Essay Example on Dreams: Maintaining Emotional and Mental Balance

Introduction

This writing comes in as a submission of my paper entitled "Why Humans Dream" for consideration as a research manuscript in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. I examined the efficacy of various dream theories to explain why humans dream.

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My findings confirm that dreams take place to maintain individuals emotional and mental balance. Dreaming could enable a person to realize an emotive disproportion when they seek to find an explanation for something. Other investigations that I carried out also suggest that dreaming works as a tactic of recording and categorizing memories.

Additionally, short term memory can be overburdened when immaterial or minor contemplations do not get directed somewhere else. Dreams are quite exciting experiences, and those encounters are what aid in creating and reinforcing neural paths in the brain.

However, the research also found that dreaming tags along with some incredible duties. That is, it is not sufficient to have dreams and disregard them.

Given that every human being dreams, I believe that the argument presented in this paper will appeal to the readers with interest in dream theories and brain functions during sleep in the field of psychology.

My research will thus go a long way to inform readers on the importance of appreciating dreams and having enough sleep to help the brain refresh through dreams and hence prepare well for the next day's activities.

This document is an original work and has not been printed before in any other journal. Thank you for receiving my paper and considering it for review.

Why Humans Dream

The human mind is a strange little wad of gravy matter. After such a long time, specialists are as yet confounded by several factors of why and how the brain functions in such a manner. Researchers have been carrying out studies on a dream and sleep for years, yet there is still no a hundred percent explanation on the function of sleep, or precisely why and how humans dream. The human dream cycle is ordinarily greatly plentiful and best recalled in the REM phase of sleep. It is likewise pretty usually acknowledged among established researchers that every individual dream, however, the recurrence in which ideas are recalled shifts from individual to individual, hence dreaming has been perceived to be a universal physical feature in humans.

Nevertheless, most people are not able to vividly recall what takes place in their dreams. As a result of this exceptional troubling aspect of dreams, the main reason as to why individuals dream is highly inconclusive. However, following several years of theoretical debate and research on this matter, several arguments have risen as to why humans dream and the importance of dreaming.

Dreaming is a vital process. With the lack of an inability to dream, there would have been no aspiration to pursue in life. Humans would be nothing without dreams. Not having dreams is similar to seeking a traceless homicide. It is somewhat similar to following an invisible track. Humans ought to realize their goals and work towards pursuing that ambition. They cannot achieve anything in life with no purposes, and for those aims, they ought to dream. Without dreams, individuals would be fatigued by the equivalent repetitive schedules of their everyday existence and would not have a passion for the main revitalizing things.

When humans are not inspired, they might end up failing in their endeavors in life. They probably will not be in a position of accomplishing their aims and will live a miserable life. One might at no time relish in life's extravagances and might even be unhappy. Therefore, dreaming is believed to act as an encouragement towards one's steady improvement. Consistent improvement is crucial.

Humans should thus go that extra mile of achieving their goals. Dissatisfactions might be faced, but dreams entirely accomplish the resilience of keeping on and attempting to progress. Dreams encourage humans to realize any goal which they want to achieve. It is somehow the essential aspect of a human's existence. Hence dreaming is vital throughout daily lives. They improve, inspire, motivate and aid individuals in accomplishing their desires (Morewedge and Norton 251).

Most researchers commendably hypothesized that dreams are continuations of the conscious life. Assumptions are that the association between humans' existence and their imaginings works as a healing act profoundly examining individuals' current emotions, problems, concerns, fears, and thoughts. Theorists also believe that dreams could as well exhibit several functions such as enhancing creativity and problem-solving (Gamwell 302). The highly renowned assumption of dreaming originates from the well-known psychologists, Dr. Sigmund Freud. Freud argued that "dreams are related to a 'royal road' in the human incognizant desires and thoughts" (Gamwell 71).

