Why We Dream and the Meaning behind the Dreams

Why We Dream and the Meaning behind the Dreams

Abstract

Dreams are always considering life reflecting scenarios by many psychologists. Dreams differ from one person to another. This paper will evaluate the reasons as to why we dream and the meaning behind these dreams. The framework of this research follows the methods of quantitative methods. In this regard, the research was conducted during the annual world dream day in Washington DC on 25th September 2017. A total of fifty participants were randomly selected both males and females, adults and children. The major research methods used were questionnaires and surveys as well as interviews. The paper starts by introducing the background information of dreams, their origins, and the researcher’s views before settling on the research problem which is the thesis. The literature review for this research was carefully and well-manipulated to fit the research problem. It outlines the different relevant sources giving the similar if not the same opinion of this research.

The research methods included condensing the responses from the questionnaires into the scales of responses about the dreams. The scales range from A1 to A4 where A1 represents good comments about the dream to A4 horrific dreams. As the research is executed, it was necessary to review the three parts of the human mind according to Freud which includes the Id, Ego, and Superego. From this approach, a psychologist can gauge how the human mind contributes to the dreams. Various authors give various reasons for dreams. Under normal circumstances, it becomes difficult to consolidate these reasons across all the ages, races and cultures. This rationale is what constitutes this research framework.    

Introduction

There are many theories why people dream, and this is one of the facts prompting the execution if this research. According to many psychologists, no one can attribute certain reasons to the dreams they have in their nights or daytime during deep sleep. Nevertheless, they owe certain aspects of the dreams to certain life occurrences (Turner, 1999). Some researchers also assert that just mere nonsensical activities of a sleeping brain hence owe no prime purpose or meaning. There are no succinct proofs of certain meanings behind dreams. Each person relates his or her dream to the life encounters, perhaps of that particular day or the whole life experiences. Researchers, however, disregard these attributes saying that dreams have no connections to the real-life situation. Such ideas have led to standstill ideologies when it comes to evaluating the reasons and the meaning of dreams thus the following thesis for research. Dreams are always attributed to certain aspects of the real-life situation.                

Literature Review

Several psychoanalysts have tried to come up with the actual reasons why people dream. Nevertheless, this has proven a point at stake. Some articles and journals have been published to help many patients overcome mental problems associated with dreams using the psychoanalysis approach. Authors like Sigmund Freud consider dreams as a mental activity which is meant to fulfill certain functions in the real-life situation. According to articles from the secondary sources, when one falls asleep, the minds begin to disconnect from the real external world environment but remains in the instinctual state. The minds will work as a protector in such cases, protecting the brain form disturbances by satisfying unconscious desires emanating from the dreams. The dream is the unconscious content which becomes conscious upon the distortion of the content.

The human mind is separated into three parts according to the modern psychologists and philosophers. These include the effective mind, the conative and the cognitive mind. Feud structures the mind complements the Id, Ego and the Superego (Freud, 2013). The Id plays the role of unconsciousness. The Id is usually satisfied by the dreams without any troubles. The Id ‘will thus continuously seek to satisfy the impulses resulting from the instincts. The ego, on the other hand, deals with the realities of life and the social appropriateness to satisfy the demises of the Id. The superego holds on to the standards and moralities acquired from the society and parents in particular.

Research Methods

This particular research follows a quantitative approach and objective measurements. The research was conducted with the keenness of obtaining unbiased information form the feedbacks. The main methods deployed in this research included interviews. I conducted interviews with a selected sample of individuals who had dreams in the previous nights. In these samples, there were a total of twenty adults. Among them, ten were females and males in a ratio of 1:1. Moreover, thirty children were selected at random across the cities. Here there were fourteen girls and sixteen boys. It is worth noting that gathering such people only for the research is not enough. The research thus targeted the world dream day event in Washington DC on 25th September 2017. The selection was random with regards to the geographical locations, but gender balancing was key. Thus, the sampling techniques were exhaustively applied during this research.

Additionally, a total of fifty questionnaires were distributed to ten families both in the suburbs and the urban areas of the United States. The questionnaires had both closed and open-ended questions to allow the respondents elaborate on their points about the dreams they had the previous nights. Again, the respondents targeted in the questionnaire are the ones who at least in the past two days had a dream. It must be noted that certain individuals do not keep the dream memories for quite long and this explains why I went for the respondents who at least had a dream in the last two nights or one. The questionnaires were structured in such a way that the questions were specific to the reason behind dreams and their related meanings. The other data used I this research were obtained from the pre-existing data mainly using the computational techniques.

The design of this research would follow the methods as mentioned above of data collection techniques. However, the research methods did not consider to factor in the persons with the disability during the data collection. The respondents selected, however, were free form any mental disorders. As such, this assured me of the reliability of the results and verifiability. The variables, in this case, are the dreams as it applies to various respondents and the length of the dreams. Since some respondents might have shied-off, the design was made in such a way that the females were grouped separately from males gender. Certain dreams are gender alienated, and some respondents might have felt it is impossible to share them. Their responses for the reason they dreamt were recorded in the scale of remarks labeled A1, A2, A3, and A4. The A1 represented good remarks about the dream, A2, bad or hungry thoughts about the dream, A3, critical remarks and A4 horrible dreams. The respondents were selected from across all the cultures in the United States. There were a total of twenty-four females and twenty-six males totaling to fifty respondents. The adults were of ages between 20-65 years while children were between 8-16 years.

