Dreams: Could They Be All They Are Made Out To Be?

³Over a seventy-year life span, you¹ll devote at least fifty thousand hours to dreaming² (Segell 42). These dreams can be made up of many things. They can be a window into another world or ³like a urgent fax from your subconscious² (Graves 97). Many things can affect what we dream about and they are not always our previous thoughts. Things such as gender, information gained during the course of time, or even sensations received while asleep all contribute to the content of dreams. Many times they contribute more than most people think.

Gender affects many things, including the way we dream. ³Men typically dream about fighting, protecting, or competing in an outside environment; women are more likely to dream about relationships and loss in an inside environment² (Segell 42). Most men have been brought up with the notion that they must have more of a tendency of being aggressive. In this aggression they either dream about how aggressive they are or about the lack of aggression in their daily routine. Women, on the other hand, have typically been brought up to be more emotional than men. This up bringing has also affected the way women dream. ³Women are more likely to dial into their interior life whether awake or asleep² (Segell 42). This means that women will read into their dreams more frequently then men. Researchers have found that problems that occur during the day either at work or home and are worked through in your sleep (Segell 42). While men would most likely look at these dreams as nothing but a dream, women will try to face these problems throughout the day. Although there are many differences there are also similarities between men and women in dreams. ³Like women, you have slightly more negative than positive dreams² (Segell 42). Which in this case would show one of those similarities. Other similarities would include sex dreams and the ongoing infatuation about their body and physical appearances. This also shows that although men and women are very different their mind works very similarly. This could be from being brought up or society constantly showing no hope in the life we live.

In the course of the night your mind will keep working or trying to figure out problems that crossed your path over time.

³Dreams perform emotional homework that helps us master life¹s lessons² (Graves 190). The mind will work sub-consciously on the small things in life that are often missed because of larger problems. Many times your mind will put information together that was gathered over either a long or short periods of time. For instance, if two pieces of information were obtained, the mind would subconsciously put them together while in a dream state. While both men and women have the ability of doing this, women have an easier time remembering their dreams (Graves 190). This may be because of the content of the dreams or the fact that men normally do not worry about them as much. The mind also in the dream state can process certain outside stimuli. ³We close our most important sensory channels, our eyes, and try to protect the other senses from all stimuli or from any modification of the stimuli acting on them² (Freud 56). When asleep the body tries to close out all of the stimuli that would influence our dreams. The body tries hard to do this but when a strong enough stimuli is encountered when asleep we tend to wake up. However, this does not always work. That is why the mind registers these stimuli and turns them into our dream imagery. ³The sensory stimuli that reach us during sleep may very well become sources of dreams² ( Freud 57). The stimuli that could affect the dreams are what we feel like or certain sleeping positions may bring dream altering sensations . Almost every noise, contact or feeling influences a dream image. Many scientists have done studies on the reaction of stimuli on someone in a dream state. Through the researsh they found that the stimuli must be a of a certain amount of power dependind on what dream state the subject is in (Freud 59).

³There have been professional dream interpreters for many thousands of years² (Lowe 3). The problem with the all of the interpreters is that they looked for the meaning of the dreams and not why we we are having the dreams. Although many researchers have found many new facts and information on dreams there is still a lot of information that still needs to be discovered. Although the break through in dreams and psyche have baffled the scientific industry, the thought of being able to manipulate dreams is incredible.

Personally I feel that because of these break throughs the

human race may have just a little to much control over the mind. Which may be a good or a bad thing, that all depends on how you choose to think. I know I wouldn¹t want anyone that far into my mind to be able to explore my dreams. As a matter of fact, the thought that someone can manipulate my dreams now kind of makes me wonder, how much further will they go. Maybe you wouldn¹t mind the scientists do that to you but if they can get in, they can always tamper with what they find.

Work Cited

Graves, Ginny. ³What your dreams are trying to tell you.² Glamour Aug. 1998 v96 n8 p190-191, 236.

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. New York: AVON BOOKS,1965.

Lowe, Ralph. Interpreting Dreams. New York: Doubleday, 1963.

Segell, Michael. ³Dreams: his and hers.² Esquire Feb. 1996 v125 n2 p42.
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