Dream History

Dreaming can be described as a phenomenon that dates back in time to when human beings first evolved.  There are multiple definitions for dreaming as understood and believed from different cultures across the world. 

Ancient Egyptians believed dreams were messages from God and that dreams were a form of predicting the future.  They classified dreams into three categories the pious, revelatory, and informational.  Pious dreams involved messages from God asking for devotees to perform a particular act of devotion.  Revelatory dreams carried a prediction for the future and informational dreams carried some important and significant information. 

According to Greek mythology Hypnos was worshipped as the God of sleep and his son Morpheus was the God of dreams.  In the year 350 B.C. Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher for the first time defined dreams to be originating from within one Self.  With this people started to consider and understand the metaphysical nature of dreams.  Taking this theory forward, the father of modern medicine, Hippocrates started believing dreams to be a significant part of his diagnostic technique and claimed that it helped him analyze his patient’s better.

Several thousand years ago, holy Hindu scriptures called the Upanishads portrayed dreaming as a higher state of consciousness in comparison to the waking state.  The Upanishads described the cycle of consciousness to work in seven steps or stages; the waking/conscious stage, transition, dreaming/unconscious state, transition again, deep sleep/subconscious stage, samadhi/state of true yoga, and turiya/absolute consciousness.  The second stage of dreaming is considered to be higher and superior to the first stage of waking or conscious stage because the soul is freed from the physical body and is partially awake in the astral plane.

Ancient Chinese believed that the dreamer’s soul is responsible for the dreams and while dreaming the soul leaves the physical body to visit the land of the dead.  Dream temples were built and Chinese leaders were advised to visit these temples for guidance and wisdom to carry out their mission.

Throughout the West people believed that dreams were a direct communication from God and Christianity too referred to dreaming as a form of communicating with the divine.  The Bible has references to divine dreams and how people have interpreted these dreams.

Thousands of years later, the father of psychoanalysis, Sir Sigmund Freud defined dreaming as a psychological process that is based on personal experiences and unfulfilled desires that have a deep and insightful psychoanalytical meaning.  In the year 1900, Freud released his book, The Interpretation of Dreams, which describes dream analysis as “a royal road to the understanding of unconscious mental processes.”  According to Freud, dreams were a means by which the unconscious mind was trying to fulfill the unfulfilled desires of the conscious mind.  Freud stated that there are no chance happenings and in order to inhabit the human society we suppress and repress our emotions and impulses, and once repressed these manifest in our dreams and therefore dreams are a natural form of releasing these unexpressed emotions and urges.

Freud’s contemporary Carl Jung did not agree with him and believed that dreams are:

A direct reflection of the day-to-day activities and dreams bring about a psychic balance in a person’s life.  For example, if you are feeling sad at a conscious level then you might have a happy dream and if you are thrilled about something you might dream about something depressing.  Thus dreams are a way of compensating at the subconscious level for what is happening at a conscious level.

Dreams are also a form of expression or reaction to a particular experience or episode.  For example, a rape victim might dream of this negative incident soon after the incident and the dream will be very close to what transpired during the real-life experience, and eventually these nightmares might decrease in frequency but appear in a different form.

Dreams can be an indication of what could happen in the future; again dreams are symbolic and cannot be interpreted literally.

Dreams could be telepathic in nature and is way of communicating to another person or another part of a person’s psyche without involving the senses.

Dreams can also be mimetic or take the form of a premonition of conditions that are occurring in the physical body of a person who is unaware of these conditions that are manifesting in a person.

Another famous psychologist Alfred Adler described dreaming as an indication of our true feelings, thoughts, emotions, and actions.  Adler believed that dreams were a means of overcoming a dreamer’s weaknesses and shortcomings in the conscious world.  According Adler, dreams help the dreamer to deal with his fears by acting as an outlet to do and say things that he wouldn’t have been comfortable expressing at a conscious level.  For example, an abused wife might actually shout back at her husband in her dream, thereby satisfying the need to express her anger that is felt during the actual experience.

As per the Gestalt therapy founded by Fredrick and Laura Perls, dreams contain the neglected or disowned and rejected parts of the Self.  Perls stated that dreams were an expression of oneself and dreams were an active means of filling the emotional gaps in a person in an attempt to become a unified whole.

Then came the neurophysiological school of thought that determined the four stages of sleep, and they are slow, delta, spindle, and REM.  It was further concluded that dreams occur during the REM or last stage of sleep mostly due to a chemical transaction that takes place during the REM stage of sleep.

To conclude dreaming is more of a creation than a medium of communication and if a dream can be interpreted don’t hesitate to do so or just leave it alone.  Dreaming is a natural phenomenon that occurs from time to time, unless it is disturbing in nature and interferes with your sleep cycle you might want to consult an expert and seek advice.

Excerpts taken from this article are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. They use material from Wikipedia topics "Lucid Dream" and/or "Sleep".