Sleep and Dreaming

11 Key excerpts on "Sleep and Dreaming"

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  eBook - ePub

  Topics in the History of Psychology

  Volume II

  • G. A. Kimble, K. Schlesinger(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  This theory marks yet another point in the constant struggle to bridge the mind-body issues sharpened by the advancing discoveries about the central nervous system. Freud (1900/1965) had found it necessary in his approach to take a different position: “Scientific theories of dreams have no room for any problem of interpreting them, since in their view a dream is not a mental act at all, but a somatic process signalling the occurrence by indications registered on the mental appratus” (p. 128).

  It can be reasonably guessed that the relationships between neurophysiological correlates of sleep and the mental states associated with sleep as precursors, concomitants, and consequences will remain as fundamental challenges.

  CONCLUSION

  From this review of sleep and dreams, it is clear that these areas have not been of central concern in the development of contemporary psychology. They remain of peripheral interest. Of the 13,800 articles appearing in the Psychological Abstracts from January through June, 1981, 218 were indexed under “sleep” and 45 under “dreams.”

  The apparent lack of interest in these topics is puzzling. As a behavioral event, sleep constitutes roughly a third of the daily behavior of a human adult and two-thirds of that of a neonate. Furthermore, it is a condition before which all other behaviors bow down when it is present and which modifies behavior when it is wanting. As a state of mind, sleep is clearly psychologically challenging; it is a reversible and differentially responsive period of “non-mind,” as well as a breeding ground for a “third” state of unconsciousness, the dream.

  There are a few obvious contributors to this neglect. Much of the development of contemporary psychology, certainly from the 1920s, has been ordained by behaviorism (of both a small “b” and a large “B” type). From this perspective, sleep has limitations. Is this non-behaving really a behavior? Even if considered a “behavior,” it is sharply restricted in its variability. More critically, at the core of behaviorism’s concern is the mutability or modifiability of the behavior. Sleep is not a response controlled by learning or desire. In this context, sleep is likely to be viewed as a biological system such as digestion or the circulation of the blood—a homeostatic system with limited responsivity to learning, reinforcement, or motivation. Those interested in the sensory or information input side of psychology see their interests disappear with the onset of sleep. In short, sleep can be viewed as a variable which fits neither our theoretical conceptions nor our methods of study.

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  Dreaming

  A Cognitive-psychological Analysis

  • David Foulkes(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  any mental experience occurring during sleep. We now see that such an all-inclusive definition is not very helpful in either describing or explaining the mind’s activities during sleep. However, it’s been difficult to come up with an acceptable system for classifying these activities.

  2. Dreaming and Non-Rem Sleep

  Consider, for example, the variety of experiences people can report on non-REM awakenings. Significantly more often than on REM awakenings (in one study, on fully 20% of all non-REM awakenings10 ), subjects report “thinking” about something. They’re not simulating life, they’re just thinking about some aspect of it. Fairly often, the object of their thought is some aspect of their workaday world: an I.R.S. employee contemplates the amount of support you need to claim someone as a dependent, or a student “thinks” about an upcoming examination. Sometimes, the object of their thought is described topically rather than in any way that lends itself to propositional analysis: “I was thinking of Italy.” (Of what about Italy? The subject seems not to know.) What these “thinking” reports often seem to have in common is that, paradoxically, they don’t give evidence of much thinking. That is, subjects describe the object of their mental concern, but they typically don’t describe having done much real thinking about it. They haven’t actively thought through anything; their thinking has not been to any particular point or in the service of any particular goal. Occasionally, the lack of active, constructive thinking is so striking that the subject describes the experience as simply remembering, rather than thinking about, some real-life situation (“I was rehearsing my parents’ conversation with me on the phone last night”). “Remembering” reports also are given significantly more frequently on non-REM than on REM awakenings.11

