Dream Exploration

We’re all human. Therefore, we all dream. This much is certain, even proven by oneirologists, psychologists, neurologists, you name it. In fact, it has been proven that all mammals dream. Scientifically, of course, which increases the validity of the claim.

In most cases, something that can be proven scientifically provides us with three components: What Is, How, and Why. In the case of dreams, the What Is is simply that we do dream. We know the How by exploring the active parts of the brain during different stages of sleep.

We dream about reality, we dream about fictitious worlds, we dream vividly, we can’t remember our dream at all, we can’t put the pieces together. The abstract essence of a dream, the truth-defying tendency of a dream, the unpredictability, the surrealistic quality, the irregularity: we strive to understand the mechanics, and beyond that, the psyche. It is more likely the latter that pervades our minds the most, and we crave a deeper and more thorough understanding of our subconscious.

Dreaming is an inevitable part of sleeping, one that has profoundly affected nearly every mentally capable human being in existence to some extent or another. And naturally, we are forced to wonder, to inquire, to consider. We wake from sleep, somehow already consumed by sentiment, by a certain sensibility, before the day has even begun, and we’ve inadvertently placed our emotions in the hands of the remnants of a dream for hours and hours to come. It’s almost as though we awaken in a bubble, cut off from everything but our disoriented mind until we reassemble the fragments of dream and attempt to make sense of it all.

You’ve most likely noticed that I haven’t yet addressed the Why. And you’ve probably guessed that the reason is, well, because it doesn’t exist. The purpose of dreams has long been a controversy among philosophers and scientists and deep thinkers alike, one that cannot be tied to a specific rationale or traced to a specific philosophy. We can never do more than hypothesize about the reasons for which we dream, nor can we rely on consulting a concrete answer on the matter.

Let’s explore a handful of dream theories that attempt to explain the inexplicable intentions of our subconscious.

Psychotherapy

We often face reality in our dreams, but not in a conventional way. We may see figures, places, people that are familiar to us, even a scenario that resembles a recent experience. We emerge from our slumber and the dream resonates with us. We may feel deeply, and our perception of the figures and places and people we saw may be altered, even if only slightly.

All of us battle difficult and confusing emotions day in and day out, and sometimes our emotions are too complex for our minds to attempt to process. The theory is that dreaming allows us to process difficult emotions while our minds are defenseless. In dreams, we deal with emotional content in a safe place, processing complicated emotions in a less defensive frame of mind. We are able to make connections we cannot make if left to our more critical and defensive conscious, enabling us to accept truths we might otherwise repress. We may acknowledge these truths with acute awareness, or they may linger just below the permeable surface of the subconscious; likewise, the influence of the connections we make varies with the nature of the dream and of the individual.

In this sense, dreams are our nightly psychotherapy. Our subconscious takes advantage of the absence of rational thinking, and acts as a therapist for our difficult emotions. And we don’t even have to pay.

Filtration System

Throughout the course of a day, we process, using our senses, an overwhelming amount of — well, stuff. We hear tidbits of conversation, we read snippets of articles, we watch an informative television program, we communicate with people we encounter. We are constantly experiencing, processing, accepting new stuff into our conscious and subconscious minds, all of which we cannot possibly expect to retain the following morning.

Another theory suggests that dreams filter out the unnecessary processed material existing in our minds from the previous day. Dreams sort through memories stored in archives in our brain and determine which ones are worth retaining and which can be forgotten. The brain functions as a machine in this way; it is constantly connecting its data in certain specific ways, creating perceptions and impressions that are embedded within our subconscious. Some of these thinking pathways may be inconsequential, however, and we are unable to be aware of this in a conscious state. When we sleep, the brain fires much more randomly, thus allowing our minds to loosen certain pathways and create raw connections potentially more beneficial to us. This accounts for the often eccentric yet marginally accurate replaying of events of the day before experienced in dreams; your mind is playing around with different emotions and situations, some of which will resonate with you thereafter while others will dissipate.

Dreams are cerebral filtrations systems, discarding the trivial links and memories held within the brain from the previous day and retaining the beneficial ones. You may attempt to delve into your mental archives and retrieve as many aspects of days past as possible, but you’ll find that only the more profound feelings and influential events in a day are the ones that resurface. This mechanism cleanses our minds in preparation for the day ahead, full of experiencing and processing and accepting new stuff into our mental database.

Fight-or-Flight

We’ve all been naked in public, or cornered by a murderer, or trapped in a body of water, or chased by an enemy, and so on. Such dreams have an adrenaline-pumping, blood-surging urgency to them, and we often wake in a cloud of hysteria that hovers over us, lingering for some time.

Scientists have shown that during REM sleep, which is the deepest level of the sleep cycle and the level in which we dream, our amygdala (the part of the brain that stimulates decision-making, also referred to as the fight-or-flight response) fires more than normal. While dreaming, the brain has been proven to fire in similar patterns as it does when it’s threatened for survival, although our muscles are immobile. (Not to be confused with sleep paralysis, although muscle atonia plays a crucial role in the experience.) Therefore, some theorize that in dreams we rehearse behaviors of self-defense in the safety of nighttime isolation.

Whether or not these “rehearsals” will ever be beneficial to us in any circumstance, they are our brain’s way of formulating responses to terrifying, life-threatening situations. Such a frightening experience, even if within a dream, inevitably leaves an impression on the mind that could potentially resurface in our lives someday. We, of course, would likely be unaware of the impression’s influence, if influence is present at all. And if it is, it certainly demonstrates the proactivity of the brain pertaining to the survival instinct.

Contrary to each of these theories, many people believe that dreams truly are as random as they seem to be. They would dismiss all of these theories in favor of the conclusion that dreams serve no real purpose, that they are merely the result of random impulses fired by the brain in a state of deep sleep. Nonetheless, the subconscious is still producing images that are often products of our experiences and emotions, but there is no conscious sense behind them. Perhaps it’s only consciousness itself that wants to see some sort of deeper meaning behind dreams and their effect on the subconscious.

Human imagination is a whimsical thing, almost as much as it is subjective. Fact is verifiable, perception is visionary; we are at the liberty of our own minds to see as we so desire, and therefore run the risk of inability to distinguish one from the other, to distinguish perception from what is certain. The danger is in assuming that these theories have been validated, when this is not the case. We long for answers too dependent on perception, and perception is merely a reflection of our cognitive instincts and not necessarily of truth. And so we must recognize the possibility of the absence of theory, on the basis that it is a possible theory in itself.

Even so, there’s no ignoring the relevance these theories hold. Taking a moment to think back, you’ll no doubt recollect a number of your past dreams that bore uncanny resemblance to at least one of the theories mentioned. Not a pair of eyes reading this could convincingly admit that he or she hasn’t once had a dream that fit one of them perfectly. Yes, the images projected into our subconscious are often as random as anything, but similar patterns in human dreams suggest that they do, in fact, correspond more or less with each other in a manner that suggests that each of these theories is a valid interpretation.

And our cognitive instincts might very well be delving too deep, craving an answer to a question deemed unanswerable. But such instincts, without which these intriguing theories wouldn’t exist, cultivate our natural inventiveness and promote ingenuity through exploration of the mysteries of our world. Is over-analysis really plausible? That is like asking whether being overly curious is plausible. One can never be too curious.