During the pandemic, many of us took the opportunity to turn off our alarm clocks and wake naturally, allowing us to experience longer stretches of dream-rich sleep. This has led to a renewed interest in dreaming.

What is a dream?

A dream is a series of thoughts, images, or sensations that occur in the mind during sleep. Some people dream in color, while others recall them being in black and white. Dreams can range from being extraordinarily intense, exciting, and emotional, to very mundane. Some dreams are joyful, while others are frightening or sad. Sometimes they have a clear narrative, while others seem to make no sense at all.

Why do we dream?

Since ancient times, philosophers and scientists have questioned why we dream. Many, including esteemed psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, have written at length on the subject. But despite all the theories, we still don't have a solid explanation.

What we do know, is that just about all of us dream for a total of around two hours per night, whether we remember it or not. By using a diagnostic test known as a polysomnogram (PSG) which measures brain waves, blood oxygen levels, heart rate, skeletal muscle activity, breathing rate, and eye movement, two basic types of sleep have been identified; rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, and non-REM sleep, which has three different stages. 

Sleep studies show that we cycle through all stages of REM and non-REM sleep several times during a typical night, with increasingly longer, deeper REM periods occurring toward morning. And it’s during REM sleep, when our brain activity is high, but only our eyes and breathing muscles are active, that we experience our most vivid dreams. Non-REM dreams are far more simplistic; perhaps just an image or an idea. If REM-related dreams are a movie, non-REM dreams are more like a photograph.

Dream theories

The exact purpose of dreaming is still being examined, but several theories have developed during the past two centuries that suggest they may have an important role in helping us to expess our deepest desires, process emotions and stressful experiences, practice problem-solving, and consolidate our memories. Here are three popular hypotheses.

• Wish-Fulfillment: Sigmund Freud believed that dreams were often a form of wish-fulfillment, because in a dream, we can act out desires that we couldn’t fulfill in waking life. Some types of dreams though, proved problematic within this model, such as dreams involving punishment or traumatic events. These led Freud to believe that dreams sometimes served as a way for us to express guilt or conquer trauma. All of these assumptions played into Freud’s overall theory of dreams; that they represent our repressed and unconscious desires.

• Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis: Conceived by Harvard professors Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley in the 1970s, the Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis proposes that dreams are created by changes in neuron activity that activates the brainstem during REM sleep, allowing us to consolidate and process the information and memories that we’ve collected during the previous day. They determined that dreams are an accidental by-product of random responses to electrical activity during sleep, that are brought together in a meaningful way as we wake.

• Threat Simulation Theory: More recently, Finnish neuroscientist Antti Revonsuo found that during REM sleep, the amygdala (the fight-or-flight section of the brain) actually fires in similar ways as it does during a survival threat. According to his Threat Simulation Theory, our sleeping brains focus on the fight-or-flight mechanism to prepare us for life-threatening or emotionally intense scenarios. His model suggests that practicing or rehearsing these skills in our dreams gives us an evolutionary advantage so that we can better cope with, or avoid threatening scenarios in the real world, and this may explain why so many dreams contain scary, dramatic, or intense content.

Recalling dreams

It’s common not to be able to recall our dreams. As a rule, the electrical signals and chemical signatures that constitute the experience of the dream usually disappear as we wake. Unlike our lives while awake, dreams are not ‘real’ experiences but instead represent a processing phase, so our minds probably don’t mark many of them as worth remembering. Sometimes, elements of the dream may be recalled later in the day, perhaps triggered by an experience that reactivates the same area of the brain that created the dream overnight. And occasionally, a particularly memorable dream may leave an impression that endures for decades.

If you’re keen to try and improve your dream recall, consider keeping a pen and a notebook on the nightstand next to your bed to record dreams as soon as you wake, before they’ve had a chance to fade. The more you do this, the more you’ll recall.

Nightmares

Most of us will have had occasional nightmares; dreams in which we experience such fear and anxiety that we often wake ourselves up by shouting out, our heart racing, as we try to flee from whatever’s upsetting us. They’re common in children, but can happen at any age, and are usually nothing to worry about.

Emotion is a pivotal factor during sleep. Several studies have revealed that dreams are often accompanied by emotions, especially negative ones, and frequent and recurring nightmares are often the result of stress, anxiety, or a mental health disorder, in particular, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Current treatment often involves identifying the stressor, if there is one, and employing a form of cognitive behavioural therapy called image rehearsal therapy (IRT) in which sufferers are asked to recall and write down their nightmares, then to rewrite the nightmare and give it a positive ending. The individual then rehearses the rewritten version before going to sleep, with the aim of displacing the unwanted content when they next have the dream.

Lucid Dreaming

Lucid dreams are relatively rare dreams where the dreamer has awareness of being in their dream and often has some degree of control over its content, rather like directing themselves in their own personal movie. A strong link has been found between lucid dreaming and highly imaginative thinking and creative output. For this reason, many people covet lucid dreaming and seek to engage in it more often, employing a variety of methods that include cognitive training, external stimulation during sleep, and medications. While some of these methods have shown promise, they have yet to be rigorously tested.

Do our dreams have meaning? 

In 1899, Sigmund Freud published his groundbreaking text ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’, in which he proposed that dreams express the unfulfilled wishes of the dreamer’s daily life. More than a century later, and despite the fact that a number of his theories have been called into question, most people seem to embrace a Freudian outlook.