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  Sleep Disorders

  Elements, History, Treatments, and Research

  • Kathleen J. Sexton-Radek Ph.D., Gina Graci(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 10 Dreaming as a Psychological Process

  W hy do we dream, why are some dreams frightening, and why do we only remember some of our dreams? Hypotheses have abounded for years regarding the meaning and biological or neurological pathway of dreams. Some people earn a living by analyzing dreams, but what do dreams really mean, and what is the current dream landscape? The symbolic meaning of dreams is called the latent content of dreams, and many people believe there are hidden messages in dreams. Some scientists believe that dreaming is related to depression, and some therapists postulate that if the unconscious meaning of dreams can be interpreted, then psychological distress could be relieved (Cherry, 2020). This chapter will explore dreaming as a psychological process.

  A dream is defined as a physiologically and psychologically conscious state that occurs during sleep. It is often characterized by a rich array of endogenous sensory, motor, emotional, and other experiences (American Psychological Association [APA], 2020). Dreams mainly occur in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and may be logical or illogical. Dream interpretation is the attempt at finding meaning from dreams as it applies to an individual’s life.

  Sigmund Freud believed that the meaning and content of dreams were heavily encrypted and hard to translate (Lyon, 1990). The hidden meaning of dreams played an important role in Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, and he believed that bringing the hidden meaning of a dream into conscious awareness could relieve psychological distress (Freud, 1913). For instance, Freud believed that the latent content of a dream was not only suppressed but hidden by the subconscious mind to protect the person from thoughts and feelings that were hard to cope with (Cherry, 2020).

  While the function of sleep is hypothezied to be based on restorative properties, there is no concluding evidence that this is true. The early work of Dr. Rosalind Cartwright (the Grandmother of Sleep) showed the scientific measurement of Sleep and Dreaming, primarily dreams and the process of dreaming. “Dreams,” wrote Cartwright, “are our private perceptions which cannot be validated or shared by others” (Cartwright, 1977). She also postulated that dreams may “provide us with a direct cure for certain mental problems long before anyone determines exactly what Sleep and Dreaming are for” (Lyon, 1990).

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  Psychology in Action

  • Karen R. Huffman, Katherine Dowdell, Catherine A. Sanderson(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  1. Everyone needs 8 hours of sleep a night to maintain sound mental and physical health. 2. Dreams have special or symbolic meaning. 3. Some people never dream. 4. Dreams last only a few seconds and occur only in REM sleep. 5. When genital arousal occurs during sleep, it means the sleeper is having a sexual dream. 6. Most people dream only in black and white, and blind people don’t dream. 162 CHAPTER 5 States of Consciousness Four Sleep Theories How do scientists explain our shared need for sleep? There are four key theories: 1. Adaptation/protection theory The most common explanation for sleep is that it evolved to conserve energy and provide protection from predators (Drew, 2013; Tsoukalas, 2012). From an evolutionary perspective, it’s adaptive to sleep because it conserves calories, es- pecially when food is scarce. Furthermore, sleeping at night helps us avoid becoming prey to animals that are more active at night. Indeed, as you can see in Figure 5.4, animals vary greatly in how much sleep they need each day. Those with the highest likelihood of being eaten by others, a higher need for food, and the lowest ability to hide tend to sleep the least. 2. Repair/restoration theory According to this theory, sleep helps us recuperate from the depleting effects of daily waking activ- ities. Essential chemicals and bodily tis- sues are repaired or replenished while we sleep, and the brain repairs itself and clears potentially toxic waste products that accu- mulate (Iliff et al., 2012; Konnikova, 2014; Underwood, 2013; Xie et al., 2013). We re- cover not only from physical fatigue but also from emotional and intellectual demands (Blumberg, 2015). When deprived of REM sleep, most people “catch up” later by spending more time than usual in this state (the so-called REM rebound), which further supports this theory.

