The quick answer is that nobody knows. The long answer is that are lots of different theories. So, if you’re interested, read on!
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Freud believed that we dream so that we can release the deep, secret desires that we are not allowed to express in real life because of the rules of polite society. Most people know about Freudian dream analysis – a dream about a train going into a tunnel is a dream about sexual intercourse. But couldn’t it just be a dream about travelling on a train?
Another theory is that dreams allow us to solve problems that we can’t solve in real life. We go to sleep with a problem and wake up with the answer. This may be more of a way to ‘use’ our dreams than a ‘purpose’ of dreaming. If you believe that your dreams are important then analysing them may help you to focus your mind on the problem and help you to find the solution.
The modern image is that dreams are the brain’s way of cleaning up the computer’s hard disk, organizing the events of the day into folders and deleting the rubbish that it doesn’t want to keep. But we all know that very little of what we dream every night is concerned with what happened to us that day.
Another idea is that dreams are the brain’s way of practising the behaviour that we need to survive. So we dream about being chased by a monster because one day it might happen! It’s a bit like a pianist practising her scales every day even though she doesn’t need to use them at that moment.
Others believe that dreaming is the brain’s way of exercising the pathways between the brain cells. This may be an important element in why we sleep rather than why we dream. We die if we don’t sleep but we can live without dreaming. Some patients with brain injuries lose the ability to dream but don’t seem to suffer any ill-effects.
Scientists used to think that dreaming only happened during Rapid Eye Movement sleep (REM). REM sleep is essential for all mammals. We all become irritable and depressed without it. If we don’t have enough REM one night, we will compensate by having more the next. REM is generated by the brainstem – the oldest and most primitive part of the brain. So scientists used to believe that dreaming was also caused by activity in the brainstem. We now know that dreaming can happen at any time during sleep. The only difference seems to be that it’s easier to remember dreams that happen during REM.
Babies have a lot more REM activity than adults, but research shows that they dream less. The same may be true of animals. We know that they have REM activity but that doesn’t mean they dream.
It also seems that dreaming is a skill that develops as you get older, like language for example. Young children’s dreams are very different from older children’s or adult’s dreams.
Modern technology has allowed scientists to map the parts of the brain that are active when we dream. The primitive brainstem is very active, but so are other important areas at the front of the brain. These are the frontal lobes that control emotion, memory, and experiences that come through the senses like hearing and vision. If these areas are injured, the person stops dreaming. On the other hand, the areas that control rational, logical thought are not active at all. This could explain why dreams are so strange. They have no logical sequence or time, which makes them very difficult to explain to other people when we wake up. Dreams combine recent events with long past events and our emotions while we are dreaming are often very strong.
Psychologists have also done studies on people who kept dream diaries for long periods of time (up to fifty years in some cases) and have found that what we dream is very much connected with how we think and behave when we are awake. So an extrovert, adventurous person will have extrovert, adventurous dreams. A shy person will be a shy person in her dreams. People who are important to us will often be in our dreams and so will things that worry us or make us happy.
Well, nobody really knows. But scientists are now suggesting that dreams have absolutely no purpose at all. When we are awake we are ‘thinking’ all the time. Some of this thinking is useful and has a purpose. But we often just ‘think’ about nothing in particular while we’re waiting for the bus or walking to work. And that’s what the brain is doing when we are asleep - just thinking. Sometimes it’s interesting and sometimes it’s boring.
Doing the research for this article has made me more interested in my dreams rather than less. I might even start a dream diary! But nothing that I’ve read explains why I sometimes have an embarrassing dream about finding myself standing completely naked at a bus stop. Fortunately, this has never happened to me in real life, and it isn’t something that I think about when I’m awake. I’m told that it’s an example of a ‘universal dream’ – a dream that is common to people all over the world. Dreaming about flying is another example. So what’s the explanation? We can’t all be ‘just thinking’ about the same thing, can we?
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What do you think dreams are for? Do you believe that they have no purpose? Send us your opinion
Saate Excise writes “A dream is an uncompleted action/activity which could not be completed in an awakened state. We have fancy, romantic, inspiring etc. dreams, which depend on the sensitiveness of a person towards a/an thing/activity.
When we see a horrible incident (murder/crime) we will definitely have a nightmare. If we have a fight with others resulting in defeat we end with a haunting dream.
Dreams about the opposite sex make us merry. When we see a lass/young boy sizzling his/her beauty we definitely have a fascinating dream leaving us in eternal enjoyment.
Though we see a stunning beauty and if we feel it is not possible to know them we cannot get them in dreams since we cannot remember their face or structure, except in case of a hero/ine, who we see regularly in photos.
If our goal is to reach the zenith/highest point in a particular field we see the taste of success/failure, and what is more it depends on the optimistic/pessimistic nature of a person.
