The Dream Sourcebook: A Guide to the Theory and Interpretation of Dreams (5 page)

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Authors: Phyllis R. Koch-Sheras

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BOOK: The Dream Sourcebook: A Guide to the Theory and Interpretation of Dreams
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Myths and Facts About Dreams
It has taken centuries of interest to move beyond dream lore to a scientific understanding of dreams. Yet many myths are still taken as fact in interpreting our own and others' dream behavior. Let's examine some of the more popular myths about dreaming:
MYTH: Some people dream only a few times a yearor not at all.
FACT: Everybody dreams. Everybody! While some people may only remember a few dreams a year, they actually dream several times a night, usually every hour and a half. The trouble is, many people have a hard time remembering their dreams. Even people who are able to remember part of their dreams upon wakening or at some point during the day will quickly lose that memory unless they take some steps to note their dream content, by writing it down, recording it on a cassette player, or telling it to a friend or loved one. (Chapter 6 details strategies to improve your dream recall.)
MYTH: Babies don't dream. After all, what could they have to dream about?
FACT: Babies do show evidence of dreaming, although what they dream about is anybody's guess. Even a newborn infant will have rapid eye movement, or REM, sleepthe kind of sleep in which we dreammost of the time. That's a lot of REM sleep, considering that babies spend twice as much time sleeping as adults do, usually about two-thirds of their day. Scientists believe there is a connection between REM sleep and brain development, citing evidence that, for instance, REM sleep occurs 80 percent of the time in an infant born ten weeks prematurely, dropping to 50 percent in the full-term baby, and 35 percent in the one-year-old. Why do babies dream so much?
 
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REM sleep may provide "nerve exercise" from within the brain for newborns until they can get more stimulation from the external environment as they get older. The trend continues as humans age. Five-year-olds dream 20 percent of the time they are sleeping, which is roughly the same as the percentage of time adults spend dreaming each night. As people continue to age, studies show, the percentage of time spent dreaming drops off to as low as 13 percent in some people.
MYTH: Animals do not dream.
FACT: As dog owners readily suspect, animals do dream. Dogs sometimes move their legs, wag their tails, and even bark and growl while sleeping. As with infants' dreams, dogs' dream content is not something we can easily discern, though some proud pet owners like to say, "Oh, he's dreaming of chasing rabbits" or "I bet she's dreaming about the mail carrier." Around the turn of the century, Sigmund Freud, the father of contemporary dream theory, wrote about animal dreams in his landmark book
The Interpretation of Dreams:
''I do not myself know what animals dream of. But a proverb . . . does claim to know. 'What,' asks the proverb, 'do geese dream of?' And it replies: 'Of maize!' The whole theory that dreams are wish fulfillments is contained in these two phrases."
But what about other animals? In all mammals studied, there is evidence of REM sleep. (Anyone with a dog or cat can observe moving eyelids during sleep, usually ten or twenty minutes after the pet falls asleep.) And scientists have sought to prove whether animals actually see images while they are sleeping. In one experiment, monkeys were trained to touch a lever whenever they received visual stimulation. Then, while they slept, the monkeys pressed the lever again, apparently in response to the visual stimulation of dreaming. What they see has yet to be determined.
 
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MYTH: Blind people do not dream.
FACT: Blind people do dream. According to author Charles W. Kimmins, as quoted in
The New World of Dreams,
researchers have found that "all dreamers becoming blind after the age of seven see in dreams even after an interval of twenty or thirty years." Those who became blind before age five, however, almost never see in their dreams. Generally, in dreams as in waking life, a person with one impaired sense compensates with other senses. Thus, a person who cannot hear often has especially vivid visual content in dreams, and a person blind from birth distinctly remembers sounds and tactile experiences in dreams. Being able to visualize while dreaming helps blind people use visual imagination when awake, which is vital for orienting the other senses. The deaf also have good dream recall, with the majority remembering dreams every night.
MYTH: There are no differences between men and women in the area of dreaming.
FACT: From the earliest days of modern dream research, scientists have documented differences in men's and women's dream recall, dream content, and dreaming patterns. Traditionally, the waking interests, goals, and personalities of men and women have differed. So it is not surprising that men's and women's dreams reflect these differences. Women tend to recall and share their dreams more often than men, perhaps because women tend to focus more on inner processes. Women also report more night-mares and more psychic dreams than men do. Research collected in the 1940s showed significant differences in the content of men's and women's dreams. But current research shows a change in these tendencies, as gender roles continue to equalize.
The source of these sex differences in dreams is still unclear. As with other gender issues, the nature-nurture controversy remains: How much difference is inherent (due to our biological
 
