I.

Introductory paragraph
II. To apply the lens of psychology to answer the question of the meaning of dreams, one must
first understand that a psychological lense examines the behavior of agents to unearth
deeper meaning. Given this orientation, a psychological lense would say dreams show us the
beauty of sleep. There is a lot of diversity in thinking about dreams. A therapist might try to
tease the “meaning” and significance of a person’s description of a dream, whereas a
psychoanalyst may try to understand an image and the symbology about the dream.

A. Necessary background about lens and question

1. Name the lens and research question
Psychological Lens- Do Dreams have meaning
2. How does this lens find knowledge?
Cross-cultural studies and surveys in Psychology of very large numbers of people and of
representative samples of the population (e.g., Morewedge & Norton, 2009) show that
people the world over treat dreams as meaningful experiences about themselves, other
people, and even events in the world. If we can take the practices of pre-modern tribal
groups as partially indicative of practices of ancestral populations, then we can infer that
these populations also treated dreams as sources of vital information about themselves,
others, and their world. People in traditional societies frequently share their dreams with
others in the group (Gregor, 2001), which leads us to assume that considering dreams as
meaningful experiences was a common practice in early human groups as well.

3. How does this lens connect to the research question?

B. Major claim (thesis statement, 1-2 sentences): How does this lens answer the
research question?

Through the lens of psychology, we can infer that dreams are believed to carry important
and privileged bits of information because they involve a very distinct form of information
processing. From an anatomical point of view, that form involves bihemispheric integration
without anterior-posterior integration. The two hemispheres talk to one another during
dreaming, but they do so without prefrontal (anterior) and parietal (posterior) input. Although
many animals are capable of REM (rapid eye movement sleep during which most dreams
occur), very few of them – possibly none besides human beings – display this type of
bihemispheric integration of information sources.

Preview 3 minor claims

III. Minor claim 1 -Dreams as Costly Signals

Costly Signaling Theory (CST) may provide insights into why dreams have distinct
cognitive specializations. Signaling Theory, which examines communication between
individuals with conflicting interests, refers to a collection of theoretical work begun
by Amotz Zahavi (1975) over three decades ago. Mathematical models that depict
individuals communicating. honest. signals show this approach to be an
evolutionarily stable strategy.

Signals are defined as any trait, structural or behavioral, that has evolved to transmit
helpful information to receivers that also proves beneficial for the signaler. Mutual
and conflicting interests of signalers and receivers shape the system. Honest and
costly signals have evolved in countless species, and it is likely that humans evolved
similar behavioral and structural strategies. For instance, the human neonatal cry

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 serves as an example of CST. It is costly for a neonate to exert forceful cries to
demand maternal resources, but this behavioral strategy is ultimately beneficial to the
fitness of the maternal-offspring dyad. Another example of the impact of costly
signals demonstrates that increases in autonomic nervous arousal signals
promote change in group social dynamics through mood contagion, verbal and
postural mirroring, promotion of trust and empathy, and assessment of risk and
reward. Applied to dreams, CST is a powerful explanatory device to potentially
illuminate our understanding of the evolution of sleep and dreams.

The theory of costly signaling may help us understand why. If dreams are a source of
costly, hard-to-fake signals, including emotional signals, and such signals are crucial
in producing and maintaining the reliability and honesty of systems of communication
among human beings, then the dream becomes a source of unity and cohesion for
these tribal groups. Pre-modern societies apparently often used the dreams
(frequently, lucid dreams) of shamans in much the same way. The dream ‘s ability to
produce forms for costly signals made it an extremely valuable cultural tool, with the
images in the dream providing the forms for healing ceremonies and religious
ceremonies. Costly signaling appears to be a common and powerful
evolutionary strategy for development of systems of reliable and honest
communication; it may, therefore, not have been excluded from the realm of sleep
biology. Both REM sleep and dreaming involve costly physiologic processes and
signals. If, indeed, REM sleep and dreams are a primary source for the formation of
hard-to-fake emotional and costly signals, then REM sleep and dreams are crucial to
all forms of human communication that involve costly signals. REM sleep and
dreams are, therefore, central to human behavior, well-being, and
culture.