Findings

Out of the total female adults interviewed, seven of them attributed their previous dreams to the occurrences of that particular day. Five females precisely mentioned their struggles through life as the major contributing factor to their dreams. Twenty respondent from the females group dreamt of funny occurrences, and the replication in the real-life situation was a similar occurrence. As such, this represented 83.333% of the females, but it represents 48% of the total sample population. While only two of the female (8.33% females, 4% total population) respondents had dreams which did reflect anything on their previous life. Nevertheless, these respondents hold a belief that one time, such occurrences will come to pass at a time when they shall have forgotten about the dreams. The respondents, however, indicate that even though those dreams owe nothing to the previous life experiences, they, however, will come to pass one day. They were strongly convicted that dreams influence a person’s endeavors.

On the side of the males, twenty dreams form each of the twenty males reflected on what occurred to them after the dreams. This proportion represented 76.9% of the total males and 40% of the total population of respondents. From the sample of the children, it was noticed that they fancy dreams a lot. However, a few of them feared to dream since thy attribute dreams to scary occurrences which at times get them off their beds. In such cases, they cite horror dreams as the major factor as to why they hate dreams. They believe that dreaming the horror dreams would mean some devil is chasing after them and deprive them of their life fans. According to the responses from the questionnaires, the A1 recorded a total of seven respondents, A2 nine respondents, A3 sixteen and A4, eighteen respondents. The scales were plotted in the data analysis graphing tools and the following results obtained. 75% of the respondents in the questionnaire said that dreams are good for their health. Among the 75%, twenty respondents assert that nights without dreams are full of depressions, difficulty in concentration and unwarranted weight gain. They were citing the tendencies to hallucinate, increased tension and lack of coordination the following day after waking up.

Discussions

Reasons for Dreaming

Different kinds of dreams have different meanings and different reasons for dreaming. One of the reasons why people dream is spiritual. Since dreams are a prediction of things that occur in the life of a dreamer, they are greatly attributed to spiritual aspects of a person. Some of these dreams are spiritual in the sense that they act as a warning to the dreamer and hence calls for mitigation approaches which prayers are fundamental (Krippner, 2009). Dreams act as predictions of the life predicaments while other drams may just be predicting what might occur in the future. From the samples interviewed and those who filled the questionnaires, we could see clearly that dreams of the highest percentage of the respondents, in turn, reflected on their future life.

Psychology conforms to the fact that people connected to the deities experience warning dreams from those deities. This fact, however, cannot be proven from this research but can be closely attributed to the large number of respondents who occasionally experience horror dreams from the scale of respondents above. From the findings, it is therefore evident that the reason people is to eliminate unnecessary tensions, eliminate anxieties, increase the level of concentration and consequently good coordination practices in daily activities. Psychological experts asserted that dreams help solve many life problems, process emotions.

Dreams are always as a result of chronological processes which relates to a person’s situation or a certain subject matter. Indeed, dreams do not just evolve from nothing but these situations. People usually dream of things they have constantly been thinking about. In a deep sense, most psychologists define a dream as an extension of the daily thoughts attributed to certain things. Many psychologists are backing this assertion (Turner, 1999). In fact, most people always receive the images of their dreams and the things and matters they have been trying to solve in life. Due to daily life occurrences, one can be able to build an image in his or her mind and eventually, that will constitute the dream of that day. The suction to these problems at times may present itself during the dream, and the dreamer will have to recall what exactly the solutions in the dream to arrive at the desired real-life solution.

Conclusion

In conclusion, dreams are among the most mysterious human experiences. Several researchers including this particular one have tried to illustrate the reasons behind the dreams. Nevertheless, as mentioned before, such reasons always vary per person. Therefore, it quite hectic to come up with solid ideas which will apply to all the population. Children are the most vulnerable to dreams. Perhaps this will form the basis of another research since the reason behind it is not covered in this research. Dreams may be numerous in a single sleep but memories of our dreams are often incomplete and at times fleeting (Hall, 1923). A person may wake in sharp and vivid recollection of dreams only to lose their memories in a single second or minutes. Much of the dreams thus go unrecorded and consequently, unremembered. The topic of thematic experiences in dreams to some extent has proven to be rocket science for many psychologists and scientists. However, I cling to that fact most of the psychologists, philosophers, and scientists argue that dreams are usually attributed to personal life experiences.

Appendix

The scale of Dreams as per the respondent comments.

References

Domhoff, G. W. (2013). Finding meaning in dreams: A quantitative approach. Springer Science   & Business Media.

Freud, S. (2013). The interpretation of dreams. Read Books Ltd.

Hall, R. (1923). [Review of Conflict and Dream and Psychology and Politics]. Psychological       Bulletin,20(12), 707-713.

Krippner, S., Joffe-Ellis, Debbie, & ProQuest. (2009). Perchance to dream: The frontiers of dream             psychology(Psychology research progress series). New York: Nova Science.

Turner, J., & ProQuest. (1999). Human psychology as seen through the dream (International         library of psychology. General psychology; 34). London: Routledge.