Thread: Dreams: Its not the content but what the mind is doing.

Site is going through mega upgrades right now, so nothing works excepts the homepage and forums.

http://www.abnormalpsy.org/community
Christopher Shaw
[email protected]

This is my personal write up/theory on dreams.

Introduction

Well I believe I will have to start off by saying that the body has a function for everything. Yes even dreams. We should start with a little fundamental background information to make the point clear, and it starts at evolution. Evolution works on the basis of combining information, and in the process utilizing it to the full effect because of the variable constants associated with it works inside on an equalized scale. Everything in nature works towards a goal to thrive with everything around them. Everything except humans which work on the basis of the environment that we created. Society in general neglects the laws of nature or more so redefines them based on our own standards. However the fundamental rules of evolution still created our bodies and they still run on those very same principles.

Problems that society is creating

It has only been recently that man has come in to his own and learned to utilize all kinds of information because of the calming affects that society has provided. It has basically taken the instinct to live out of human behaviour and totally replaced it with linear thinking. Or basically the tendency to learn things in sequence. There is a problem with this though, the human brain is not branded for this new line of thinking as we as a race are still adapting to it, as it has basically evolved up in to this point to recognize patterns, patterns that have been in nature learned through survival that has shaped our instincts today. The sheer level of context of linear type thinking has created a bi product. A bi product called dreams. You have to realize that the human brain runs on a compromise, and this compromise is the real reason why we have such things like ADHD, alcoholism, mass amounts of drug use, schizophrenia, simply because when you combine the context of everyday life with pattern synthesis, our instinctual drive. Conflicts will and do arise. When I say instinctual drive I mean the fact that people pass on their instinctive traits to there children in the womb. Traits caused by today’s context of living that have stressed out the rapidly maturing brain cells of the child in the womb that has made the cells extra sensitive. Extra sensitive brain cells upstart the instinctual behaviour and put people on edge resulting in a conflict, a conflict that in which the person turns to an external source of transference such as alcohol, drugs, venting or whatever the means to release the stress of every day life.

Dreams as a natural defence / Unconscious wish fulfillment

In light of the mental scars that society brings forth, the brain has a natural defence, it try’s to clear out the garbage of every day life to bring things back to an equilibrium state. That is why sleep is important as it allows our body to recuperate and let the built up stimuli accumulated dissipate from everyday living. Now I am going to borrow an idea Freud proposed, dreams in general do fulfill our needs, if we have a desire while we are sleeping, we end up acting out the desire and I have experienced this myself on multiply occasions. However it isn’t a message, all it represents is a prevailing idea to the activity going on in our head and that activity takes precedence over anything else because it deals with a need that we need to satisfy at that moment whether it be a want in every day life to a personal emotional need, and in a way it also represents the balance that our body is constantly trying to reach, if we need something then it reacts accordingly. It really is that simply, but using Freud's model that he proposed I am going to take it one step higher. Right up to the unconscious level of activity as his model proposed deals only with the conscious part. However the unconscious part deals with the annual cleaning out of ideas that would be considered clutter, and hence dreams are born. Clutter that has accumulated from the context of everyday life, ideas that have been discussed or thought about in relation to important events, ideas associated with daydreaming, anything really but I cant explain the context of the dream itself, just what the mind is doing in the process. Dreams are derived from the calming of neurons, when the neurons enter hibernation they release the ideas which in affect turn into dreams, and it is also why we forget them almost instantly, simply because an idea is being released. However if those ideas are not cleaned out then they cause conflicts. Conflicts such as schizophrenia that arise in the middle of the day to turn the person into a walking dreamer, basically making the person lose conscious control of their body while the unconscious takes control to provide emergency cleaning. Again the unconscious was developed first and therefore still controls aspects of who we are, and therefore we are still a slave to it when the need arises. This also lends to the notion that people who live rather sheltered lives develop better, I am talking about the general here simply because it encompasses most of the population. Ailments among people who grew up in a good home rarely come forth. This is because of the premise that I mentioned earlier, extra sensitive cells vs. the notion of compromise representing conflict between instinctual drive and the context of every day life. I personally believe just like anything else, if the foundations are thwarted then everything after that point gets modified in a negative way as well. It really is that simple. If people want to find a cause for today’s various ailments, then they have to start listening to every aspect of life, the environment around us, and even start thinking outside the box but most of all, start listening. You will get a lot further in life if you just listen and incorporate as many ideas as you possible into your thought process. Just because something is taught in a linear fashion doesn’t always make it correct, it just makes it common. And dreams certainly are a part of a larger scheme of things. To equalize the body back to an optimal state that evolution itself was founded on.

