Are Dreams Messages from Our Subconscious Mind or Insignificant Manifestations? One of the most mysterious and intriguing functions of the brain is the process which takes place every night while we sleep, the process is called dreaming. Psychologists and similar professionals have theorized on the purpose of dreams for years, but no conclusion has been reached so far. While currently there is no single theory that can be purported as the ultimate explanation of why we dream, looking at and analyzing a combination of these ideas can provide us with some insight as to why it happens and allow individuals to draw their own conclusions on what meaning they are willing to assign to their dreams. Dreams are not meaningless, but because of our
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As Szegedy-Maszak says of how Freud might have analyzed the bizarre dream of a child who told of a rhinoceros being found in her home; “To Freud, had he met her, Madeline 's rhinoceros horn would almost certainly have symbolized a penis, and the animal 's violence would have been an expression of normal but threatening sexual feelings toward her brother--or perhaps of a fear of men in general. Freud saw dreams as deeply buried wishes disguised by symbols, a way to gratify desires unacceptable to the conscious mind” (Szegedy-Maszak 2). Szegedy-Maszak tells us that according to Freud nothing in a dream is without meaning, every aspect of the dream represented something that the person felt or wanted regardless of whether or not their conscious mind was aware of the desire. This was over time disproven by the large scale analysis of dreams. Generally speaking, while they do reflect to some degree our views of ourselves and the world, all facets of a dream are not really a direct reflection of a distasteful desire of the …show more content…
This allowed for researchers to finally be able to establish a concrete connection between the processes occurring in the brain and what was happening in the dream, “Brain scans performed on people in REM sleep, for example, have shown that even as certain brain centers turn on…one vital area goes absolutely dormant: the systematic and clear-thinking prefrontal cortex, where caution and organization reside” (Szegedy-Maszak 3). It can be concluded from this information that dreams are the product of the brain shutting down the safeguards preventing the rapid, uncontrollable association of ideas resulting in the surreal narratives we experience in dreams. However, deeper thought on the theory reveals that this can’t be the whole story; the thoughts come from our experiences and have some bearing on how we as individuals feel about our world and the situations we face in our waking lives. Ultimately, with many viable ideas on the meaning of dreams, if there is any, to identify a single theory as the indisputable reason why we dream would be impossible at this stage in our understanding of this deeply complex phenomenon. There is not a clear answer to the question of why it is that humans dream. Rather, there is a collection of thoughts and possibilities that contain some elements of truth
As Szegedy-Maszak says of how Freud might have analyzed the bizarre dream of a child who told of a rhinoceros being found in her home; “To Freud, had he met her, Madeline 's rhinoceros horn would almost certainly have symbolized a penis, and the animal 's violence would have been an expression of normal but threatening sexual feelings toward her brother--or perhaps of a fear of men in general. Freud saw dreams as deeply buried wishes disguised by symbols, a way to gratify desires unacceptable to the conscious mind” (Szegedy-Maszak 2). Szegedy-Maszak tells us that according to Freud nothing in a dream is without meaning, every aspect of the dream represented something that the person felt or wanted regardless of whether or not their conscious mind was aware of the desire. This was over time disproven by the large scale analysis of dreams. Generally speaking, while they do reflect to some degree our views of ourselves and the world, all facets of a dream are not really a direct reflection of a distasteful desire of the …show more content…
This allowed for researchers to finally be able to establish a concrete connection between the processes occurring in the brain and what was happening in the dream, “Brain scans performed on people in REM sleep, for example, have shown that even as certain brain centers turn on…one vital area goes absolutely dormant: the systematic and clear-thinking prefrontal cortex, where caution and organization reside” (Szegedy-Maszak 3). It can be concluded from this information that dreams are the product of the brain shutting down the safeguards preventing the rapid, uncontrollable association of ideas resulting in the surreal narratives we experience in dreams. However, deeper thought on the theory reveals that this can’t be the whole story; the thoughts come from our experiences and have some bearing on how we as individuals feel about our world and the situations we face in our waking lives. Ultimately, with many viable ideas on the meaning of dreams, if there is any, to identify a single theory as the indisputable reason why we dream would be impossible at this stage in our understanding of this deeply complex phenomenon. There is not a clear answer to the question of why it is that humans dream. Rather, there is a collection of thoughts and possibilities that contain some elements of truth