Freud believed that dreams allow us to express unconscious desires through symbols. Modern theories suggest dreams help process memories and make sense of random neural activity during sleep. Most dreams have negative emotional content like failure, attack, or rejection. Sexual dreams are less common than thought, especially for women. Women dream equally of men and women, while men dream more about men. Common universal dream themes include flying, exams, nudity in public, falling, being chased, natural disasters, and seeing people from the past.
2. Dreams
• Freud – dreams as wish
fulfillment
– Sigmund Freud
suggested that dreams
provide a psychic
safety valve to
discharge unacceptable
feelings. The dream’s
manifest (apparent)
content may also have
symbolic meanings
(latent content) that
signify our
unacceptable feelings.
4.5 Why do people dream and what do they dream about?
3. WHY DO WE DREAM?
• Information Processing Theory:
–Dreams may help sift, sort, and fix a day’s
experiences in our memories.
• Activation-Synthesis Theory:
–Suggests that the brain engages in a lot of
random neural activity. Dreams make
sense of this activity. Explains sudden
visual images during REM
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4. WHAT DO WE DREAM ABOUT?
• Negative Emotional Content
• 8 out of 10 dreams have negative emotional
content.
• Failure Dreams
• People commonly dream about failure, being
attacked, pursued, rejected, or struck with
misfortune.
• Sexual Dreams:
• Contrary to our thinking, sexual dreams are
sparse. Sexual dreams in men are 1 in 10; and in
women 1 in 30.
• Dreams of Gender:
• Women dream of men and women equally; men
dream more about men than women.
4
5. Universal Dream Themes
Don’t write all down but have you experienced any of these?
• Flying on your own or in an airplane (also, plane crashes).
• Failing or forgetting to study for an exam in high school or college, or forgetting your lines for a
presentation, speech or play.
• Appearing naked or partially clad in public
• Falling
• Being paralyzed or partially or totally restricted in movement, like trying to run away but being
unable to move fast enough.
• Getting chased or kidnapped by people, animals, or creatures.
• Sexual adventures, including overt references to heterosexual or homosexual acts.
• Natural disasters such as earthquakes, tidal waves, tornadoes, floods and volcanoes.
• Technological disasters such as explosions, fire, terrorist acts, nuclear war, chemical
contamination, or plane crashes.
• Losing your teeth, often with the teeth seeming to crumble.
• Violent threats, attack or injuries to self or others.
• Rejection, abandonment, betrayal or humiliation.
• Driving or being in cars (also crashing a car, brakes locking, going out of control).
• Missing a bus, train or plane (arriving late or missing an appointment)
• Discovering new and unexpected rooms in houses or buildings
• Finding or losing money, wallet, purse or valuables.
• People appearing from your past (both living and dead).
• Returning to a childhood or previous home, school or setting from childhood.
• Pregnancy and birth (seeing yourself or others pregnant or birthing).
• Meeting unknown or unfamiliar people, or finding yourself in unfamiliar settings.
6. Universal Dream Themes
Don’t write all down but have you experienced any of these?
• Flying on your own or in an airplane (also, plane crashes).
• Failing or forgetting to study for an exam in high school or college, or forgetting your lines for a
presentation, speech or play.
• Appearing naked or partially clad in public
• Falling
• Being paralyzed or partially or totally restricted in movement, like trying to run away but being
unable to move fast enough.
• Getting chased or kidnapped by people, animals, or creatures.
• Sexual adventures, including overt references to heterosexual or homosexual acts.
• Natural disasters such as earthquakes, tidal waves, tornadoes, floods and volcanoes.
• Technological disasters such as explosions, fire, terrorist acts, nuclear war, chemical
contamination, or plane crashes.
• Losing your teeth, often with the teeth seeming to crumble.
• Violent threats, attack or injuries to self or others.
• Rejection, abandonment, betrayal or humiliation.
• Driving or being in cars (also crashing a car, brakes locking, going out of control).
• Missing a bus, train or plane (arriving late or missing an appointment)
• Discovering new and unexpected rooms in houses or buildings
• Finding or losing money, wallet, purse or valuables.
• People appearing from your past (both living and dead).
• Returning to a childhood or previous home, school or setting from childhood.
• Pregnancy and birth (seeing yourself or others pregnant or birthing).
• Meeting unknown or unfamiliar people, or finding yourself in unfamiliar settings.
The information-processing perspective suggests that dreams help us process information and fix it in memory. Some physiological theories propose that REM- induced regular brain stimulation helps develop and preserve neural pathways in the brain. The activation-synthesis explanation is that REM sleep triggers impulses in brain areas that process visual images, but not the visual cortex area, evoking visual images that our brain weaves into a story line. The brain-maturation/cognitive development perspective maintains that dreams repre- sent the dreamer’s level of development, knowledge, and understanding. Despite their differences, most theorists agree that REM sleep and its associated dreams serve an important function, as shown by the REM rebound that occurs following REM deprivation.
Activation-synthesis hypothesis - explanation that states that dreams are created by the higher centers of the cortex to explain the activation by the brain stem of cortical cells during REM sleep periods.
