Who Needs Sleep?

What is the importance of dreams? Even in the past they've had an effect on people. "For thousands of years, people believed that dreams originated from somewhere outside of us. They believed that the strange images encountered in dreams were either the result of our souls leaving our bodies during sleep or of visitations from gods delivering messages and prophecies" (Recio & London 6). This is even used in the Bible, some examples being in the Book of Judges, Gideon had a prophetic dream about defeating the Midianites, and in the Book of Matthew, the Archangel Gabriel visited both Mary and Joseph in a dream about Mary's pregnancy. It doesn't seem to relate that God sent messages through dreams in the Bible and that during the Middle Ages "in the West, the Roman Catholic Church relegated dreams to the realm of devils and demons" (Recio & London 8), but dreams have always been an enigma, and people tend to be scared of what they don't know, so they would claim that dreams were evil.

Nowadays, people generally see dreams as a bridge between the subconscious and conscious minds, and a lot of people like to try to interpret their dreams using dream dictionaries. Some dreams are extremely vivid and some are very frightening. Everyone dreams, and dreams have inspired various movies and books such as "Vanilla Sky" directed by Cameron Crowe, "An Insomniac's Nightmare" directed by Tess Nanavati, "The Wizard of Oz" which was based on L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and directed by Victor Fleming, "Dream Saga" written and illustrated by Megumi Tachikawa, and Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass."

According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, a dream is "a series of images, ideas, etc., occurring in certain stages of sleep" (217). However, modern science has proven that dreams can occur in both Rapid Eye-Movement and Non-Rapid Eye-Movement stages of sleep, and not just some stages (Recio & London 12).

"Sleep stages are defined in terms of brain wave patterns...beta waves, alpha waves, theta waves, and delta waves." Beta waves "are short and quick," and are emitted by our brains "when we are awake and alert." A little slower than beta, are alpha waves, which occur when we are relaxed "and become drowsy.... During this relaxed state, we may experience visual images such as flashes of colour or sensations such as feeling as if we are falling. This stage is followed by five distinct stages of sleep" (Rathus 108).

Stage one is about thirty to forty minutes long, and "is the stage of lightest sleep." Our brain waves turn from alpha to theta waves in this stage, and we may experience "brief...images that resemble vivid photographs" (Rathus 108).

After stage one, "we move into sleep stages two, three, and four." During stages three and four, our brains produce the slowest of the brain waves: Delta waves. During stage four, we are in a deep sleep, which means that stage four is the stage "during which someone would have the greatest difficulty waking us up" (Rathus 108).

Stages one, two, three, and four are called Non-Rapid Eye-Movement (NREM) sleep, "because our eyes do not move as much...." (Rathus 108) In "NREM sleep our brains are engaged in mental activity," but the "activity is generally more akin to thinking than to dreaming" (Recio & London 12), and dreaming with images is "typically less frequent and less memorable than REM dreams" (Wood, Wood, & Boyd 115).

"After perhaps a half hour of stage four," we begin to move backwards through the stages: Three, two, one.... Then we suddenly "breathe more irregularly, [our] blood pressure rises, and the heart beats faster. [Our] brain waves become similar to those of stage one..." This is the stage of sleep called Rapid Eye-Movement (REM) sleep. It is called this "because beneath our closed lids, our eyes are moving rapidly.... During a typical eight-hour night of sleep, most people go through these stages about five times..." (Rathus 108) and "the REM periods" increase "in duration throughout the night. On average, the first REM phase lasts about ten minutes; the final one, which ends when we wake up, usually lasts between twenty and forty minutes. The dreams we are most likely to remember occur during this last episode of REM sleep" (Recio & London 12), though dreams from previous stages may be remembered as well.¹

REM sleep is important. "Animals and people who are deprived of REM sleep learn more slowly than usual. They also forget more rapidly what they have learned (Adler, 1993b; Winson, 1992). Other research findings suggest that REM sleep may help brain development in infants and 'exercise' brain cells in adults (McCarley 1992)" (Rathus 109). Dreams and REM sleep are so important that "people with brain stem damage, which causes the cessation of REM sleep," start dreaming in NREM sleep the way they would in REM sleep (Recio & London 12).