What I just outlined are normal dreams, however there are dreams that come across so vivid that they can be exhilarating or scary. Both fulfil the same purpose but with two very different outcomes, one being a nightmare and other being a wild ride.

There are two types of stimuli that affect dreams.

There are 2 types of stimulus that affect the vivid dreams.

1. Stimuli that is positive in nature
2. Stimuli that is negative in nature

If you lead a very positive life and all your psychological needs are taken care of then your dreams are going to be very positive in nature, and for good reason.

And then there is negative stimuli that causes nightmares which are usually based on insecurity.

In both cases the dream is very vivid and causes you to wake up. Now if the nightmares represent insecurities of some sort, and my gf used to have them a lot before I came along in which they disappeared, and I had them because of other things that I was able to pinpoint to the exact hour. Then it shows at least some evidence in why people have them, at least with me and my gf. All in all, a nightmare is just another idea that is expressed through a dreamstate that we have a personal issue with that makes us feel uncomfortable. They are essentially the same as any other dream though, the nightmare part is essentially how we feel about the idea associated with the dream.

Positive dreams would work the same way. They would generate additional stimulus creating an escalation in overall feeling because of the strong emotion that the dream is originating from. This would represent positive stimuli and a good state of mind making for a very vivid memorable dream.

I think when the mind is trying to clean out ideas that hold emotional content, that attachment creates additional emotion and activates other neurons which hold other ideas leading up to a state where you have to wake up.

In the normal case if nothing emotional is stimulated the neurons calm and dreams are forgotten almost instantly.

There is another aspect to this as well. Schizophrenics who go into a dream like state while having an attack will experience a change in thought sometimes. They will think one thing but get back another msg, like the mind intervened and changed it a long the way because they are still fully awake. When you are sleeping this does not happen as the conscious isn’t fully present. This tells me that the mechanism responsible for the change in thought pattern isn’t active and dreams are allowed to run wild with the connections making the dream illogical and intelligible. And for this reason I believe there is a greater purpose to the dreaming state. Because if there is nothing to intervene and fix things with some logic. The mind is allowed to run wild to restore the equilibrium. Just like the body would react to somebody taking cocaine. Increases the metabolism to get rid of whatever foreign substances are in body. Same type of affect takes place. And once the ideas are purged. The mind is ready for the next day.

An addition quote from my forum about the content.

My quote about the content of a dream.

Well the ideas had to have come from somewhere, when you are born; the mind basically has a clean slate. There is basically nothing there. And you slowly add to it with your every day thought process. To prove this point I am going to use a baby as an example. A baby will perceive depth perception but continue to go forth and walk off the edge anyways only to fall down and hurt himself. He may do this a few times before finally associated the pain with the fall and avoid such matters in the future. This is one of the first cyclical actions a baby learns because an emotion was erected. Now whenever a baby sees an edge that emotional experience will come to mind activating whatever else he learned from that incident. This inadvertently illuminates a series of neurons all with related ideas with emotion at the core.

Another example of your mind accessing information would be somebody playing the game of chess. A pro's chess players mind was scanned while he was in a game. And they found that he was accessing old memories. Old memories based on loses and what not to do to gain the upper hand in controlling the board. Even in chess there is a fundamental rule in which to win you have to control the layout and flow of the game, effectively giving you the win. That is why many games of chess at the pro level never finish and they resign because the pros know they have lost the game based on the control by accessing old loss memory and in general by studying the game.

The mind works very much the same way in dreams, only this time every time it discards something it erects other neurons in the process by association but since there may be emotional attachment to those other neurons the idea doesn’t get discarded. Dreams then are constructed by what is active in the mind and the garbage gets thrown out while giving you this wild ride in the dream itself.

Bottom line the ideas had to come from somewhere and simple put everybody looks at something a different way and all kinds of associations are crafted, whether or not they are emotional based which most nightmares and important events are is really up to you. I can’t tell you how the associations occurred. I can only help with the emotional bit and what the mind is doing in the process.