(C)1995 Lee Kent Hempfling All Rights Reserved It's the aboriginal Australian mythology of creation. Dreamtime. A time when things happen that are not understood. A time when things that are not understood must hold some meaning and therefore must explain but remain forever unexplainable. It's the Freudian Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1899 that established modern consideration of things that are not explainable as explaining things that are. Without ever possessing the knowledge of what a dream actually is Sigmond Freud determined why they exist. What they do. And how to cause them to be read to explain things that are unexplainable. . Most importantly his work still lives. Perhaps it does in order for us as we evaluate dreams to have something by which to make our comparisons? Perhaps it does in order for us to establish what facts are not. Perhaps it does because as man evolved he left behind the most important knowledge of all. . Dreams have been a puzzle. Ever since man first woke up from a place he never went to, a time he never existed in or a condition he never experienced dreams have held mystery. Ever since man first told another man about his dreams there have been those who would interpret. Used to be such interpretation was based upon that mystery but as man evolved man learned that mystery is not insurmountable. Knowledge leads to understanding. Facts lend credibility to theory or destroy it. . Dreams were considered prophetic events. Any dream was potential soothsaying. The gods visited us in our dreams. A point made by Homer with Agamemnon being visited' by Zeus in the Illiad'. To this day the older a culture the more dependence there is on the potential meaning and interpretation of a dream. Dreams still hold that mysterious aspect to even the most understood chemical actions as a dream is but is not an event. . How could early man or older cultures accept something that was felt to have happened but was not in fact physically experienced? The dream became what it is itself to be. An illusion. . But like everything else in existence even an illusion has a cause. The lack of knowing that there is a cause left the French writer Michel de Montaigne with this thought, "Dreams are the true interpreters of our inclinations, but art is required to sort them out." Misinterpretation at it's deepest level. SLEEPING Before we can examine what a dream actually is we have to agree on a few basic terms. Sleep is one of them. In order to have a dream (we will examine daydreaming later in this paper) we assume the subject to be sleeping. We know what sleeping looks like. We know what it does to us. We know how it sounds if we live with a snorer. We know that the act of sleep seems to result in a few things we can experience. Rest is one. Strength returning to a wearied body is another. Clearer thoughts is one. Dreams are in there too. . But what exactly is sleep? We know that the amount of sleep seems to vary with age. Infants can sleep 16 hours or so a day in naps. As a person gets older their nine to 12 hour sleep pattern in naps and overnight periods normal in a 2 year old falls to single sleep sessions of far less time with adults averaging seven and a half hours at a stretch. And it has been observed that the older one is the more chance there is of the person reverting to naps and returning to the sleep cycles of their youth. But is that what sleep is? No. That's how long sleep takes. . Sleep is recharging. The connection the brain uses to it's power source is given a rest. That results in the first memory (or long term memory) moving very slowy. To that is compared the second memory in the subconscious comparator and it's result, slowing as the sleeper gets deeper and deeper into sleep is compared with the third memory and the result is a dream that may not make sense. It is the reflection of reality from numerous previous comparisons without the benefit of regulated and relative to reality input. While this goes on the power source is recharged and ready to tackle another long period of inputs. . In "Physiology of dreaming" as published by Comptons Encyclopedia dreaming is discussed as: The state of the body during sleep continues to be carefully studied. In 1953 it was discovered that while dreaming an individual experiences a burst of rapid eye movements (REM), active brain waves, and an increased rate of breathing. In newborn infants this dream state takes up about 50 percent of the sleep period. This declines until about age 10 and stabilizes at 25 percent through young adulthood to age 60. After that there is a slight decline among the elderly.' . Do you notice a correlation in that description? The length of dream periods decreases until the recharge periods reach a portion of sleep time equal to the necessity of recharge. Then as the subject ages the need for further recharge increases and dreams decline again. . Compton's goes on: Dream states have been observed in many mammals, including dogs, monkeys, elephants, rats, and opossums. Surgical studies of mammal brains indicate that the dream state involves an area within the brain stem known as the pontine tegmentum. Dreaming itself seems to be associated with a hormone called norepinephrine, or noradrenaline (See Hormones). The order and length of dreaming and nondreaming periods during sleep appear to be regular, and there seem to be associations between these patterns and the emotional state of the individual before going to sleep.' . The point to keep watch on is "seems to be associated with". This reference has a habit in science of becoming "caused by". The first is indicative of relationship the latter indicative of cause. When a clear cause is not indicated by observation the most likely candidate gets the job. That being the one most observed as therefore most logical. The chemical process itself is the tool whereby the process is carried out it is not the process. . Keep in mind as well the reference to "seems to be associations between patterns and the emotional state". This is indicative of comparison based solely in observation. And results oft times in error of judgements as not all that is observable is the cause nor basis of the observation. (Look at any ice berg.) . Sigmund Freud is responsible for modern thought regarding dreams: Freud gained additional insights into the workings of the