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  An Introduction to the Psychology of Dreaming

  • Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D.(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  Dream reports gathered from people sleeping in the laboratory indicate that the vast majority of dreams obey the same basic rules of logical association that govern our waking thought and language. While Foulkes grants that dreams do Cognitive Psychology and Dreaming 89 emerge out of personally relevant thoughts and emotions, he sees no proof that dreams are saying anything in particular. Unlike waking speech, dreams are not intended to communicate a specific message: “I conclude that we have no sense of intention during dreaming and we are unable, asleep or awake, to reconstruct plausibly why we dreamed a par- ticular dream because there was no intention in the formation of any particular dream image” (Foulkes 1982b, 176–177). For Foulkes, as for Freud, the essence of dreaming is a set of cognitive mechanisms by which thought and language are structured: “That is, mechanisms whose investment is not so much in saying any particular thing as in insuring that whatever is said is literally and thematically comprehensible” (1982b, 186). Foulkes’s key argument is that the sleeping mind is not functionally distinct from the waking mind. The human mind is always operating as an information-processing system, whether it is producing waking thoughts during the day or dreams during the night. Although he is skeptical about any effort to interpret special meanings hidden in dream contents, Foulkes affirms that dreaming probably does serve a number of valuable psychological functions: • The complex stories and plots found in dreams suggest that dreaming allows people to exercise their powers of narrative integration, making symbolic knowledge more easily accessible to waking consciousness: “Becoming human is, from this perspective, learning to understand and to be able to tell ‘stories.’ Dreaming surely might play some role in this pro- cess” (1985, 202).

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  Psychology

  Modules for Active Learning

  • Dennis Coon, John Mitterer, Tanya Martini, , Dennis Coon, John Mitterer, Tanya Martini, (Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  (REMember to get some REM!) Dreams—A Royal Road? Learning Outcome 24.3 Name and briefly describe three theories of dreaming Here’s what we know so far: Most people go into REM sleep and dream four or five times a night, at roughly 90-minute intervals. We also know that REM sleep may help us consolidate important memories. To continue our discussion of sleep, let’s consider an age-old ques-tion about dreaming: How meaningful are dreams? Some theorists believe that dreams have deeply hidden mean-ings. Others regard dreams as nearly meaningless. Yet others hold that dreams reflect our waking thoughts, fantasies, and emotions (Hartmann, 2011). Let’s exam-ine all three views. Psychodynamic Dream Theory Psychodynamic theories of dreaming emphasize internal conflicts and unconscious forces (Fischer & Kächele, 2009). Interpreting dreams is such an important part of psycho-analysis that Sigmund Freud referred to them as “the royal road to the unconscious.” (See Module 66.) Freud’s (1900) REM rebound The occurrence of extra rapid eye movement sleep following REM sleep deprivation. Non-REM (NREM) sleep Non-rapid eye movement sleep character-istic of sleep Stages 1, 2, 3, and 4. Repair/restorative theories of sleep Proposals that lowering body and brain activity and metabolism during sleep may help con-serve energy and lengthen life. Sleep deprivation Being prevented from getting desired or needed amounts of sleep. Microsleep A brief shift in brain-wave patterns to those of sleep. Sleep-deprivation psychosis A major disruption of mental and emotional functioning brought about by sleep loss. Psychodynamic theory Any theory of behavior that emphasizes internal conflicts, motives, and unconscious forces. Wish fulfillment Freudian belief that many dreams express uncon-scious desires. landmark book, The Interpretation of Dreams , first advanced the idea that many dreams are based on wish fulfillment — an expression of unconscious desires.

