Throughout the ages philosophers have been puzzled by the idea of dreams. Humans have written and interpreted dreams. For example,The ancient egyptians wrote a dream book which listed common dreams. Dreams are images, thoughts and emotions you are experiencing during sleep. Even with today’s technological advancements, there is still no definite answer to why we dream. Scientists believe that the reason we dream is because of past or present memories, emotions, and unsuppressed and unconscious desires and dreams.
After doing research, there are some interesting theories which include: solve problems,wish fulfillment, and to forget. Unconstrained by reality and logic. In your dreams your mind can create limitless scenarios. These scenarios help your mind gasp problems. This scenarios can also help you create solutions. These solutions you may not be able to consider while awake. John Steinbeck, a American author of the 19th century, called it the committee of sleep. John’s research demonstrated the effect of dreaming on problem solving.
John’s research stated that the best solution for a problem is to sleep on it. Scientist Sigmund Freuds believed that dreams function to fulfill wishes that you yet have to experience. Freud believed that all our dreams are a collection of images in our life’s. These images can relate to the fulfillment of our wishes. Everything you remember from a dream can be symbolic. This includes, fear, strengths, and insecurity. These dreams can resolve psychological issues. There about 10,000 trillion neural connections within your brain.
They are created by everything you think and do. A 1983 scientists came up with a theory of dreaming called reverse learning. While sleeping our brain gives off REM cycles. Your brain uses the REM connection and dumps the unnecessary ones. This process becomes your dreams, if it wasn’t for REM your brain could become overrunned by useless connections. These useless connections could affect the brain by stressing the human who is dreaming. Dreams could be interrupted in man ways. Research proves that 90% of people who ever even had a dream don’t remember it.
Scientist from the university of Swansea did a slight test on why this occurs This occurs because the REM is over flown with images,emotions, and ideas which have occurred over time or that same day. Its very hard for a human to remember a dream. Professor Mark Blagrove stated that “vivid dreams or their level of anxiety or sleep quality results in people remembering dreams at different amounts each month, say. In general, for all of us dreams are very easily forgotten once we wake up if we don’t consolidate them or in other words if we don’t transfer them from short-term to long term memory immediately upon waking.
The ancient egyptians recorded their dreams in a journal. They viewed dreams as the out most important thing and had interpreters of dreams; they called them “Masters of the Secret Things”. The master of the secret things wrote in a journal called the dream book. Egyptians wrote every common dream they had in this journal. They recorded up to 108 dreams which included many different emotions. ” The Egyptian ‘Dream Book’ is preserved in the form of a papyrus with a hieratic script. This papyrus was found in the ancient Egyptian workers’ village of Deir el-Medina, near the Valley of the Kings.
This papyrus has been dated to the early reign of Ramesses II (1279-1213 B. C. ). Each page of the papyrus begins with a vertical column of hieratic signs which translates as ? lf a man sees himself in a dream’. In each horizontal line that follows, a dream is described, and the diagnosis ‘good’ or ‘bad’, as well as the interpretation is provided. Thus, as an example: ‘If a man sees himself in a dream looking out of a window, good; it means the hearing of his cry’. The good dreams are listed first, followed by the bad ones” This proves that dreams have affected and interested humans for centuries.
Some dreams were believed to contain truth of future events. “Dreams were considered to be divine predictions of the future. They were messages from the gods that could be foretelling of impending disasters or, conversely, of good fortune; therefore, understanding the significance of one’s dreams was an important part of the culture. ” As you can see from above dreams have fascinated the human race for ages. Even with today’s technology there is no definite answer to why we dream.