what are dreams?

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by god-of-course, Aug 29, 2003.

  1. god-of-course Bluegoblin. Registered Senior Member

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    one definition is:

    "a dream is a fragment of involuntry psychic activity, just concious enough to be reproducible in the waking state. of all psychic phenomena the dream represents perhaps the largest number of "irrational" factors. it seems to possess a minimum of that logical coherance and that heirarchy of values shown by the other contents of conciousness, and is therefore less transparent and understandable. dreams that form logically, morally, or aesthetically satisfying wholes are exceptional. usually a dream is a strange and disconcerting product distinguished by many "bad qualities," such as lack of logic, questionable morality, uncouth form, and apparent absurdity or nonsense. people are therefore only too glad to dismiss it as stupid, meaningless, and worthless."

    can people please offer their thoughts and what they make of this, thnx
     
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  3. Leapy Registered Member

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    That's a good definition God-of-Course!

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    I would say (and this is from Freud's line of thought) that dreams are subconsicous phantasies of some kind, that can only come inot the fore of the mind because during waking time, the conscious/rational mind cannot deal with them.

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    However some dreams just seem to be imaginal formations of thoughts and experiences too.
     
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  5. river-wind Valued Senior Member

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    Dreams are the one area of my life where weird shit happens. I have had many, many occurances of dreams which, months later, actually occured. Due to my scientific nature, I, of course, set about to show people that I was not making things up. So, I began keeping a dream journal.

    I have proven to many people, including myself, that there is something beyond simple random synapse firing or subconscious cleaning or subconscious pattern interpretataion by the conscious mind. I have had many occurances where I will tell the person who appeared in the dream what it was about. Days, months, or even years later, that person and I will stop short, and both realize that the dream I told them about just occured.

    An even more powerful example is that I occationally have a certain type of dream, where the visual, aural, and odorous nature of the dream is much more intense than a common dream. These dream also are usually tuned towards violence or death. Within a week of having one of these dreams, someone I know dies. the strength of the emotional effect of the dream seems to be directly connected to how close I am to the person who passes away. More than once, I have warned family and friends to be carefull, and within a week, someone dies, showing more than just myself that there is something to these dream patterns than just some sort of psycosis. Every year since I was 6, with the exception of the past two, I have had someone close to me die, so I have had 16 occurances, all recorded and dated. This isn't a case of my imagination inventing the dream after the fact to create a sense of importance (a common explination I get when discussing this with psycologists).

    So while I don't know much about what dreams are; I can say that they are not just Fruedian. He certainly had some insight in some types of dreams, but both he and Jung were missing a large part of what was possible in the dreaming arena.

    How do I explain my dreams? I really don't have a final conclusion yet, but I'd say that it's possible that I pick up on subtle patterns in the world which I'm not consciously aware of. These patterns, which are completely within the realm and rules of current physics and biology, are, however, picked up and comprehended by my subconscious, and "delivered" to my conscious through my dreams. While there are many *possible* explinations, only this one seems to fit the evidence I have without breaking the known rules of science, and without requiring some sort of God or Spirit World. For a real-world example, if I saw all the factors involved in the throw of a pair of die, I could predict with 99% accuracy what the final role would be (I mean *all* the factors, down to as close to the level of quantum uncertainty as is possible). I cannot, however in normal everyday life, be aware of every factor involved, so I can't predict the outcome - a simple limitation of the human conscious mind. However, my subconscious mind may be able to, given enough time. So maybe it's just really good at reading the world right now, and really good at guessing.

    No matter what else, dreams for me are quiet fun! Last night involved lesbian vampire undead, off-roading in limo's, volenteer work, self-aware elevators, and a large run down mansion set in forested rolling hills, with manacured lawns and clean lakes; complete with wood-plank bridges crossing over tops of them. And snipers, bodyguards, one of the actors from "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou", orphan kids, ambulance workers, and the evacuation of high-rise hotel buildings. All with sound effects, smells, tastes, and textures. A kids who grew from a baby to a full grown overweight adult while he and I were watching "The Secret of Nymh". Lights, shadow, wind blowing across the surface of a lake, pushing ripples across it's surface and the musty smell of mildew to my nostrils...
    And my boss wonders why I'm tired in the morning, given that I go to bed at 11PM every night.

