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Hayley King

UWRT 1103

The Truth about Dreams

During my inquiry project, I thoroughly researched details and statistics about dreams

and what their purpose serves in our lives. Dreaming is a unique process that we humans endure

because it is a way to escape from the real world and encounter new journeys in our minds.

Everyone dreams at some point during the night, particularly during REM sleep, and many of us

may recall some very weird dreams.

In order to fully understand the concept of dreams, tThe first inquiry question I developed

was simple: Why do we have dreams? Scientific studies have been performed on peoples brains

while they were asleep to develop theories and ideas on why we have such vivid dreams at night.

One article I reviewed was developed by a clinical psychologist named Michael J. Breus.

Michael claimed that some scientists propose that dreams have no certain reasoning behind them,

but others who actually study dreams have a strong theory that they do serve an actual purpose,

While some scientists posit that dreaming has no direct functionbut instead is a consequence

of other biological processes that occur during sleepmany studying sleep and dreams believe

dreaming serves a primary purpose (Breus, 2015). What purpose may can this be? Most

peoples dreams have no connection with their real life. Dreams are usually sudden and random

with people that we may not even recall. If dreams serve a primary purpose, what is their exact

role? Since these words came from an actual psychologist, it stronglyreally changed my view on

the importance of dreaming. I researched how reliable this psychologist is, whom is known is

also known as the sleep doctor. Michael Breus has been on the Dr. Oz show and owns his own

clinic. He has been interviewed on several others shows as well because he He is one of the few
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psychologists in the world who specialize in sleep disorders and dreaming. His information was

valuable and seemed to be based off a lot of fact. After hearing that there is still no definite

answer to why we dream and only theories to base from, I am shocked that no one can dig deep

enough to find one common answer.

The next question I formulated was related to lucid dreaming. I wanted to understand the

meaning behind lucid dreams and what they consist of because this may be able to back up many

of the theories being made about dreams. I found a blog that explained lucid dreaming as the

ability to consciously observe and/or control your dreams (Turner, n.d.). Lucid dreaming is a

unique form of dreaming that I never even knew about beforehand. This author went

oncontinued to explain how to teach your mind how to lucid dream on its own. This author

seemed to be genuine, and once I dug deeper, I found that she was the founder of the blog. She

also created an intensive online course about the process of lucid dreaming that you can

purchase on the web. The author, Rebecca, quit her job as a journalist to create this whole

website about the ins and outs of lucid dreaming. After reading this article, I wondered- if you

can teach yourself to lucid dream so easily, why do more people not do it? Why is it rarely heard

or talked about if it is such a unique experience? The reason for this may have been discovered

as I continued to do more digging. One article claims, Research suggests that our brains have

trouble distinguishing whats imagined from whats real (Rossen, 2016). If you are unable to tell

what is real from what is fake, this may lead to large amounts of confusion, eventually causing

yourself to be put in dangerous situations. You can search through the web and find several lucid

dream stories that others have shared, but I chose not to include these in my annotations because

a story from some random person on the internet may not be totally authentic. Including stories
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from informal people on the web with no skilled backgrounds may give false leads about lucid

dreaming.

My favorite source I used for the whole project was also about lucid dreaming. This

source talks about how lucid dreaming can actually be dangerous to a human. The article says,

Its sort of like living a double life. Except you cant really talk about it. (Rossen, 2016). We

are so caught up in the moment and love sharing our weird dreams with others that we dont

realize how influential they can be. The article talks about several specific incidents where

people literally caused harm to others because of how intense their dreams were. One lady

indisputably struggled with her lucid dreaming practices after she could not depict a dream

memory from a real memoryone. The article claims, People think its a safe high. No high is

safe. (Rossen, 2016). LThe lucid dreaming can cause false awakenings and become dangerous

to the dreamer because they may not be fully aware of the location their body is in. The author of

this text, Jake Rossen, seemed to have key facts that made the reader, myself, really concerned

aboutmake room for concern about lucid dreaming and its effects. Jake has published many other

articles through this website, and I believe he is a genuine source to get key information fromIn

my opinion, I believe more studies should be done on lucid dreaming in order to determine the

actual influences it can have on the mind and body.

One of my other leads referred to Sigmund Freud, who had a strong influence on the

research of dreams and the raw facts revolving around the concept of sleep. Almost everyone has

heard of Freud, because of his consistent research on dreams and how they are part of the

unconscious mind. According to the author, Freud developed a topographical model of the

mind, whereby he described the features of the minds structure and function (McLeod, 2013).

The author goes on throughout the article to explain Freuds work and what he discoveredthe
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discoveries he made. I researched more about the author of this article to determine how reliable

his facts were, and the The author of this article actually has a psychology degree and a masters

degree in research. The author claimed to begin this website back in 2007 by publishing some of

his teaching notes. Freud is a popular psychologist known to many and I believe this former

college student provided valuable information to allow us to understand more about the structure

of the mind and how it works during our sleep cycle.

The last source I want to be critical of is the one about nightmares and night terrors.

Nightmares are basically a scary dream, so these are an important topic to cover and they

correlate well with my inquiry. The article said, Nightmares most often later at night during

REM sleep where dreaming is most prevalent (Phillips, 2014). Since the article mentioned

dreaming, I knew that it would be significant to include in my project. I believe this source was

able to correctly define the difference between night terrors and nightmares, but it did have one

negative side to it. The title of the article was How to Deal with your Terrified Child. I was not

looking for a solution, and definitely not for children in general, because nightmares can occur at

any age. This is a great example that shows how articles can be biased toward certain sides of a

situation and you should be careful to identify this before using a source. The article was posted

on a site called, Alaska Sleep Clinic Blog which made it seem like it would be a great place to

look into. Sleep clinics are able to treat patients who have trouble sleeping and possibly with

nightmares so the source should be credible, however I am not sure this was the case.. I dug

deeper into who the author was and found more information about him. He has no degree related

to the field and only wrote for the blog to promote marketing. This means he wasnt even part of

the sleep expert team, only a young guy looking for business inquiries. It would have been more
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helpful to have found more research about nightmares and in what ways they can affect the

sleeper.

References

Breus, M. J. (2015, February 13). Why Do We Dream? Retrieved from

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sleep-newzzz/201502/why-do-we-dream

McLeod, S. A. (2013). Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/Sigmund-Freud.html

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Phillips, K. (2014, December 23). Night Terrors Vs Nightmares: How to Deal with Your Terrified

Child. Retrieved from http://www.alaskasleep.com/blog/night-terrors-vs-nightmares-

how-to-help-terrified-child

Rossen, J. (2016, September 25). The Dark Side of Lucid Dreaming. Retrieved February 21,

2017, from https://vanwinkles.com/lucid-dreamings-dark-side

Turner, R. (n.d.). What is Lucid Dreaming? Retrieved from http://www.world-of-lucid-

dreaming.com/what-is-lucid-dreaming.html