Dreams are obviously important, whether people remember their dreams or not; a person that cannot dream goes crazy (Lindaland.com), such as an Italian family that suffered from fatal insomnia. Their insomnia was caused by genetic mutation and ran in the family through many generations. Most of the family members were admitted to a mental asylum in Venice, San Servolo where they eventually died from lack-of-sleep and dreaming. While they were alive, their minds would attempt to dream and they would end up in a half-dream state "miming" things such as "combing...hair" and "buttoning...
However, this does not explain why dreaming is important. Most people see dreaming as "the subconscious mind's way of communicating to you what is happening in your life, emotionally, socially, mentally, and physically" and that "the symbols in dreams all have meanings..." (Lindaland.com).

If dreams really are interpretable, then one must know oneself to interpret one's own dreams. There are many books and websites that will list symbols and their meanings, but not everybody's brain works the same, meaning that one symbol to one person could mean something completely different to another. For example, if two people have a dream about spiders, "one loves spiders and has them as pets" and "the other absolutely fears them;" since they both feel differently about spiders, their dreams would mean two different things (Lindaland.com). Also, if one were to look at several dream dictionaries, he or she'd notice the symbols have different meanings in each dream dictionary: Dreammoods.com says, "To see a spider in your dream, indicates that you are feeling like an outsider in some situation," while Recio & London's Dream Cards say, "spiders have come to symbolise creation, fate, and destiny," and sleeps.com says, "All spiders except tarantulas are omens of good luck."

The interpretation of dreams would not necessarily apply to lucid dreams. A lucid dream is "a dream state in which one is conscious enough to recognise that one is in the dream state and which stays in one's memory" (Dictionary.com). Basically, one could lucid dream by just knowing that he or she is dreaming. Interpretation could apply here, because the dreamer is not exerting any control over the dream. When one is lucid dreaming, he or she can take control of his or her dream, and if the person takes control of the dream, the symbolism has most likely dissipated, because the conscious mind is over-throwing the subconscious mind.

If lucid dreaming does not help a person through symbolism, what purpose does it serve? When one lucid dreams, he or she can do whatever it is that he or she desires or would not normally do, much like daydreaming save more realistic. This gives the dreamer wish-fulfilment, making him or her more apt to be happy in the waking world. With enough control, a person can experience anything in a lucid dream: Freedoms that people cannot experience when they are awake, such as breathing under water and flying. Another benefit of lucid dreaming is that the dreamer can completely let go. The dreamer doesn't have to worry about hurting others or him- or herself, because the dreamer knows that it is just a dream. The dreamer can do whatever he or she desires at that very moment.²

Another aspect of lucid dreaming that is important is learning. In a lucid dream, people can attempt to do things that they would not have done in reality, or they could put themselves in situations that they could not necessarily encounter in reality. By doing this, the person can experience what it would be like to be in such a situation, come up with a solution without hurting anybody in reality, and feel what they would normally feel, because even though the dream is just in a person's mind, what he or she feels in the dream is actually real. "Most of the events we experience in dreams are real; when we experience feelings, say, anxiety or ecstasy, in dreams, we really do feel anxious or ecstatic at the time" (LaBerge).

A nightmare is an excessively unpleasant dream. What a nightmare consists of depends on the person that is dreaming. "The dreamer may feel any number of disturbing emotions in a nightmare, such as anger, guilt, sadness or depression, but the most common feelings are fear and anxiety.... Probably the most common theme is being chased. Adults are commonly chased by an unknown male figure whereas children are commonly chased by an animal or some fantasy figure" (ASDreams.org).

Nightmares can be caused by a number of things. Some examples are drugs, withdrawal, illness, traumatic experiences, and stress. But "some people experience frequent nightmares that seem unrelated to their waking lives. These people tend to be more creative, sensitive, trusting and emotional than average" (ASDreams.org) and "they are [generally] unusually open with others and can be emotionally vulnerable. Levin has also found nightmare sufferers to be more inward looking than the average person and prone to vivid fantasies. Their thoughts and daydreams are often negative, according to his new study, published in the journal Imagination, Cognition and Personality. 'These people often have depressive background thoughts, but they don't know it,' Ross Levin says" (Cognews.com).

