In this journal, Allan Hobson defines dreaming as “Mental activity occurring in sleep characterised by vivid sensorimotor imagery that is experienced as waking reality”. He also goes on to highlight features that are consistent in dreams such as: hallucinatory perceptions, rapidly changing imagery, delusions which seem real, self reflection and intensified emotions.
Dreams are thought to be linked to problem solving however, philosopher Antti Revonsuo states that the evidence behind this is scarce. He goes on to say that if dreaming did have any impact it must have been effective in the ‘evolutionary context’. Revonsuo touched upon a study done by Barrett in 1993. The subjects were allowed to choose a problem that they had to try and solve in their dreams. The results showed that “problems of a personal nature were much more likely to find a solution through dreaming than problems of an academic or intellectual nature. The personal problems, however, lacked definitive criteria for what should count as a solution, raising the suspicion that at least some of the alleged solutions may have been attributed to the dream during retrospective reflection required during the reporting rather than having been arrived at within the dream itself.” We are also told about another study by Kramer (1993) in which it was shown that having more characters in dreams leads to increased hapiness during the waking period. He also concludes that nightmares are an unsuccessful attempt at solving our emotional problems.
Revonsuo explains that dreams deal with our emotions and emotional concerns by making pictorial metaphors of them. By doing this we are ‘making connections in a safe place’. He goes on to talk about a study conducted by Punamaki in 1997. This study showed that traumatised children have better dream recall than non-traumatised ones. She linked frequent dream recall with depressive symtpoms and infrequent dream recall with somatic and anxiety symptoms.
“When we live under constant emotional stress or have recently experienced trauma, our dream consciousness typically makes us suffer from intensive nightmares that constantly remind us of the trauma by reactivating powerful negative feelings and other elements from the trauma “
Revonsuo delves into different types of dreams. He states that emotions experienced in dreams are much more likely to be negative than positive. He also states that misfortune dreams ‘reflect situations in which the physical well-being or the resources and goals of the dream-self are threatened’. It is said that dreamers are involved in 80 percent of the aggressions in their dreams and when they are they are usually the victim.
We are told that childrens dreams show strong biases toward simulating a world that contains wild animals, aggression and conflicts. These biases decrease as the child gets older. We are also told that recurrent dreamers reported more problems in their lives than those who do not have recurrent dreams.
Many people claim to not dream about writing or reading; this is explained by the fact that these functions were ‘cultural latecomers’ that had to be hammered into our ‘evolved cognitive architecture’.
Pace-Schott, E. F., Solms, M., Blagrove, M. and Harnad, S. (eds.) (2003) Sleep and Dreaming: Scientific Advances and Reconsiderations, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Ayanfe III 