The nature of sleep: how do dreams characterize a person?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

"Tell me 100 of your dreams and I will tell you who you are." A person spends a third of his life in a dream, but few people realize that dreams can tell a lot about us. Studies have shown that the content of dreams is closely related to the daily life of a person and allows you to learn about the emotional state, character, fears and hopes, writes the German magazine Spektrum.

Dreams can tell more about us than scientists have assumed until now. And by retelling dreams to others, we can help ourselves see things in new ways, overcome difficulties, and deal with emotions.

“Tell me 100 of your dreams and I'll tell you who you are,” says psychologist Kelly Bulkeley. Although this is a bit like bragging, he really succeeds in such miracles! Since the mid-1980s, the woman, whom the researcher calls Beverly, has been recording her dreams daily. Since then, she has accumulated 6,000 notes. The psychologist selected 940 records from them, made in 1986, 1996, 2006 and 2016, and on their basis made 26 conclusions about the character of a woman: about her temperament, emotional state, prejudices, relationships with others, fears, attitude to money, health, cultural and religious interests. “23 conclusions have been confirmed,” the Oregon psychologist said with some pride.

This case study supports the theory of a consistent relationship between wakefulness and sleep, developed, among others, by psychologist Michael Schredl of the Central Institute for Mental Health in Mannheim. The essence of the theory: the content of many dreams is significantly related to the interests, preferences, concerns and activities of a person in his daily life. “This thesis is considered amply proven among dream interpreters,” explains Schredl. The psychologist determined, for example, that the dreams of people who often listen to music, play music or sing themselves, contain more music. And whoever does composition during the day sees dreams about new melodies.

1. The interpretation of dreams has long been considered by scientists to be a pseudoscientific exercise. But according to new data, dreams are largely dependent on personal interests, experiences, preferences and problems of a person.
2. It is possible that dreams help us cope with life's difficulties, better deal with excess emotions, and soften the intensity of memories.
3. Telling others about their dreams, a person creates emotional connections with them, evokes empathy, which helps him to see a lot in a new way.

Events of the previous day

In 2017, a group of researchers led by Raphael Vallat from the University of Lyon surveyed 40 subjects of both genders for one week about their dreams immediately after waking up. On average, the subjects recalled six dreams at this time of day. 83% of dreams were related to the personal experience of the subjects. 49% of these autobiographical events occurred on the previous day, 26% at most a month ago, 16% at most a year ago, and 18% more than one year ago. The subjects rated most of the real events that arose in their dreams as playing an important role in their lives. However, this did not apply to events that occurred only the day before the survey. As Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939) also noted, the impressions of the previous day that arise in dreams are perceived rather as ordinary and trivial. In contrast, pictures from the distant past, seen in a dream, turn out to be more intense, important and often negative from an emotional point of view. Actual problems are present in 23% of dreams. For example, a young student, fearing that he would not be able to cope with his studies, dreamed that he was sitting with his professors on a tram and waiting for his grades to be finally announced.

According to a case study by neurophysiologist I-sabelle Arnulf of the Sorbonne in Paris, dreams can also relate to the future: for example, a man who, due to his profession, often travels on business trips, saw in every tenth his dreams the places to which he will soon go.

The results of such studies are part of a series of discoveries that inspire modern dream researchers and lead to the emergence of new theories. For example, that dreams are in the service of a person's social life and therefore often take fantastic forms. Thus, they show a different approach to emotional problems, tasks and patterns of behavior that occupy the human mind.

For many years, sleep medical research has focused primarily on sleep as a neurophysiological process. The importance of dreams was given secondary importance. They were considered a kind of sleep epiphenomenon. Psychologist Rubin Naiman of the University of Arizona in Tucson believes that dreams - according to the point of view - can be compared to the stars: “They appear at night and shine brightly, but are too far away to have any a life.

Naiman belongs to a small group of psychologically oriented dream researchers who perceive dreams as an independent phenomenon. For him, these unusual states were and remain subjective experiences that are of particular value for the mental and physical health of the individual. He and his colleagues are trying to find patterns in these nocturnal travels of thoughts.