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    edit: it sounds like plasticwingsmelting's good friend's mother was one of the lesbian vampire undead from my dream

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    Last edited: Aug 29, 2003
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  7. plasticwingsmelting Banned Banned

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    i have dreams. lucid ones. usually involving girls. not always sex. but it usually involves a girl. fighting, sometimes too. and music. i dont ever really eat or drink or smell anything in my dreams. however, emotional ties are often profound.

    i have reoccuring dreams sometimes. i even go to places ive been only in my dreams again. as in..some place ive never been to anywhere but in my dreams, and visiting that place again in another dream.

    im also rarely ever aware that im dreaming.


    last night involved some woods with friends around a large fire. it had elements of fantasy as i was some type of stealthy thief wearing black with daggers. the dream proceeded to a point where one of my good friends' mother came pulling up to an abandoned cabin type thing. i was hiding, watching through the boards. she dumped what i know was a body into a dumpster. another friend of mine came walking up just then and she ran him over. there was also some girl tied down in the passenger seat. i got up to help the girl and the woman attacked me with a shovel. i think i woke up then...
     
  8. moementum7 ~^~You First~^~ Registered Senior Member

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    I myself think that dreams are a way of learning.
    For myself anyways I can always learn something from my dreams.
    Basically,I can take the fundamental emotions and situations and place them in a context for how I percieve the world,people,and myself.
    As an example if I had the dream that plastic had I would interpret that as myself as percieving people and/or the world as dangerous.Neccessarily feeling it neccessary to maintain a detatched relationship to them.Feeling that it is neccessary to have something for self defense,and that any attempts at saving the world or making a significant impact for the positive would lead to my own harm.It would tell me that I do indeed care deeply about people but feel an overwhelming sense of danger or negative consequences would come about if I faced these fears head on.
    Basicaly I think you are holding back from your full potential.
    You know what is right,and know when others are doing wrong,but in someway feel contradicted that it is not your responsibility to get involved.

    Once again I beleive that dreams are the very fundamental perceptions and emotional links one has to the world.

    I can always learn something from my dreams.
    No matter how insignificant it may seem.

    It probly takes a certain level of self understanding and introspection to become effective at this ,but hey.
    It is a positive spiralling effect.
    Again this is only my perception and use for dreams.

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    I could list many of my dreams and relate them to my life, but I know that this thread is already long enough.

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    Peace Out
     
  9. river-wind Valued Senior Member

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    a-haha! mmmm, donuts...
     
  10. invisibleone Registered Senior Member

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    Dreams are images produced in the brain during a relaxed state in which we either 1)process daily events, 2)attempt to make sense of our lives, or 3)escape 'reality' altogether. Those are three big ones, of course there are probably lots more

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  11. dinokg Registered Senior Member

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    I've had a few strange dreams.

    In one I could fly, but it seamed natural, and I was in this very old giant library. There wasn't much going on except I think there may have been some other people that could fly to and we all just flew around.

    In another I was at school there was some millitary battle going on and a jetplane crashed a few blocks away and the explosion came right up to where I was. The strange part was just a few weeks later when my dad was setting off fireworks one large firework blewup on the ground instead of in the air and the explosion radius was the same as the one I saw in my dream. Luckly no one was hurt by the firework but it was still strange.

    I've had other strange dreams to but it would take up alot more room to tell them.

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  12. coluber Registered Senior Member

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    have you read Freud's "the interpretation of dreams" its really interesting and it might give you some fascinating new ideas
     
  13. dinokg Registered Senior Member

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    I haven't got to read to many dream interpretation books.

