“THE Dreams are a short madness, and madness is a long dream.”. So wrote the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Why, about what dreams really are and what their real function is, thinkers, scholars and scientists have always wondered.
As is now known, the first real attempt to recognize a function in a dream and a meaning is due to Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. According to his theory, every dream is due to the action of stimuli, both physical and psychic, which disturb sleep. Psychic stimuli are in most cases unconscious, with an origin that often dates back to childhood. Such stimuli would come according to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, accidentally awakened, by unconscious associative means, by recent experiences experienced while awake. It is no coincidence that, in psychoanalytic treatment, the analysis and interpretation of dreams has central importance.
While remaining one of the most discussed and controversial topics today the dream is no longer seen solely as the expression of the unconscious but as a psychic dimension that performs different functions. Which? We talked about it with doctor Elisa Morrone, psychologist and psychotherapist specialized in sleep disorders at the Humanitas Psycho Medical Care center and the hospital Humanitas Mater Domini.
Dreams: what is their function?
«It’s the question that scientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists and neurobiologists have been trying to answer for years, but To date there is no theory scientifically proven to be unique – explains Dr. Morrone. – Our brain never turns off at night, but continues to work doing what it knows how to do: creating cognitive activity. We also know that dreams accompany us every night, for the entire duration of sleepin all its phases, and which we all dream of.”
Brain activity
«We also know that our brain, to prevent us from hurting ourselves enacting the content of dreams – mimicking what we dream – activates a mechanism that prevents our body movements. Basically it is as if we were “paralyzed”, even yesand sometimes this mechanism ‘breaks’ and a manifests itself sleep behavioral disorder, which occurs in REM sleep. Patients suffering from this disorder act out what they are dreaming about, often hurting themselves. We could therefore say that perhaps i Dreams are the nocturnal manifestation of brain activity».
How do they affect sleep?
What is certain is that dreams can also influence ours sleep.
«During the night the Our sleep changes and goes through different stages – explains Dr. Morrone – the NREM sleep stage, made up of light sleep and deep sleep phases, and the sleep stage REM (Rapid Eye Movements), which alternate cyclically with an average duration of 90 minutes. The process and the alternation of the different phases goes on uninterruptedly even if we are dreaming, something which, as we have already said, always happens from falling asleep to waking up, and despite this fact our sleep continues. Exist situations and moments in which our dreams disturb our sleepwhen they transform into nightmares, when they become distressing and cause awakenings. Let’s think, for example, about children’s night terrors: they scream, they get up and sit on the bed, they cry and have difficulty going back to sleep.”
Dreams: a mirror of our mental well-being?
We tend to think that the dream has a profound connection with our emotional state and with our mental well-being. But dreams really can give an indication of how we are emotionally?
«The answer is not simple and obvious: in some cases yes, they give us an indication of how we are, but this does not mean that if I have a distressing dream I necessarily have to be distressed – clarifies the expert. – Different research has shown that dreams are greatly influenced by daily life. Once again, we return to children’s nightmares which are often linked to everyday experiences: the fight at school, the removal from home, and so on…”.
Pandemic Dreams
«Not only that, a recent study by the University of Rome “La Sapienza” has shown that the lockdown period has changed the content of our dreams and we even went so far as to talk about “Pandemic Dreams”, that is, dreams that represent pandemic situations with the presence of many negative elements – continues Dr. Marrone. – Or we know that in the post-traumatic stress disorder, dreams, or rather nightmares, become recurrent, the patient tends to experience and relive the traumatic situation, such that it becomes one of the diagnostic criteria of the disorder”.
Does dreaming help problem solving skills?
Equally fascinating is the position of some scholars, according to whom the dream could also have a problem solving function, that is to say it would allow the brain to think up new possibilities. Harvard neurobiologist J.Varela describes the dream in this regard as “a fundamental cognitive activity. The dimension in which humans can engage in imaginary representation, try out different scenarios and devise new possibilities”.
“As anticipated, the brain doesn’t stop at night, it continues to work to allow us to be fitter and more rested during the day, creates connections, cleans up everything we don’t need, it makes permanent the information we have been exposed to during the day and that we need, it helps us to be efficient, and therefore in this sense we can say that sleeping more helps us develop new strategies – clarifies the psychotherapist. – Studies show us, for example, that sleeping well before an important exam improves our performance, but not because we dream but because our cognitive functions continue even during sleep, activating and strengthening useful connections, strengthening our memory. A long-term, unrestful sleep actually increases sleep likelihood of suffering from dementia».
When they become recurring
Dreams, of course, are not all the same. In fact, it will have happened to everyone to be faced with a recurring dream or nightmare, as well as not even remembering having dreamed…
«If dreams recurring are distressing, they are of a nightmare nature and may be linked to some event traumatic that we experienced in everyday life – explains Dr. Morrone – where by traumatic event we mean an event that subjectively made us anxiousit can also be an exam.”
Why don’t they sometimes remember?
However, as regards dreams that our memory does not keep track of upon awakening, the reasons may be different.
«When Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman, in 1953, they discovered the REM sleep phase and took it for granted that dreaming occurred only in that phase of sleep – explains the expert. – This is because people who were woken up at that stage and asked what they were dreaming were able to remember everything. Subsequently, in 1962, David Foulkes proved that he was the way patients were asked about their dreams influenced dream retrieval or not, and this could be an explanation. The other reason could be related to the difference between the dreams we have in the REM sleep phase and what we do in the NREM phasethe former much more similar to reality and less confusing.”
What are lucid dreams?
It also happens to dream and succeed exercise some sort of control over the dreamalmost as if we could somehow act on them plot. This is a phenomenon linked to what are called lucid dreams.
«These are dreams during which in some way our consciousness or, rather, the areas of the brain that control it, remain awake – explains the psychotherapist – This allows for an easier and, indeed, more lucid recovery of the dream».
Dreamscaping
There are even several techniques that help control our dreams…
“The Dreamscaping is a behavioral technique which plans to thinking hard or writing down dreams or even repeatedly imagine the dreams you would like to have – explains the expert. – He comes used with the aim of also modifying the emotional experience of dreams and make it more pleasant, sometimes even for research purposes. Another technique for modifying dreams, used mainly in the laboratory, consists of wake the person as soon as the REM sleep phase beginsasking her to stay awake, look around and make contact with reality, that is, increase her level of consciousness and then go back to sleep… provided she doesn’t suffer from insomnia.”
How to interpret dreams?
It is said that dream of falling is the expression of a lack of self-confidence. Or what dream of the stormy sea means having a worry that you can’t deal with. Raise your hand, in fact, who hasn’t asked themselves at least once in their life about the meaning of their dreams. But is it really possible to discover the hidden meaning of dreams?
«At the beginning of 1900 Signund Freud, with the publication of his book “Traumdeutung” precisely on the interpretation of dreams, he introduced a new way of thinking about dreams, as gateway to our unconsciousto what we don’t want to see or face emotionally during the day – concludes the psychotherapist, – Even before him, one Italian psychiatrist, Sante de Sanctis in his book “Clinical and psychological studies of an alienist”, he had started to have this vision. But psychoanalysis is not a science like medicine is. Today again, dream interpretation has a lot of importance for psychoanalysis and attracts a lot of curiosity. But currently there are no scientific foundations that can confirm or refute these theories».
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