DREAMS: THE REALM OF MEANINGS

Do you remember the last dream you had? Maybe it was beautiful and reflected your dream, maybe it was bad and you would never want to experience it, or maybe it was an irrelevant dream. These possibilities are predictions that will happen if you remember them. Except for people with brain damage, everyone has dreams, but not everyone remembers them. Dreams occur during REM sleep. Sometimes you also dream in non-REM sleep, but these dreams are not vivid and not easily remembered. We can recognise that a person is dreaming by the rapid movement of the eyes of the sleeper, even though the eyes are closed. At this time, although his body is completely unresponsive and largely paralysed, the EEG of his brain will be almost the same as when he is awake. If you wake the person up at this moment, there is a high probability that they will remember the dream. Most dreams last between 5 and 20 minutes. And none of them occupy any part of the brain. We don't realise how illogical our dream is until we wake up because during REM sleep, there is less activity in our prefrontal cortex. When this area is less active, we are unable to recognise the illogical events in our dreams.  

There are countless theories as to why we dream. Dreams have been regarded as an unsolved mystery for centuries and have been the field of interest of many scientists and psychologists. The most important research in this field has been the work of Frued, a famous psychoanalysist. Freud argues that dreams are a reflection of our subconscious. If we explain it in detail, it means that it is the uncensored expression of every emotion that is suppressed in our subconscious while we are awake. According to evolutionary psychologists, they stated that dreams are a messenger and provide us with foresight against the threats in our lives. Other evolutionary psychologists say that dreams are part of neural development and do not mean anything. As a result, many theories have been explained about why we dream.   

Whether dreams have meaning or not varies according to different perspectives. According to some views, it is a meaningless, disconnected series of events and that it has no meaning, and according to some, the events we experience during the day, our thoughts and memories in our brain, so it has meaning, is among the theories.   

If we use the theory that dreams have a meaning and need to be interpreted, it is among the information that will contribute to us in psychotherapy. The therapist listens to the client's dreams, tries to make sense of the client's interpretation of the dream, and makes a connection with reality. Thus, by looking at how the client interprets and thinks, the therapy process is progressed by revealing the underlying concerns and fears.  

When we want to examine dream interpretations, Freud's thoughts come to the fore. For example, associating going up and down stairs in a dream with sexual intercourse; seeing the walls as male and the rooms as female, likening the small animals seen in the dream to a sibling; unwanted sibling, going on a journey; seeing death and the fear of it, seeing a king or queen; the relationship between the mother and father who are the authority and the fear felt against them, seeing water; birth, mother-child relationship and memories of childhood, areas such as locked, basement or underground; avoiding or looking for someone, dying in the dream; living, seeing crowds; he thinks that it represents loneliness.   

 When we make a general approach to dreams, we see that they consist of subconscious and unconscious states. Our thoughts, memories, wishes, fears and desires about our past, present and future include the whole of the dream. 

REFERENCE

Claudia Picard-Deland C, et al., (2023) The memory sources of dreams: serial awakenings across sleep stages and time of night. Sleep, 1–13, 

Rüyaların Dili: Psikolojide Rüya Çalışmaları, Türk Psikoloji Yazıları, Aralık, C.18 (36), s. 15-25