Do dreams really mean anything?

When I was 14 years old, I had a dream that I will never forget. Although it was not dramatic or worthy of a film adaptation, it has been with me all these years.

He was wandering the endless corridors of an ancient and mysterious mansion. Cobwebs adorning its opulent furnishings showed that no one had been there for many years. However, even in its neglect, there was electricity and numerous ornate crystal lamps and chandeliers lent a dim glow to his gloomy countenance. He was anxious , but not terrified. Like a character in a horror movie, I felt strangely compelled to explore, even fearing what I might find. In the garage, I found a ruined carriage. In the dining room, there was a feast, but there were no diners. And throughout the house, he found more and more crystal lamps. There must have been thousands of them lighting my way.

Then I woke up.

The dreams have fascinated people since the beginning of recorded history. In ancient Egypt, people with vivid dreams were considered blessed with special vision, and many of their dreams have been found engraved on papyrus. In fact, the Egyptians believed that one of the best ways to receive divine revelations was through sleep, and some people even slept in sanctified "dream beds" to gain wisdom from the gods.

In the 19th and 20th centuries , scholars largely abandoned these supernatural ideas. Prominent figures like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung instead concluded that dreams provided insights into the inner workings of the mind. In his book The Interpretation of Dreams , Freud detailed a complex system of dream analysis. In essence, his theory stated that while our conscious minds sleep, our unconscious minds produce images that can give us a special insight into our deepest selves.

Regardless of whether dreams predict the future, allow us to communicate with the divine, or simply provide us with a better understanding of ourselves, the process of analyzing them has always been highly symbolic. To understand the meaning of dreams, we must interpret them as if they were written in a secret code. A quick search of an online dream dictionary will tell you that haunted houses symbolize "unfinished emotional business" dimly lit lamps mean that you are "feeling overwhelmed by emotional problems" a party indicates "a lack of balance in your life , ”And garages symbolize a feeling of“ lack of direction or guidance in achieving your goals”. So there it is: At 14, I was feeling very emotional about lacking balance and direction in my life.

But what if there is no secret code, and we have been wasting our time reading a set of disjointed images, like when people find shapes and objects hidden in clouds? What if dreams don't really mean anything?

That is the conclusion drawn by some modern neuroscientists, who believe that dreams are just a side effect of more fundamental neurological processes. Although people often think that the brain shuts down during sleep, researchers now know that sleep is a period of intense neurological activity. One of the main reasons we sleep may be to allow the brain to consolidate and organize our memories. Just as computers must periodically optimize their hard drives, our brains must continually consolidate the memories we have stored. You can think of it as a kind of neurological cleaning of the house, sweeping away the unnecessary experiences of the previous day and storing the important ones more safely. Research shows, for example, Memory suffers if sleep is interrupted. That is why parents and teachers often urge children to get a good night's sleep before taking a test.

Although not all researchers agree, many think that dreams may be an unintended consequence of these and other underlying neurological processes. Harvard psychiatrists J. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley, for example, proposed that as various brain circuits are activated during the night, this triggers sensations, emotions, and memories, all of which are essentially random. However, since we are creatures trying to make sense, our brains assemble all this underlying activity into a story. But this story doesn't really mean anything. It is simply an attempt to make sense of neural activity that has taken place. That is why dreams seem so illogical and strange.

So why do people cling to their dream dictionaries?

It may have something to do with what researchers call the "Barnum Effect," named for circus impresario PT Barnum. Psychology professor Bertram Forer first demonstrated this effect in 1948, when he administered a mock personality test to 39 students. They didn't know it, but they all received exactly the same results, including statements like, "You have a great need for other people to approve and admire you," and "You have a tendency to be very critical of yourself." The students were then asked to rate how accurate they felt these results were on a five-point scale. The average rating was a staggering 4.3, indicating that even though they all received the same bogus comments, they felt the test did a near perfect job of summarizing the inner workings of their minds.

Dozens of similar studies have replicated Forer's findings in the intervening decades, involving horoscopes, handwriting analysis, and yes, even dream analysis.

The "Barnum statements" are easily accepted as true due to their wide applicability. Although they sound specific, they can be applied to almost anyone, just like my dream interpretation of the haunted house. Doesn't "feeling emotional about lacking balance and direction" apply to just about everyone, up to a point? We could reasonably ask the same question about almost any interpretation given by a dream dictionary. And if all the interpretations apply equally well to almost everyone, then they are not really accurate with anyone .

But not all scientists agree that there is no inherent purpose or meaning in dreams. Tore Nielsen and Ross Levin have proposed a theory halfway between Freud's almost magical symbol-based dream analysis system and the view that dreams are simply random. His perspective, the Neurocognitive Model of Dreaming , is complicated and impossible to fully explain here. Although this theory still establishes that dreams are closely linked to neurological memory consolidation processes, this does not mean that they are random. Instead, Nielsen and Levin believe that the stories our brains weave from seemingly random dream images are guided, at least in part, by our emotional states. For example, as the number of negative experiences increases in our waking life, the likelihood of having bad dreams also increases. This may be why people who have experienced trauma they are more susceptible to nightmares than others. According to this theory, an important function of dreams is what researchers call " fear of extinction", that is, dreams help us process our stressful experiences in a healthy way, putting them "to rest", so that we are not overwhelmed with negative feelings during our waking life. When the process works properly, dreams use the waking stresses and concerns in our lives as source material, separating and reassembling them into strange but generally harmless stories, a procedure that ultimately allows us to overcome them.