IV. Minor claim 2 – Neurocognitive theories

As a cognitive basis for action in the waking world. Dreams are a dramatic and perceptible
embodiment of schemas, scripts, and general knowledge. They are like plays that the mind
stages for itself when it doesn’t ‘t have anything specific to do. Most dream scenarios
express several key aspects of people ‘s conceptual systems, especially self-conceptions,
which can be defined as a set of cognitive generalizations about the person that guide the
processing of self relevant information and events. Dreams also express conceptions of
family and friends; they rarely involve politics, economics, or other current events. Starting
with the idea that dreams usually reveal highly personal conceptions, it is possible to build a
complex picture of a dreamer ‘s overall conceptual system because people usually have
more than one conception of themselves and the important people in their lives.

A cognitive approach also contains a way to assess the weight to be given to the
conceptions expressed in dreams: by determining the relative frequency of their occurrence.
Numerous studies show that the frequency with which a person, action, or activity occurs in
a series of dreams reveals the intensity of the "concern" with that person, action, or activity
in waking life, which means that dreams are dramatized enactments of both "conceptions"
and "concerns. (Domhoff, 1996, 2003b). The emphasis on concerns. links dreaming with the
fact that the drift of waking thought is shaped by underlying concerns
(Klinger, 1978; 1999)

(1) laboratory studies of the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and non-REM (NREM) dream
reports of adults; (2) laboratory investigations of the development of dreaming in children; (3)
studies of large samples of dreams collected outside the laboratory from groups and

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 individuals; and (4) neuropsychological studies of patients who experienced changes in their
dreaming as a byproduct of brain lesions have all backed up this theory.

V. Minor claim 3 – Adaptive Function

There are many different theories concerning the possible adaptive function of dreaming.
The most famous and intriguing theory of dream function, Freud ‘s (1900, p.180) idea that
dreams are the .guardians of sleep,. that is, a response to bodily-based wishes, seems to be
refuted by several different kinds of findings. First, the frequency and regularity of dreaming
in most people suggests that the process cannot be primarily a way to deal with wishes that
emerge episodically during sleep, as Freud claimed. Second, there is very little dream
content that seems to relate to the wishes Freud had in mind—for food, drink, and sex.
Third, there is every reason to believe that pre-school children seldom or never dream, but
they sleep very
soundly nonetheless (Foulkes, 1982). Fourth, while lobotomized schizophrenics showed
normal sleep in the laboratory, they rarely reported dreams from REM awakenings (Jus et
al., 1973). Fifth, there are neurological patients who lose dreaming but retain the ability to
sleep (Solms, 1997). Finally, there are even a few normal adults who do not dream, as
shown through REM awakenings over two or three nights in the sleep laboratory (Pagel,
2003).

Nor, as noted at the end of the discussion of dream content, is there any support for
Jung‘s well-known idea that most dreams, and especially those with roots in the collective
unconscious, have a compensatory function. Although this idea is very difficult to support or
refute in a definitive way because there may be subtle forms of compensation, every
relevant systematic study suggests that dream content is continuous with waking thought or
personality rather than compensatory (see Domhoff, 2003b, pp. 144-147, for a critique of
Jungian theory).

Activation-synthesis theorists argue that dreaming is the by-product of the off-line.

cognitive processing and sleep-dependent memory consolidation that allegedly occur during
all stages of sleep, with some stages enhancing one kind of learning and other stages aiding
other kinds (Stickgold, 2005). There are several major problems with this claim. First, there
are serious methodological problems with the research on memory consolidation during
sleep that have not been answered. In fact, it seems unlikely to some sleep researchers that
very many, if any, of the claims about learning and memory improvement during sleep will be
sustained (Siegel, 2001; Siegel, 2005; Vertes & Eastman, 2000; Vertes & Siegel, 2005).

VI. Lens conclusion

As the foregoing discussion of rival theories of dream function suggests, there are many
findings that support and contradict the idea that dreams have any kind of physiological or
psychological function or meaning in a philosophical sense. It therefore makes sense to
explore the meaning of dreams through the lens of religion and science to draw a holistic
picture. While the lack of dreaming in other mammals and preschool children does not
preclude an adaptive function for dreams, it does make it less likely and narrows the focus
as to what that function might be.

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