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  Routledge Library Editions: Sleep and Dreams

  9 Volume Set

  • Various(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Or, dream bizarreness, and closely related states of consciousness in waking associated with psychedelic drugs and deep meditation, may be taken as a uniquely direct manifestation of the processes involved in metaphor and imagination. Methodology for the Study of Dreams Possibly in no other area of psychological study is the contrast between laboratory-experimental methods (for the study of psychophysiology and content norms of recalled dreams) and phenomenology (of special types, cases, and mean- ings) so striking--or the need for their creative synthesis more obvious. Indeed, any attempt at a cognitive psychology of dreams will tap directly into the major debates of the human sciences. While positions taken on any of the above dimensions tend to determine what investigators "see" when they look at dreams, each position has also managed to generate new and unexpected empirical findings. If, as it seems, we have strong evidence favoring both poles of these alternatives, then we will want a cognitive psychology of dreaming that is correspondingly eclectic and multiple--but that has not proven so easy. The Dream as a Linguistic Narrative-- Absent in Young Children and Lower Manunals:  The Contribution of David Foulkes  In recent years David Foulkes has worked prodigiously to develop a cognitive psychology of dreaming as psycholinguistic 256 Toward a Cognitive Psychology of Dreams skill. The great strength of such an approach is, of course, that most dreaming involves an internally generated story, and it is this side of the phenomenon that Fou1kes makes central. He points to a potential separation of the processes of dream- ing from the physiology of the REM state, arguing that a cog- nitive theory of dreams can largely dispense with psycho- physiological studies of REM sleep.

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  Sleep Psychiatry

  • Alexander Golbin, Howard Kravitz, Louis G. Keith, Alexander Golbin, Howard Kravitz, Louis G. Keith(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  A psychological model was developed to address the issues of dreams and of affect changes in psychiatric pathology. It started when Snyder 56 reported dreams from 635 REM awakenings over 250 nights from 56 subjects. His conclusion was unexpected: the typical dream is a ‘clear, coherent and detailed account of a realistic situation involving the dreamer and other people caught up in very ordinary activities and preoccupations, and usually talking about them’. Another of his stunning suggestions was that emotionally disturbed dreams are coming from emotionally disturbed people, because the dreams reflect this disturbance. Normal and abnormal dreams 135 Although these conclusions seem to contradict a common experience, they found support in the dream research of children. Foulkes concluded 10,47 that children’s dreams developed in parallel with the child’s psychomotor development, meaning that they get more realistic with age. Dement believed that we need to dream, because of the rebound of REM after REM deprivation 57 , but REM deprivation is not always equal to dream deprivation and does not produce hallucinations and other psychotic behavior. In fact, it is the other way around— REM deprivation sometimes improves mental and physical performance. Psychologists emphasized the notion that dreams have something to do with emotions. Unpleasant dreams are more frequent then pleasant ones. Breger and colleagues 58 studied dreams before and after elective surgery. Their conclusion was that dreams have an information processing function, which is free from a waking logic. The dream function is the attempt at emotional problem solving in sleep. This concept is very close to Rotenberg’s ‘search activity’ concept (see Chapter 3). Kramer 28 confirmed that dreams could improve the person’s waking emotional state, specifically from more to less unhappiness. Kramer sums up the function of dreams as ‘selective mood regulation’.

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  Memory in Mind and Brain

  • Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Vadim A. Staklo(Authors)
  • 1983(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  In preparation for that inquiry, let us first summarize briefly the psychoanalytic clin-ical observations and inferred functional mental principles de-scribed in chapters 3, 4, and 5, and the experimental observations and inferred functional neurophysiological principles derived from the field of cognitive neuroscience, described in chapters 6 and 7. We will then review those aspects of the physiology of 130 THE SLEEPING BRAIN REM sleep that seem relevant to the functional mental and neuro-physiological principles and begin to interpret the theoretical im-plications of the data. This approach should provide a basis for comparing two sepa-rately derived sets of functional memory principles, one from the domain of mind and the other from the domain of brain, and assessing each set in relation to a single psychobiological state (REM sleep) and hence to each other. This assessment, in principle, will be required for the ultimate formulation of a satisfactory psy-chobiological model of dreams and dreaming. This particular phase of the study represents an effort to move in the direction of formulating such a model, but it is focused rather than general, concentrating mainly on one central aspect of dream process, namely the generation of dream imagery. The Functional Mental Principles Dream collages appear to be put together from parts of sensory percepts taken from different historical epochs of the dreamer's life. The perceptual residues are mainly visual, but they may also be in auditory, tactile, proprioceptive, and even occasionally olfac-tory and taste modalities. A person's dream images appear to be associatively connected with each other by virtue of shared emo-tional meanings and to be arranged accordingly in nodal memory networks.