Psychologist Mark Blagrove and his team at Swansea University in Britain are using neurophysiological scientific methods such as electroencephalography (EEG) to answer the important question: Do dreams have a function? Or are they just a byproduct of sleep? For ten days, 20 subjects kept detailed diaries about their everyday affairs and worries, fears and experiences. After that, they spent the night in a sleep laboratory wearing a cap made of electrodes on their heads recording their brain activity. From time to time they were woken up and asked if they had seen anything in their dreams and, if so, what exactly. The researchers then compared the content of the dreams with the entries in the diaries. For example, if someone in reality almost fell down the stairs, and then saw the steps in a dream. Or if someone was supposed to prepare for the exam in reality, but did not do it, and then in a dream he fled from the pursuer.

Why do we dream? The two most common theories

During sleep, important neurobiological processes take place in memory, thanks to which the newly acquired knowledge is accumulated and combined with the existing one. But scientists have not come to a consensus as to whether dreams are necessary for this so-called consolidation of information in memory, or whether they arise as a by-product when our memory reviews the impressions of the day at night. According to Allan Hobson of Harvard University, dreams arise only as a result of the brain trying to interpret the incoherent nocturnal arousals generated by the brain stem.

In contrast, the Finnish neurophysiologist Antti Revonsuo considers dreams to be an evolutionary mental training program. With its help, we supposedly prepare ourselves for potentially dangerous situations and challenges. That is, we learn to run away from enemies in a dream, defend ourselves, behave correctly in delicate situations and cope with social rejection. Because the expulsion from the group meant certain death for our distant ancestors. In favor of the theory, Revonsuo points out the fact that two-thirds of all dreams of young adults contain elements of threat and twice as many negative as positive emotions appear in them. Perhaps by doing so, dreams help us overcome difficulties, better cope with excess emotions, and smooth over memories that are too intense.

Especially often and intensively people indulge in dreams during REM sleep (the stage of rapid eye movements or REM sleep for short), but dreams occur in other phases. REM sleep is characterized, among other things, by electrical brain waves in the frequency range of four to seven and a half hertz. “These theta waves become more intense when a person dreams of emotionally charged everyday events,” summarizes the first result of the study. The second result is the following: the more emotional the real event was, the more often it occurs in a dream, in contrast to unimportant everyday trifles. It is possible that dreams help us in this way to process the events that excite us.

But as it was found in the course of Blagrove's study, events that occurred earlier than one week no longer affected the number and intensity of theta waves. “Theta waves discernible on the EEG are probably a reflection of the fact that the psyche processes actual, real and emotionally colored memories,” the researcher believes. In addition, a group of researchers from the University of Montreal in Canada recorded increased activity of theta waves in people who often have nightmares: "Presumably this is a reflection of the fact that these people are overly occupied with emotional experiences."

Blackrove also recalls the experiences of Francesca Siclari and her colleagues. These brain researchers woke subjects several times during the night and questioned them about their dreams. Prior to this, they had detected changes in activity in the back of the subjects' cerebral cortex as soon as they began to dream. Thanks to this, scientists could tell in advance whether the subject, after waking up, would be able to talk about his dream or not.

Training of social situations

“In sleep, the brain processes all sorts of information to store it in memory,” explains Blagrove. Sometimes the mechanism of dreams is activated for this. This happens, first of all, in those cases when the processing process requires “all available emotions and all available memories,” as the researcher puts it. He sees an important function of dreams in the fact that they teach us to behave correctly in various social situations. "It is very likely that in working through such topics, we must use information in memory, which in the waking state we can only extract with great difficulty."

Michael Schredl recently developed a method to motivate people to reflect on their dreams. Like Blagrove, he is convinced: "We can learn a lot in dreams, because in dreams we experience events that we perceive as real." In his opinion, they refer to the "general psyche of the individual."

Interpretation of dreams

According to the theory of the Austrian physician Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), dreams reveal human desires that have been repressed, recent or rooted in childhood. Therefore, he considered the interpretation of dreams to be the main path to the unconscious.

