Have you ever thought about where dreams come from?
We have all been there in the middle of the night, where a dream seems so real that you wake up thinking you have actually experienced it. Some people think dreams happen because we are recalling events that occurred earlier in the day, or maybe because we are able to have visions from the future, but do we really know their main origin?
Aristotle once defined dreams as a perceptionless state where our senses of our outside stimulus are shut off. (http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/dreams.html). According to (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dream), dreams are “Successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur usually involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep” …show more content…
(http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v10/n11/abs/nrn2716.html). People are most likely to have three to five dreams per night, some of them can also have up to seven. Even though, most dreams are immediately forgotten, humans who are awakened during the REM phase are usually able to remember them. Since dream’s origin has been a mystery, many researchers have focused on studying it deeply. Some of them have found reliable theories. The strongest and most believable study about dream’s emergence is called “ The Activation Synthesis Theory”.
The Activation Synthesis Theory is a reliable theory because it is based on the brain function. According to Diccionary.com the meaning of brain is “ The part of the central nervous system enclosed in the cranium of humans and other vertebrates, consisting of a soft, convoluted mass of gray and white matter and serving to control and coordinate the mental and physical actions.” It was created by two psychiatrists called J. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley, who supported such study by demonstrating how dreams are caused by the physiological processes of the brain. According to Hobson and other …show more content…
On the contrary, “The Activation Synthesis Theory” is a Neurobiological Theory as I mentioned before. They difference from each other because while Freud believed that dreams were related to the unconscious mind, Hobson and McCarley suggested that dreams were what happens when we try to make sense of brain activity during REM phase. Freud was the first to speculate the reason why people dreamed. He believed that “Our conscious experience was just a small part of what actually takes place in our minds. Much of what goes on is hidden in the unconscious mind. In the unconscious mind are all the unacceptable thoughts and impulses that our conscious mind cannot deal with. The contents of the unconscious are always trying to ‘break through’ into the conscious mind.” (http://www.psychlotron.org.uk/). In other words, Sigmund Freud´s theory starts with the concept of repression, “the rejection from consciousness of painful or disagreeable ideas, memories, feelings, or impulses” (Dictionary.com) that are our main threats. Furthermore, Freud believed that every action and thought was provoked by the unconscious at some level, and that everyone tends to repress their impulses and keep in their urges, which must be released in some way, throughout our dreams. Freud used his own studies to show evidence about his theory. On the following example, he showed how a person´s unconscious wishes can be
We have all been there in the middle of the night, where a dream seems so real that you wake up thinking you have actually experienced it. Some people think dreams happen because we are recalling events that occurred earlier in the day, or maybe because we are able to have visions from the future, but do we really know their main origin?
Aristotle once defined dreams as a perceptionless state where our senses of our outside stimulus are shut off. (http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/dreams.html). According to (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dream), dreams are “Successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur usually involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep” …show more content…
(http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v10/n11/abs/nrn2716.html). People are most likely to have three to five dreams per night, some of them can also have up to seven. Even though, most dreams are immediately forgotten, humans who are awakened during the REM phase are usually able to remember them. Since dream’s origin has been a mystery, many researchers have focused on studying it deeply. Some of them have found reliable theories. The strongest and most believable study about dream’s emergence is called “ The Activation Synthesis Theory”.
The Activation Synthesis Theory is a reliable theory because it is based on the brain function. According to Diccionary.com the meaning of brain is “ The part of the central nervous system enclosed in the cranium of humans and other vertebrates, consisting of a soft, convoluted mass of gray and white matter and serving to control and coordinate the mental and physical actions.” It was created by two psychiatrists called J. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley, who supported such study by demonstrating how dreams are caused by the physiological processes of the brain. According to Hobson and other …show more content…
On the contrary, “The Activation Synthesis Theory” is a Neurobiological Theory as I mentioned before. They difference from each other because while Freud believed that dreams were related to the unconscious mind, Hobson and McCarley suggested that dreams were what happens when we try to make sense of brain activity during REM phase. Freud was the first to speculate the reason why people dreamed. He believed that “Our conscious experience was just a small part of what actually takes place in our minds. Much of what goes on is hidden in the unconscious mind. In the unconscious mind are all the unacceptable thoughts and impulses that our conscious mind cannot deal with. The contents of the unconscious are always trying to ‘break through’ into the conscious mind.” (http://www.psychlotron.org.uk/). In other words, Sigmund Freud´s theory starts with the concept of repression, “the rejection from consciousness of painful or disagreeable ideas, memories, feelings, or impulses” (Dictionary.com) that are our main threats. Furthermore, Freud believed that every action and thought was provoked by the unconscious at some level, and that everyone tends to repress their impulses and keep in their urges, which must be released in some way, throughout our dreams. Freud used his own studies to show evidence about his theory. On the following example, he showed how a person´s unconscious wishes can be