Like Freud, his contemporary Carl Jung thought dreams were rooted in the unconscious mind, and could help heal the dreamer if understood properly. He proposed that dreams reveal the ways we’ve fallen out of balance, and that every aspect of our dream represents something in our psyche. So, the dream is an effort to communicate with ourselves about the things holding us back from becoming a whole and fully developed individual.

Nowadays, the focus is on gaining personal insight from our dreams rather than on interpreting them and trying to uncover the ‘true’ meaning of the dream, because we still know so little about what dreams really are. ‘Co-creative dream theory’ focuses on the way we respond to a dream’s content, both when we’re within the dream, and also when we’re awake, and how we can use that information in our daily lives. The basic idea is that a dream’s meaning doesn’t come from the images in the dream. Instead, we create the meaning by analyzing how we respond to events in the dream.

However, research suggests that when interpreting our dreams, we’re more likely to view them in such a way as to confirm our waking beliefs and desires. In other words, we look for meanings that support our already existing beliefs about ourselves, the world, and the people around us. For example, we’re likely to attach more significance to a dream that presents people we love in a positive light, than one that shows them in a negative one.

For those who take their dreams seriously, there’s also the possibility that they may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A negative dream about failing to pass an upcoming exam could make an already stressful situation worse; exacerbating the dreamer’s stress and anxiety, and undermining their self-confidence so that they perform poorly.

Dream symbols and interpretations

Much has been written about the underlying meanings of themes and symbols in our dreams. Here are a few of the most common:

• Falling: A dream about falling from a height is a sign of having a fear in real life. It suggests that you might want to rethink a choice for instance, or consider a new direction in some area of your life. It may also mean that you need to let yourself go, and enjoy life more.

• Being naked in public: Dreaming of public nudity might indicate that you feel like a phony or that you’re afraid of revealing your true self. Perhaps you’ve got something to hide. If not, you might benefit from being more open and trusting with those around you.

• Being Chased: The key to understanding what such a dream might mean depends partly on the identity of who, or what, is chasing you. If your pursuer is a mysterious, unknown figure, it might represent a childhood experience or past trauma. Being chased by an animal might indicate that you’re hiding from your own anger, passions, and other feelings. If you’re being chased by someone of the opposite sex, it could mean that you’re afraid of love, or haunted by a past relationship.

• Losing Teeth: Dreaming about losing teeth is generally associated with stress. It might mean that you’re worried about your attractiveness or appearance, that you’re concerned about your ability to communicate due to a loss of personal power, or that you may have said something embarrassing, that you now regret.

• Dying: Dreaming about death can be particularly disconcerting, and might involve the death of a loved one, a stranger, or even of dying ourselves. Popular dream interpretations suggest that such dreams reflect anxiety about change, or a fear of the unknown, because we don’t know ‘what’s on the other side’.

• Taking a Test: By their nature, tests are stressful experiences in which we’re made to face up to our shortcomings. So to dream of failing an exam, being late for one, or being unprepared, suggests that we feel ill-equiped to cope with the challenges that face us in real life.

• Infidelity: Dreaming that you or your partner are being unfaithful indicates issues with trust, loyalty, and communication in a relationship, and that one of you isn't getting what you need from that relationship right now.

• Flying: Dreams about flying can mean two very different things. On the one hand, they may represent feelings of freedom and independence. On the other hand, they may indicate a desire to flee or escape from the realities of life.

• Pregnancy: Interpretations vary about dreams involving pregnancy. There are those that believe they represent a woman's fears of being an inadequate mother, whilst others suggest that the dreamer is developing some area of potential, or deepening a relationship.

Dreamwork

Dreamwork is a broad term used to describe the exploration and incorporation of dreams in psychotherapy. Early forms of dreamwork were Freud’s ‘free association’, and Jung’s ‘amplification’ methods. Modern dreamwork, however, breaks decisively from such psychoanalytical methods. Perhaps the most important distinction between them is that in modern dreamwork there’s an emphasis on the authority of the dreamer, whereas in psychoanalytical dream interpretation the psychoanalyst was the expert and thus had authority over the dream. A key principle of modern dreamwork is that the dreamer has the final say over their own dream.

Dream therapy

Anyone wanting to explore the meaning of their dreams can work with a therapist specialising in dream analysis techniques such as the Cognitive-Experiential model developed by Clara Hill (a professor in the US who is an authority on the subject), which integrates aspects from several existing dream theories to help clients explore their dreams, gain insight into their meaning, and take action to resolve issues in their waking life. Joining a ‘dream group’ is another option. Dream groups practice methods such as ‘dream appreciation’ and ‘listening to the dreamer’ in which members of the group discuss and react to each other’s dreams. Or you might prefer to explore your dreams by yourself. Thanks to advances in technology, it’s now much easier for us to monitor and interact with our dreams. Just as many of us use mobile apps to track our activities during the day, tools for dream tracking, analysis, self-reflection, and dream-sharing, are gaining mainstream traction.

At the end of the day

It’s important to enter the world of dream exploration knowing that you might uncover thoughts and emotions that you haven’t experienced before, and that some of them may be uncomfortable, so please practice dreamwork safely, with support in place.

If you’re in any way concerned about your dreams, or are having frequent nightmares, consider speaking to your doctor or consulting a sleep specialist.

Thank you for reading this blog post. If you have any thoughts to share, or ideas for future posts, please do let me know. I would love to hear from you.