The Schredl method is based on the fact that people share their dreams: one of the subjects writes down his dream, others read it. In the next step, group members ask questions about everyday life and real events in the life of the subject that may have something to do with the dream. The subject then recounts the events and feelings in the dream that particularly disturbed him, affected him or caused painful emotions. He goes on to reflect aloud on how events and emotions in dreams relate to events and emotions in real life, and he would not prefer the exciting moments of dreams to be different.

Blagrove's team recently tested this method. For this purpose, once a week, two groups of subjects, ten people each, came together to discuss dreams together. One group used the Schredl technique, the other a similar technique by the American psychiatrist Montague Ullman.

“Both methods allowed the participants to draw important conclusions,” says Blagrove. Subjects reported that they now more clearly understand how past experiences affect their present life, and that they are now using dreams to improve their daily situations. In addition, they allegedly realized how strongly dreams and reality are connected with each other. For example, one young student dreamed of running down a marble staircase in the city of his childhood. Below he saw that he was in his new homeland. The staircase reminded him of the staircase in the holiday home where he and his family spent their last vacation together before moving. The student realized that he yearns for his family more than he thought.

The group members emphasized that the work in the group helped them especially. They admitted that thanks to her, they understood connections that they alone would not have guessed.

This effect of the team Blagrove found every time he spoke to others about their dreams as part of his Dreams ID project. Artist Julia Lockheart portrayed each of these dreams as a painting. The action has recently become so popular that in different places - for example, at Freud's house in London - events are held during which people talk about their dreams in front of the public and then discuss them together. As Blagrove says, such stories always evoke a sense of belonging to the narrator in him.

Since then, the psychologist began to test his latest theory, according to which we have dreams, in order to tell others about them. True, we quickly forget most of our night visions, but the most important ones still remain in our memory. By sharing a dream with someone, which is usually done with a partner, family or friends, then “the participants in the conversation can become emotionally close,” suggests Blagrove. According to him, dreams are events from the very depths of consciousness, nothing more personal can be. "Telling someone about your dreams will inspire empathy in the listeners."

In another unpublished study, Blagrove's team asked 160 subjects how often they learned about other people's dreams. It turned out that the more often this happens, the better their ability to understand other people's feelings is. But at the same time, the psychologist stresses: this by no means proves that "sharing dreams, you increase the indicators of empathy in the listeners."

Schroedl also asked people to initiate him into their dreams: a third of those surveyed told him a dream a week ago, two-thirds did it last month. That is, it happened "quite often", as the researcher dryly states. The scientist himself has been recording his dreams since 1984, during this period he has formed almost 14 600 records. As he explains, "we are not talking about the interpretation of dreams in the sense of classical psychoanalysis." Its purpose was to highlight certain patterns and relationships. To do this, he puts information about his dreams in a databank and looks, for example, if he perceives in a dream rather positive, negative, unusual or everyday smells and integrates them into his dreams.

Dreams Encourage Helpful Thinking

According to him, for example, the dream model in which the persecution takes place is clear: a person is afraid of something and runs away - this is the personification of a model of behavior in everyday life when a person is trying to avoid an unpleasant situation. “It doesn't matter whether he is running away in his sleep from a blue monster, a hurricane or a Doberman who bares his teeth. In this case, one should analyze his abient (avoidant) behavior in real life,”says the psychologist.

However, sleep creatively processes our impressions. The thing that emotionally engages us during the day, it exacerbates and places events in a “wider context,” as Schredl puts it. The dream connects recent experiences with earlier ones, delves into the chest of our memory and composes from what it finds both intricate and metaphorical films. Mark Blagrove, after years of skepticism about the meaning of dreams, has recently come to share this view.

Is it all about sex in dreams?

Most dreams (though) are directly related to sex - neurophysiologist Patrick McNamara of Boston University is convinced of this. As he believes, even if dreams are not of a pronounced erotic character, they are often devoted to the fulfillment of sexual desires in the spirit of Darwin's theory of evolution. The scientist relies on various empirically obtained data: men more often dream of aggressive fights with other men, with whom, from the point of view of evolution, they compete in the distribution of their genes. Women are more likely to dream of verbal skirmishes with other women. In addition, during the phase of rapid sleep (REM) in both sexes, the content of sex hormones in the blood increases. In this phase of sleep, which is crucial for dreams, areas of the brain associated with pleasure and sex are extremely active. And when scientists suppressed the phase of REM sleep in adult rodents, then these animals later became impotent. So it's clear to McNamara that dreams are just as important to good biological-evolutionary health as waking life.