    One book I did read was Intangeable Evidence which talked about various psykic phenomina. It had one part on dreams telling the future and thats how I first learned about it.
     
  14. coluber Registered Senior Member

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    really was it good who is the auther?
     
  15. dinokg Registered Senior Member

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    I forget who the author was but It was a good book.

    It had a little bit of many psyhic mysteries.

    There was telling the future and seeing the past in dreams, telekinesis, strange stories, and stuff like that.

    The copy I found was at my high school library.

    I give it a 10 out of 10 because it is good.
     
  16. curioucity Unbelievable and odd Registered Senior Member

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    Well, physically, does dream have something to do with messy neural traffic?
     
  17. Mikki Registered Member

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    I had this one dream where the Grim Reaper was chasing me down a stairwell holding a bloody diaper. A couple of months later, I realized that bloody diaper symbolised my first period.

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  18. Tano Cup of cocoa, please. Registered Senior Member

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    Why do my dreams suck? I rarely have any decent or memorable ones. Is there anything that can make them more vivid?
     
  19. coluber Registered Senior Member

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    what about the strange sense of familriality you sometimes get when you do something and then you have a feeling like you either did this before or dreamt it?
     
  20. //drift I've Seen it. . .It's Rubbish Registered Senior Member

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    Deja vu? Seem to be plenty of theories on it around . I've definately had Deja Vu that was more a feeling of dreaming it previously, rather than doing it.
    Recently now and then memories of dreams and memories of real experiences seem to merge.

    The one that has changed least and is always very weakly available to me is one that suggests birth, with light and colours slipping into place, then some vague idea of a hospital room, rather than an image. There's no emotion connected to it and it's extremely vague, but persistent. I'm not sure if it was some odd very early dream or some kind of memory. Most likely dreamt early on, but somehow implanted like a memory, because the whole thing gives the feel of normal birth somehow, I have no idea how to explain, but I was a caesarian.
     
  21. coluber Registered Senior Member

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    its strange like a memory did it feal like it just surfaced, like something you forgot long ago and just now remembered?
     
  22. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    The best theories I have seen so far, based on recorded increases in protein levels during and after sleep -

    Dreams are caused when the proteins in the synapses are replenished. While the brain consists of some 100 billion neurons that are essentially electrical in nature the connections between them, the synapses, are bio-chemical. As signals are passed through the synapses proteins are consumed. As synapse protein levels become low you experience this as feelings of tiredness.

    When you sleep the protein replenishment activity begins, and dreams are just those parts of sleep where the changes to synapses cause random neuron firings, that’s why dreams seem so disjointed. Most dreams tend to include some aspects of recent conscious moments, mainly because those were the neural networks where proteins had been most recently consumed.

    This also explains why when you are tired you cannot think clearly or focus very well; the synapses have inadequate fuel to operate efficiently.

    Dreams can also be artificially stimulated by the use of recreational or hallucinogenic drugs. These drugs simply suppress or stimulate synapse function resulting in often bizarre, pleasant, soporific, or frightening, mental images and experiences. All they are doing is corrupting normal brain function. Effects are usually temporarily but some can cause permanent brain damage. Addiction of course is another issue.

    Meditation can also cause stimulated synapse activity. This occurs because during effective meditation the brain is being allowed to rest. In effect conscious activity is quiesced and the usual sleep function of synapse protein replenishment kicks in even though you are not asleep. For advanced mediators this state can be maintained for some 20 minutes that matches the same effect of 8 hours quality sleep. Such people then usually require very little actual sleep. Quality sleep combined with effective mediation results in maximum brain efficiency and focus.

    Drug users, once the effects have worn off, in contrast tend to be constantly tired and restless since their synapses are being used excessively, without any useful product.

    This is something of an over simplification of the subject and there is significant research in this area. My primary source is Susan Greenfield, Professor of Pharmacology at Oxford University.
     

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