Nightmares in young children are normal, but having nightmares as an adult happens less (ASDreams.org) and should have the adult questioning why he or she is having a nightmare. Many parents have nightmares involving their children, which stems from stress that their children will make bad choices or that bad things will happen to their children.³ "Nightmares can also signify deeply rooted psychological problems. Individuals who have been abused as children will suppress memories at the time of the abuse only to dream of them years later" (Dreamsnightmares.com). If nightmares are less common, but suddenly spring up, the dreamer is most likely under-going excessive stress from outside forces such as school, work, or family (ASDreams.org).

Despite their frightening nature, nightmares are there for the same reason as other dreams. "Nightmares which repeat a traumatic event reflect a normal psychic healing process, and will diminish in frequency and intensity if recovery is progressing.... With practice, the dreamer can often learn to decode the visual and symbolic language of the dream and to see relationships between the dream and waking life" (ASDreams.org). If nightmares are of past events, "it is usually an indicator that their [the dreamer's] conscious mind is getting ready to remember it [the traumatic experience]" (Dreamsnightmares.com).

Ignoring nightmares will make them reoccur again and again. "Many people are not really disturbed by their nightmares, even though the experiences themselves are distressing. Research has shown that about half of people who have quite frequent nightmares regard them as fascinating and creative acts of their minds, and either view them as very interesting or dismiss them as 'just dreams.' This illustrates the fact that one's attitude toward nightmares is quite important" (ASDreams.org).

We dream to help ourselves. Without dreams we'd go crazy. If we pay attention to our dreams we can solve things we thought unsolvable; we can experience things we thought inexperiencable. We can learn about ourselves, and we can take control of ourselves, not letting fear and anxiety take over. In our dreams we can do great things, and if we listen to that, we will do great things.

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Works Cited

ASDreams.org: http://www.asdreams.org/nightma.htm. Viewed 2 April 2007.

Cognews.com: http://cognews.com/1062826566/index_html. Viewed 2 April 2007.

Dictionary.com: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lucid%20dream. Viewed 2 April 2007.

Dreammoods.com: http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/s3.htm. Viewed 2 April 2007.

Dreamsnightmares.com: http://dreamsnightmares.com/. Viewed 2 April 2007.

LaBerge Stephen, Ph.D. Lucid Dreaming: Psychophysiological Studiesof Consciousness during REM Sleep. Viewed 18 April 2007.

Lindaland.com: http://www.lindaland.com/positivebook/page15.htm; http://www.lindaland.com/positivebook/page16.htm. Viewed 2 April 2007.

Morris William. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. New College Ed. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976.

Murphy Dennis. Dateline NBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6822468/?GT1=6190. Last update: 10:00 p.m. ET 14 January 2005. Viewed 2 April 2007.

Rathus Spencer A. Psychology: Principles in Practice. HOLT, RINEHART and WINSTON, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1998.

Recio Belinda & London Eileen. The Art of Dream Interpretation: A Guide to Using the Dream Symbol Cards. First edition, third printing, 2002.

Sleeps.com: http://www.sleeps.com/dictionary/sss.html. Viewed 2 April 2007.

Wood Samuel E., Wood Ellen Green, & Boyd Denise. Mastering the World of Psychology, 2nd edition. Pearson Education Inc. 2006.

Notes

¹ In the past, I have remembered more than one dream, usually two or three dreams, upon waking, but I have experienced four to five before. Others have also informed me that they have remembered more than one dream upon waking as well.

² In my most controlled lucid dream, I just did whatever came to mind; I didn't have to think twice about what I was about to do. In fact, I started doing most things almost before I thought about doing them.

³ I'm often told nightmares by parents where their children are harmed (e.g. getting hit by a car) or make bad choices (e.g. doing drugs, getting pregnant). I've also been told dreams where the parent cannot help their child and the child will not listen (e.g. child is in the road, parent cannot move but continues to yell to the child to get out of the road, but the child will not listen; child gets hit by car).