unconscious through the study of his own dreams and those of patients. For Freud, the dream was the "life of the mind while asleep." In his dream work, Freud was able to discover and interpret unacceptable ideas expressed in the dreams of his patients while the patients were consciously unaware of them. In this sense, dreams were similar to hysterical symptoms. In Freudian psychoanalysis the manifest dream--the dream remembered by the patient--is interpreted through a procedure known as free association, or saying the first thing that comes to mind without censorship. Free association allows the analyst to uncover the latent or real meaning of the dream. Freud's dream work confirmed the power of unconscious thoughts, a theory that he and Josef Breuer had previously uncovered in studies of hysterics under hypnosis.' . Freud's interpretations of dreams has led science in it's quest to understand them and just like the building set upon sand with hollow footings it can not stand up to the pressure of anything remotely reflecting the heat of the truth. . What was unacceptable and not consciously aware by the patient was not ever intended to be acceptable. It was a dream. Dreams are comparisons with comparisons without the benefit of the control and logic of the stability of the input. The result will be nothing like the input. So therefore nothing like the perception of another person's input. The manifest dream, the one remembered by the patient, is remembered by the patient as it is connected in the patient's third memory when the patient begins to send input from awake sensors. The patient wakes up. Dreams normally stay with a subject for a very short while as the third memory clears but there are those that stay for quite a while. Those are dreams that are themselves based upon previous connections to previous dreams the patient was not and never will be aware of. Until that moment sometime down the road when all of a sudden the patient declares, I've been here before' or I've done this before'. Deju-Vu. . That is when a reality based input compares to a substantially reinforced dream comparison . Dreams to the brain are nothing different than actual reality events so the comparison seems real. It is based on previous comparisons and will result in the most unusual feelings but is nothing more than the brain at work when it's supposed to be at rest meeting the brain at work and joining for a bit of confusion. Human Sleep Patterns According to Comptons: Studies of sleeping subjects, in which the electrical activity of the subjects' brains was monitored by an electroencephalogram (EEG) have shown that sleep periods are made up of two types of sleep. One type is called rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. During this type of sleep, the sleeper's eyes move rapidly back and forth beneath the closed eyelids. REM sleep is closely related to wakefulness--there is considerable physiological activity, body movement, and twitching. It was once thought that dreams occurred only in REM sleep, and that the sleeper's movements represented the acting out of these dreams.' . Non-REM, or NREM, sleep is of a different quality. It consists of four stages measurable by an EEG. Stage 1 is a kind of twilight between wakefulness and sleep. The pulse and respiration become more even, and the muscles relax.' It is during this period that the patient begins to shut down the input receptors based upon the need to recharge. . In Stage 2, breathing and heart rate slow. It is the continuing slowing of input and converting of power consumption to recharging. . As Stage 3 is reached, breathing and heart rate continue to slow and blood pressure and body temperature fall.' The process is about complete. . Stage 4 brings the deepest sleep. The muscles are completely relaxed, and the sleeper moves very little and is awakened only with difficulty. This stage is the deep, restorative, quiet sleep associated with "a good night's rest." Sleepwalking and sleep talking occur primarily in NREM sleep, and it is now known that dreams also occur during NREM sleep.' The process of recharging begins and continues until it reaches a point where it may cause the return of partial inputs. . During the night, the stages of sleep progress in cycles and by steps. Sleep begins with a gradual progression through NREM Stages 1, 2, 3, and 4,and then backward to Stage 1. This period lasts for about 70 to 90 minutes. The sleeper then progresses to REM sleep, which may last about five to 15 minutes. This pattern of NREM-REM cycles recurs throughout the night. In general, the cycles last for roughly the same amount of time each time the cycle repeats. It has been found, though, that REM sleep time tends to lengthen as the night progresses, averaging 20 to 25 percent of total sleep time.' . One frightening listing in Compton's is the definition of dreams: DREAMS. During sleep the mind often seems to contain a stage on which unfolds a story or sequence of events. These episodes are what are most commonly called dreams. They are illusions or hallucinations of real experiences. What type of reality they express is difficult to decipher.' They are indeed illusions without being illusions as they are comparisons of real events mixed with real events that otherwise would never have been mixed. It is in that process that living creatures make connections that otherwise are not obtainable. We just don't remember' why something makes sense. We consider it to be all awake observations. But we can not control looking over once again or many times what we say and experienced in the 18 hours or so before we went to sleep with more emphasis being put on events taking place closer to dreamtime. . Sigmund Freud asserted that the feelings and wishes that are repressed in wakeful thought, particularly those associated with sex and hostility, are released in dreams. And psychoanalysis has given it's patient's guilt over it ever since. It is not true. There is no release of repressed memories in sleep anymore than there is release of repressed memory while awake. It takes the absence of values to repress memory. Dreams only pull up values. . It is perhaps best to agree with the French writer Michel deMontaigne that "Dreams are the true interpreters of our inclinations..." But logic and knowledge must disagree that " ... art is required to sort them out."
