Dreams -- Are They Psychologically Significant
psychologically insignificant, or something in between?
The phenomenon of dreaming during sleep has long been a topic of interest to those interested in understanding the human mind. On one hand, there may be reason to believe that dream content and visual imagery in dreams provide clues to the unconscious mind as famously postulated by the psychological theorist who introduced the psychodynamic approach to understanding human psychology. On the other hand, there may be equally good anecdotal evidence that dreaming in humans is not particularly significant, particularly since non-human animals also apparently dream. It may be that human dreams are psychologically significant, but any such conclusion would have to be established by further research distinguishing dream sleep from non-dream sleep in the same manner as previous studies distinguishing REM sleep from non-REM sleep.
Introduction
Sleep is a phenomenon that appears to be universal among all known higher organisms and it is quite clear that it serves a crucial physiological function, largely by virtue of the consequences of any prolonged sleep deprivation. Human beings and other animals alike become extremely stressed when deprived us sleep and humans in particular can suffer psychological breakdown, even death, when that deprivation is prolonged. Nevertheless, it is not yet understood precisely what the physiological function of sleep is or why it is so important for human health. Beyond physiological benefits of sleep, there may also be important psychological functions involved. One clue in that regard is the phenomenon of dreaming during sleep. In fact, the apparent link between dreaming and psychology led Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) to devote his first published work, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) to the topic and it played a significant role in his psychodynamic theory of human psychology that is the basis of all modern psychoanalytic psychology.
Discussion
The Physiology of Sleep
Human beings and other higher organisms all sleep on a regular basis, varying in the amount of time devoted to it by different species with respect to the amount of time spent sleeping, whether they are diurnal or nocturnal, and by chronological age. Generally, human beings sleep approximately one-third...
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