Three things had gotten me into psychology for the most part :
Personality tests
The ideas behind witchcraft
Dreams
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Dream = a sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person’s mind
They're often vivid, emotional, and bizarre.
We usually dream of ordinary events and everyday experiences, most involving some anxiety or misfortune. And approximately 80% of them are marked by at least one negative emotion.
Most dreams occur during REM sleep; those that happen during NREM sleep tend to be vague, fleeting images. And most sleep theorists agree that REM sleep and its associated dreams serve an important function, as shown by the REM rebound that occurs following REM deprivation in humans and other species.
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Within the AP Psychology curriculum, there are five major views of the purpose of dreams that can be remembered as the anagram "PACIF(y)" :
Physiological function - Regular brain stimulation from REM sleep may help develop and preserve neural pathways. (At the same time, it doesn't quite explain why we may have meaningful dreams.)
Activation-synthesis - REM sleep triggers neural activity that evokes random visual memories, which our sleeping brain weaves into stories. (But it’s our brain weaving the stories, so this still tells us something about ourselves.)
Cognitive development - Dream content reflects dreamers’ level of cognitive development - their knowledge and understanding. Dreams simulate our lives, including worst-case scenarios (However, it does not propose an adaptive function of dreams.)
Information-processing - Dreams help us sort out the day’s events and consolidate our memories. (But why do we sometimes dream about things we have not experienced and about past events?)
Freud’s wish-fulfillment - Dreams preserve sleep and provide a “psychic safety valve” - expressing otherwise unacceptable feelings; contain manifest content and a deeper layer of latent content. (Unfortunately, this lacks scientific support and dreams can be interpreted in many different ways.)
...Feel free to interpret the "y" as "why" - in terms of why dream interpretations are given certain names
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For as long as I can remember, I would always record my dreams - no matter how bizarre they were.
There was one I remember most vividly, which was transcribed into the scenery of a certain visualization exercise (complete with low-poly visuals)...
There was one I remember where I abysmally failed an important psychology test the day before the actual scores were supposed to be released.
And there was also one where I was a cult leader and performed human sacrifices.
And most of the dreams I had were lucid. Which approximately 55% of the population are guaranteed to experience at least once in their lives.
In fact - one of my earliest memories consisted of looking at a cliffside one time.
And I only had one thought that repeated itself.
"I wonder what would happen if I jumped."
So I did.
I woke up a few seconds later on the floor.
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A few months ago, I had taken a trip to Disneyland - looking to find a gift for a senior who is leaving for the United States soon.
And I came across some dream catchers for sale, which I vividly recall reading about in primary school.
The beautiful dreams then pass through the threads and slide down the feathers to reach the sleeper and comfort him. Bad dreams, on the other hand, are trapped in the web and then destroyed, burned by the daylight.
You could say that the idea of having bad dreams being disintegrated by the sun's rays always stood out to me.
Do they work?
Not quite. But I can't deny that they're fun to believe in.
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Though there is a lingering question that remains : do dreams really mean anything?
This has been debated by psychologists and neuroscientists for many years.
Despite the many scientific theories that had surfaced regarding the appearance of dreams, many people still instinctively choose to believe that their dreams are trying to tell them something.
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