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purposes or physiological makeups) and how much is acquired (due to the environments in which we were raised and the society in which we function)? Brain research suggests that men's and women's brains are actually organized differently: Magnetic resonance imaging has enabled researchers to observe that women use both hemispheres of the brain more than men do, giving them a broader or at least a different base than men from which to operate. This greater connection between the left and right brains, acting with hormones, could account for women's greater sensitivity to emotions and even so-called women's intuition. Given that dreams and dreamwork tap into these skill areas, this research may serve to explain women's higher level of dream recall, and their greater interest in sharing their dreams.
MYTH: People dream in black-and-white.
FACT: For those who can see, or who became blind sometime after birth, studies show that dreams take place in colors, sometimes as vivid as real life. In fact, in studies in which dreamers were awakened during the dream cycle and asked about color, the subjects could remember it 80 percent of the time. The reason so many people claim to dream in black-and-white may be that color is not as memorable to them as other aspects of the dream, so people "remember" seeing their dream in black-and-white. One dreamer, an aspiring movie director, reports that he has had a "film noir"style dream, which appeared to be in black-and-white like a classic movie.
MYTH: Dreams take place in a flash, and what seems like hours is really only seconds.
FACT: Sleepers view dreams as though they are watching a film or experiencing an adventure story scene by scene, and they generally take as long to dream as they would to "watch" or experience these. Dreams have scenes that may start and finish,
 
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skip ahead to the future, or regress to the past, sometimes giving the impression that the plot unfolds far more quickly than the dream's actual time span. As we said, there are several periods of dreaming throughout every nigh, and these periods get longer and longer as sleep progresses. Your final dreaming session may last as long as an hour.
MYTH: Most dreams take place as we fall asleep or wake up.
FACT: In fact, the often fleeting images we experience as we fall asleep seem an awful lot like dreams. But these hypnagogic (as you're falling asleep) and hypnomonic (as you're waking up) dreams are not so fully formed as regular dreams, consisting generally of physical sensations, snippets of words or conversations, and flashing images that may seem disjointed. Dreamlets, as they are sometimes called, do not include the rapid eye movement sleep of full-fledged dreams. And rarely do they contain enough content to be of much interest for dream interpretation.
One sometimes frustrating type of falling-asleep dreamlet is the one in which you jerk yourself awake. This is known as a myclonic jerk. Although there may be some fleeting image or experience that leads to this sensation (a feeling of slipping and falling or, in one dreamer's case, a visual image of tripping over a doorjamb), there is no full plot involved at this stage, and generally no disturbing emotions (save a fear of insomnia!) are associated with this experience.
MYTH: If you dream that you die, you may indeed dieby having a heart attack from the fear and shock the dream causes.
FACT: We think this misguided notion may reflect the fact that many people awaken as they dream of crashing a car, falling off a cliff, or otherwise endangering themselves. When you consider that nightmares are scary dreams that almost always awaken the dreamer, it seems clear that our own tendency to
 
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rouse ourselves might suggest that we are doing so to save our own lives. But never fear! There are plenty of people who have dreamed of dying only to awaken the next morning and recount the imagined ordeal over coffee and doughnuts. For example, a man reports that he has had several dreams in which he dies, and then regards himself as an observer would. ''Actually," he comments, "it gets kind of boring. I am dead, and I can't get up and do anything. I just lie there. But the dream goes on."
MYTH: It is dangerous to awaken a sleepwalker or a person having a nightmare.
FACT: This misconception probably stems from bad experiences people may have had after startling a sleepwalker into consciousness: The person may have struck out in defense, or tripped and fallen. But it is not psychologically dangerous to wake a sleepwalker, and it is certainly more dangerous to let the sleeping person wander around, because he or she could get hurt. Leading a sleepwalker to a safe place, such as an uncluttered area in a room, or back to bed, is a good idea. Experts think getting the person back to bed without waking him or her is an even better one, because it may allow the person to move gently into the next stage of sleep, perhaps resolving whatever issue may have led to the nighttime restlessness of sleepwalking. A chronic problem, however, might merit medical or psychiatric attention, of only because the person might do something dangerous during sleep, such as wander onto a balcony or into the street.
Sleepwalkers report having nightmares or night terrors 60 percent of the time, though sleepwalking and the dream state do not in fact coincide. Whether the person sleepwalks or not, it is best to let him or her sleep through a nightmare or night terror so as to complete the dream. If a dreamer screams out in the middle of the night, do not try to restrain or rouse the person unless it's necessary for safety. Instead, touch and speak to the
 
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person gently and soothingly, reassuring him or her that everything's all right, and you're there. Then let the dreamer return to sleep as soon as possible.
MYTH: A dream can predict the future.
FACT: Many people have had the experience of dreaming something that later, in some form or another, actually did occur. Often, this is just coincidence. Other times, the dreamer may be pulling together several strands of known information to derive a conclusion that the mind could not make while awake. Laboratory studies have focused on psychic phenomena in dreams, and have substantiated some precognitive dreams, but as yet there is no explanation of how psychic dreams (also called
psi dreams
) occur or what causes them. Chapter 8 explores these occurrences in depth.
MYTH: Dreams have no meaning.
FACT: This is the $64,000 Question: Do dreams have meaning? For most of this century, psychologists have plumbed the murky depths of patients' dreams in search of answers that the patients' conscious minds cannot offer. Dream interpretation has hit the mainstream, too, with dream workshops and interpretation groups forming in many communities throughout the United States and elsewhere.
But this has not always been the outlook regarding dreams. In the nineteenth century, scientists considered dreams the result of indigestion or anxiety, and denied that they had any meaning at all. And in centuries previous to that one, dreams were infused by meanings that were outside the control of the dreamer: Gods or demons supplied the dreams, people believed. Chapter 2 offers a history of dreams in human experience.
There is renewed interest in the theory that dreams are meaningless, as scientists research potential physical causes of

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