The most important feature to have in a dream is sensitivity. The more sensitive we get the more dreams we have. Easy going people do not get dreams as often as sensitive people do. Sensitiveness decides the intensity of dream.”
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Bakary Aly writes “I have no opinion about dreams, just some experience. Some years ago I was worrying about different problems in my life and I decided to keep a diary of my dreams. One in particular made me wake up terribly upset. In that dream, I tried to cut a cat with an axe and the cat turned her teeth against me. I was scared to death and I woke up. I found that the cat could be the symbol of feminine sexuality and I interpret my dream like this: I was denying very violently my sexuality; so I decided to change that and now, I am more well-balanced about my sexuality. I want to precise that I have divorced after 30 years of marriage and I felt disgust about sexual relations with men. Thanks to this dream, I found a boyfriend with whom I could share moments of happiness. He died recently.”
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Faizah Noor writes “I dream all the time. Some of the dreams don't make sense at all, but some are so intense. There were a few which made me cry in my sleep; my eyes were still wet when I woke up.
Despite the many theories about dreams, I believe not all dreams are meaningless. I believe most of our dreams are reflections of our suppressed emotions. Some seem to be telling us about the future and the hidden reality of the present. I don't know how that could be possible, but I have experienced it. Perhaps they were just coincidences. Perhaps I believed in my dreams too much.”
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Rokon writes “I want to start with the cited example of author printed at conclusion, "I am standing naked at the bus stand". Let’s think about alternative or symbolic meanings like " I may be humiliated (naked) in public (bus stand)". Probably the author was doing something which gave him feelings of offence. Probably you are thinking that all these are the thoughts of a mad person. Maybe. I may try to defend myself by telling you about a dream of mine. Here, in Bangladesh, arranged marriages are very common. And I went for it. The day my parent had scheduled to go to my bride’s house, I experienced a dream. I saw two Shaliks, a type of bird, flying away and the arrangement failed, though we have every craving for it. I was waiting for the day. So the dream signed me to ambiguity.”
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Tankist writes “I believe that dreaming is an alternative style of thinking and even living. What we see and feel in our dreams gives us an opportunity to look at ourselves and our behavior in various situations, even those which are impossible in real life, and to see ourselves from another angle. We may even obtain a different understanding of some real facts through playing varied scripts of life in our dreams as if in a movie. Dreams make real those things that happen to slip away while we are awake.”
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Kirti writes “I think dreams definitely have some purpose. In homoeopathy, Doctors diagnose by analysing patients’ dreams. If a particular patient’s dreams are scaring him then it is considered one of the symptoms of diseases. Even many of you may have experienced that whenever you are stressed or very busy with some work you will have a related dream.
Many people believe that we get pre indications of events which are going to happen in future. An Indian astrologist whom we called Jyotish made predictions about the future of persons based on their dreams. In certain cases these predictions turned out to be true.”
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Anica writes "There is saying in China: ‘What you think during the daytime you will dream at night’. I think this sentence is right. Dreams are not only because we need to solve problems, though sometimes they are. Everybody is trying to solve problems in a rational way. But when these areas for the rational are not active that might be the reason why we find an explanation over night.”
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Thraa Totyna writes “I am a Moslem, and in our religion some dreams have meanings (it’s related to the conditions). For example, when someone dreams about war that means that there will be peace, if someone dreams that he is dead that means he will have a long life or that something good is going to happen, and if someone dreams that his teeth are falling out this means that someone in his family is going to die.”
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Jensen writes “People dream every night I guess. But why do people sometimes have the same dreams, like flying? Many people have had that dream experience. In my opinion, people dream from what they think when they are awake. There is saying in China: What you think during the daytime you will dream at night. Is this an explain for what we dream about? I have no idea, who knows, who cares? Let's think, and DREAM!”
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Mike Orlove writes “The notion of dreams being like a "garbage collecting" operation in a computer is strongly supported by the observation that dream content consists of early-in-life experiences whose emotional content matches the emotional contents of the previous waking day's experiences in chronological order.
Just as the "Gong! Gong! Gong!" of the fire drill bell, at 11 o'clock at night in a boarding school might intrude on a sleeping child's awareness by making him dream of a television program in which a metal beam falls through the ceiling and hits the floor, ringing like a bell, so does the emotional content, leaking into consciousness, while replaying the previous day's record during processing, trigger "story spinning" to allow sleep to continue.
If the content or stimulus of a disturbing nature persists, we wake up. If I saw a snake, about 1/3 the way through the day, then 1/3 the way through the night next night, I may get a cameo appearance by my first pet eel in his aquarium in a dream.”
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Asifa writes “My opinion is that sometimes dreams are the result of some tension also. When we have any sort of tension then usually we have horror dreams or those which make us sleep disturbed. So the situation in which we spend our day definitely has some effect on our dreaming.”
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Wikipedia: dream
HowStuffWorks: How dreams work
BBC: In Our Times - Dreams
Universal dreams
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