Thread: Dream development within the individual

ah, nice. i see they have another section similar to this topic... I am a noob.

In general, I think dreams reflect who we are. As we change, so do our dreams. This is shown by the general progression from child to adult: as children, our dreams are often nonsensical, or at least illogical, and characterized by great creativeness and inquisitiveness. We also have more nightmares when we are younger, because we are afraid of more things. As we get older, dreams become more logical, more in line with reality as we build a concept of what things are like. Nightmares decrease in frequency, because our irrational fears of things like monsters dwindle.

I think lucid dreaming is a slightly different issue. The act of having lucid dreams is, usually, a learned skills. Naturals and children often have lucid dreams without trying, which is an exception. What we do in our lucid dreams once again reflects who we are, perhaps better than normal dreams. In our lucid dreams, we are given the chance to do whatever we want, with absolutely no consequences; this often brings out the true individual with respect to morality, because law and other consequences that may hold us back in waking life no longer apply.

In short, to answer your question, it seems that as we become more or less complex and thoughtful , so do our dreams. It seems that lucid dreaming, dream recall, and other things that generally deal with awareness of our dreams are learned, as can probably be shown by comparing the frequency and quality of dream recall and lucid dreaming of people on this forum to the average population.