How Do Dreams Work Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

How Do Dreams Work - Research Paper Example Dreams have been considered prophetic and delivered from the spiritual plane. The ways in which dreams have been stimulated include the concept of incubating in a place or chamber designed specifically to create a prophetic dream. However, dreams have been most used in the search for understanding the unconscious mind. Theories proposed by Jung and Freud have defined ways in which to approach dreams for their therapeutic values. The way in which dreams work has been studied for the brain waves that are associated to the different stages of sleep. As well, the way in which they are associated to the mental state of the individual has been examined for the many ways that dreams can be associated. The brain has been studied while sleep occurs in order to determine which parts of the brain are working compared to which parts are not working during the dream state. Still, the associations of the events in dreams to the biological event have yet to be fully explained. The state of dreaming has been somewhat defined for its biological function, but the true nature of dreams and how they work has yet to be fully established. Dreams: The Theoretical Divide Dreams have provided a great deal of study to psychologists, neurologists, and to disciplines that are concerned with the function of the brain. The concept of dreams has also been an interest to sociologists and anthropologists as they study culture. Sigmund Freud constructed his theory of dreams as purposeful in his theories of psychoanalysis where he insisted that dreaming had no connection to neurology and was a function of the mind rather than part of the brain. This divided the concept of mind and brain and even when modern scientists discovered REM and found evidence of brain functions in association with dreaming, it was still framed with the psychoanalytical structures, believing that the content of dreams was a separate issue to the physiology of dreams (Hobson 2005, xii). Previous to the work of Freud, peop le saw dreams, primarily, as nonsense of the mind. Some cultures believed in the mystical qualities of dreams, but the general belief about dreams was that they had no real value. Freud changed this through his discussions about the meaning of dreams in regard to psychoanalysis. He proposed that the mind had a hidden censor that could protect a person from sexual and aggressive threats, but that to act on every perceived threat would be socially unacceptable. The dream phase would allow for threatening thoughts to transform into harmless symbols within dreams. In allowing guilty feelings, anxieties, and inappropriate desires to manifest in dreams, the social world is safe from the intrusion of those thoughts (Plotnik and Kouyoumdjian 160). The two new concepts that Freud brought to the forefront of psychological evaluation was that dreams consisted of symbols and that they could be interpreted for psychologically relevant information (Plotnik and Kouyoumdjian 160). The idea that dre ams held symbols and could be interpreted was new from a cultural understanding as many religions and cultures had depended on the symbols and interpretations of those symbols for mystical meaning for centuries, perhaps back to the dawn of human history. However, that these symbols and interpretations could be used for the scientific study of the mind and focused upon the individual was a revolutionary idea. Freud had three