Dreams are often puzzling and intriguing. You may dream of a flying giraffe, an adventure in Iceland or your upcoming math exam, but the debate on whether the dream world has an underlying significance to our daily lives remains contested territory.
Andrew Brook, director of Carleton’s Institute of Cognitive Science, has worked with dreams while doing psychoanalysis. “Dreams are the imagination at work while we are asleep,” he says.
Whether or not these products of imagination hold deeper meanings is the subject of much debate. However, one has to look only at history to see that some of the world’s most influential philosophies and inventions came about as a result of dreams. For example, Rene Descartes’ philosophy of dualism, Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, and Frederick Banting’s discovery of insulin are all examples of discoveries that were said to be spurred by dreams.
While some dreams may have obvious meanings, such as when we re-examine certain experiences, others may have disguised meanings and some dreams may simply be the mind playing around, Brook says.
However, since people spend approximately a third of their lives sleeping, it is comforting to know that dreams serve a purpose.
“Dreams serve some important role but the details are a long way from being clarified. One theory is that dreams help to sort out what in the previous day’s experience gets added to long-term memory and what gets dumped. But that is just one theory. There are many others,” Brook says.
Theories about the purpose of dreams range from Sigmund Freud’s theory of dreams as wish fulfillment of unconscious desires and thoughts, to the theory that dreams function as a type of psychotherapy.
While everyday events can affect dream content, not all events are equally influential, and according to Brook, people are much more likely to remember dreams that have a bigger emotional impact. Dreams of a negative nature are more commonly associated with females, while positive dreams are associated with males.
Dreams are part of a “vast domain of research and controversy, in which much has been researched and written and little has been agreed for over 100 years now,” Brook says.