Sometimes dreams encourage people to look at certain things or events in a new way. Psychologists at the University of Tasmania showed some subjects a video of the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, and others an excerpt from a lecture. Those who watched the video about the terrorist attack not only saw the event more often in their dreams, but also began to understand its meaning more deeply. Blackrove experienced this phenomenon himself: “Once we were in a hurry so as not to be late to the theater for a production of Harry Potter. But the children hesitated. " This "pissed off" the scientist a little, and he says he chastised the children. At night he had a dream: “I tweeted something and the tweet ended with words in capital letters. So I roared. " Then, on Twitter, someone replied, "Don't capitalize on your tweets."

“I know for sure that in such situations I shouldn't have yelled at children, but only a dream helped me really understand this,” says the psychologist. Since then, he reacts much more calmly to children. Dreams rarely tell a person "something completely new, but they give him the opportunity to look at things from a different angle," he said. "And these motivations for thought can be extremely important to personal growth."

"Dreaming is good for health" - this is the conclusion of his colleague Rubin Nyman. It is beneficial for both the psyche and the body. The American psychologist believes that there is now a "quiet epidemic". Because many people sleep too little, they spend too little time in REM sleep. But it is at two o'clock of this phase that the most interesting sessions in the night cinema take place. First of all, in the morning, because REM sleep is especially common at this time of day.

According to a 2016 poll by the YouGov Sociological Institute, only 24% of Germans sleep long enough to wake up by themselves. Everyone else breaks out of sleep despite their wishes, and their dreams are also suddenly interrupted. Another enemy of REM sleep is alcohol. “Beer, wine, and other spirits suppress REM sleep in a very specific way,” explains Nyman. In addition, a sleeping drunk person wakes up at night more often than usual. Added to this are other sleep disorders that also adversely affect REM sleep, such as apnea - life-threatening nocturnal respiratory arrest. In other words, it says a lot about the fact that the general population is experiencing a REM sleep deficit.

Rubin Nyman, psychologist: "Dreaming is good for health"

Whether health suffers from this, no one knows yet. But if we take into account the hypothetical functions of dreams, then this is "quite likely", says Nyman and proves this by various experiments on humans and animals. Getting enough REM sleep is likely to strengthen the body's resistance. Some studies show that it may protect against PTSD. Neurophysiologists at Rutgers University analyzed, for example, over one week the sleep of 17 subjects who slept at home. After that, the participants were brought into a special state necessary for the study: they were shown photographs of rooms illuminated with light of different colors. In some cases, the subjects received a mild electric shock. This made them fear certain rooms. Subjects with longer and better REM sleep experienced less fear at the sight of "dangerous rooms". In general, people who did not develop PTSD after a terrible event had more theta waves in the anterior regions of the brain during REM sleep than people with this mental illness. It is possible that such activity of the brain indicates its ability to more favorable processing of traumatic episodes stored in memory.

The one who shares wins

In other studies, lack of REM sleep or poor quality sleep has been linked to increased susceptibility to pain, weakened immune systems, decreased resistance to infection, memory disorders, and depression. However, there is still no sufficient evidence of this connection. But Nyman and his colleagues have set themselves an even more ambitious goal: they advocate combining the science of REM sleep research with psychological research on dreams and their meanings. By doing so, they want to return to sleep the meaning that it has lost in wide circles of Western society.

"We will do a good deed if we return sleep to the consciousness of the public," says the psychologist, "because dreams are one of the basic foundations of our mentality." In accordance with this, he organizes circles in the United States in which people gather in churches, premises of various associations, communal centers or hotels and discuss their dreams. Nyman recommends doing the same in Germany: "These circles are great: you can see how people in them grow inwardly."