vivid hallucinations we know as dreams. Sensory-based input interpretation is in turn based on past experience. Perhaps this is the reason why our dreams contain many characters and scenes from our regular lives.

For some people, there are dreams that recur again and again over many years, sometimes with new additions from new experiences during the waken-up life. However, research by Mark Solms seems to suggest that dreams are generated in the forebrain, and that REM sleep and dreaming are two different brain systems. The debate between these two theories is ongoing.

In simple terms, "lucid dreaming" is "being aware in a dream that one is dreaming." This adds numerous extra abilities to the dreamer. The dreamer has full awareness that the situation he is in is a construct of his mind, and thus, can analyze the situation logically and react accordingly. He has control of the direction of the dream and can thus explore the dream world. This new found control is helpful during nightmares in particular, when the dream self can turn round and face the attacker, to confront or destroy it. The dream self has direct control of the environment, and hence can do things impossible in real life, such as summon objects, polymorph or fly.

Lucid dreams can occur spontaneously, especially during youth, but for lucid dream to occur more frequently, dedication and practice is almost always necessary.

Lucid dreamers are those who practise lucid dreaming frequently for personal or spiritual gain. They usually induce lucid dreams through the use of one of many induction techniques, which can be categorized into those which induce DILDs (Dream Initiated Lucid Dreams) and those which induce WILDs (Wake Initiated Lucid Dreams).

DILDs start as non-lucid dreams, but the dreamer realizes they're dreaming. WILDs are induced by creating a constant stream of consciousness between waking and sleeping, hence preserving conscious logic and reasoning. In a WILD, the dream self is lucid from the beginning of the dream.

These uses of "WILD" and "DILD" have mostly fallen into disuse, or rather, they mostly never came into use, though "WILD" is often used to refer to any technique in general that happens to induce a wake-initiated lucid dream, by moving directly from conscious wakefulness to conscious dreaming. Another common technique, known as MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams) and developed by Stephen LaBerge, basically amounts to reminding yourself constantly while awake, that you are dreaming and/or questioning whether or not you are dreaming. The idea is that this questioning of reality will become a conditioned, automatic process, and will in time kick-in during actual REM sleep and provoke the realization that one is indeed dreaming.