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  Sleep Apnea

  Current Diagnosis and Treatment

  • W. J. Randerath, B. M. Sanner, V. K. Somers, J. J. F. Herth(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • S. Karger

    (Publisher)

  Abstract Sleep has a restorative function which is more than rest. Sleep is an active process which follows its own program with a sequence of different sleep stages and autonomous nervous system functions related to them. Slow wave sleep is mainly related to physical recreation with humoral and neuro-endocrine excretions activated. REM sleep is mainly but not exclusively related to mental recreation with associated dream-ing and memory functions. The autonomous nervous system with ventilation, cardiocirculatory, vascular and temperature regulation differs between slow wave sleep and REM sleep. More regular control is found in slow wave sleep and more variability is found in REM sleep. The sleep processes follow a well-described temporal pattern with sleep cycles of a duration between 80 and 11 0 min.The sleep process itself is embedded in the circadian rhythm and occurs naturally during the dark phase of the day with a mean duration of 7–8 h. In order to study sleep disorders, the knowledge about physiological sleep, physiological effects of sleep deprivation, and autonomic and endocrine functions associated with it, is essential. The key question for sleep physiology, why we sleep, is still unanswered. It is well studied that many restorative functions are linked to the sleep process. Physical recre-ation, endocrine and immune functions are closely linked to sleep. Mental restoration, memory consolidation, mood and behavior are also dependent on a healthy and undisturbed sleep. Our knowledge about the mechanisms of sleep-wake states is increasing even if their neuro-anatomical locations still have not been found [1]. All physiological functions are embedded in the circadian day-night cycle. The sleep-wake cycle is closely linked to the circadian cycle and both influence each other. For the newborn child, the adaptation of the sleep-wake cycle to the circadian cycle takes some time and is part of the develop-ment process.

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  Sleep & Dreaming

  Origins, Nature and Functions

  • D. Cohen, H. J. Eysenck(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Pergamon

    (Publisher)

  In fact, demonstrating that stage 1-NREM cannot substitute for lost REM would constitute strong evidence for the unique function(s) of REM sleep and REM dreaming despite the superficial similarities. However, saying this, I do not mean to suggest that the nature of dream content is of little interest in the experimental exploration of the REM motive. Quite the contrary, if we accept the belief that there is a psychophysiological bridge carrying information and influence both ways (Akiskal and McKinney, 1975), then information about the biological characteristics of REM sleep should have implications about dreaming, and information about dreaming should have implications about the biological substrates of REM sleep (Bertini, 1973; Hartmann, 1973). Despite this, we have next to nothing to go on with respect to the changes in the dreaming process (other than characteristics like intensification of dreamlike fantasy) associated with a heightening of the REM sleep motive under conditions of REM deprivation. Perhaps this reflects the rather primitive state of dream analysis. I will have some comments later about the nature of dream content in repressors and sensitizers under different kinds of presleep conditions. However, this information will not be sufficient to advance significantly our knowledge of the role of dreaming per se in the expression or mediation of the hypothesized REM motive. Restoration of optimal levels of cortical arousal This hypothesis stems from the discussion of REM-NREM dynamics provided by Ephron and Carrington (1966). They have characterized REM sleep as a mechanism of endogenous restimulation of the cerebral cortex which occurs after a period of NREM sleep. They speak of the reafferentation properties of REM sleep, and consider them to be of great importance to the maturation of brain function in the developing neonate (Roffwarg et al, 1966).

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