According to Freud's argument, psychoanalysis is practical on the sole premise that the dream interpretation entity depends intensely on the information given by the patient. That in itself is far from being true concerning its disadvantages and advantages. Freud invented his fundamental speculations at the beginning of the twentieth century, building up the reliable idea that because our fantasies speak to our dark, profound repressed wishes, transcendently connected with suppressed sexuality (Freud and Cronin 8). Humans experience 'manifest dreams'- those which could be remembered when one wakes up; however, this is essentially an unrefined mask for their actual oblivious, the 'latent dream.'

Freud further contends that dream work aids in preventing the dreamer from knowing the concealed considerations, while he plays the part of translating the symbolism and reversing the representability, displacement, and condensation that at that, in turn, takes into account the 'latent' significance of the dreams to be uncovered (Gamwell 39). Freud created several dream images identifying with social images, including, jokes, mythology, and stories among others.

For instance, dreaming about flying could express sexual acts. He similarly trusted that dream symbolism was generally addressed in the days' occasions which could aid in disguising the latent content. Nevertheless, Freud additionally remarked on the way that dreams do not express anything. For example, a cigar could necessarily be a representation of a cigar and nothing more.

Based on Freud's assumptions, it is clear that dreams can be seen as emotional deflection developments. In this point of view, humans become reacquainted with recognizable Freudian phrases, including, "condensation and displacement," the two approaches fill one essential aim of protecting the personality, and consequently the dreamer (Gamwell 38).

It is thus held that dreams do not speak to the unconscious which would be commonly visible; however, they represent the conscious thoughts that are deeply repressed in the individual. Freud assumed that this distinguished the intricacies of human mental capacities, and that individuals hidden wishes which if exclusively known, would be very harming (Freud and Cronin 30). Dreaming takes place because of trade-offs made between the suppression of regressed thoughts, ego defense, unconscious, and the conscious.

On the other hand, one theorist - Carl Jung refutes Freud's theory on dreams. Jung followed on Freud's footsteps and concurred with him from numerous points of view as in the unconscious mind and symbols although he does not perceive the unconscious as sexual, instinctual, or animalistic. He observed that dreams could expose different subjects other than sexuality and aggression. Jung "was never ready to concur with Freud that dreams are 'facades' from which its significance lies masked- importance is known yet maliciously, so to say, retained from awareness" (Jung 104).

In spite of Freud's hypothesis that dreaming is a prominent piece of logical brain science, studies have also discovered that patients with brain injury in the frontal context have demonstrated that our oblivious wishes get disregarded in the dream content (Gamwell 66). Freud unmistakably contends the point that dreams are tremendously noteworthy in their very own perspective. Dreams contain a blend of recent developments and feelings from the daily encounters that later join with materials from the oblivious personality.

On the other hand, information processing theories explain that sleep permits humans to process and consolidate the majority of the data gathered during the day. Some dream analysts recommend that dreaming is primarily a result or even an active part of the data handling process (Morewedge and Norton 260). Therefore, as humans manage the great memories and information from their daily activities, their sleeping minds generate narratives, impressions, and images to deal with several events taking place in their minds as they sleep.

Another perspective is that dreams could as well be seen in an additionally biological view referred to as the 'activation-synthesis theory,' whereby, brain areas that are typically inactive when one is awake become active during sleep (Hobson and Robert 1336). These areas are mostly the emotional (limbic system) and visual (visual cortex) brain parts. This assumption clarifies the hallucinatory, random pictures made by fantasists and the disorderliness of occurrences recalled as a result of the procrastination of thought processing zones.

As indicated by the activation-synthesis theory, dreaming is among the systematic procedure of the brain's sleep process. Nevertheless, this hypothesis permits the coordination of the motor and sensory information. A case of this is the point at which neurons are released in the part of the brain which controls balance; the cortex could create a dream of 'falling' (Hobson and Robert 1337). Another case of this is when the symbols create something similar to a running incidence; at that point, the cortex would make an individual dream of being chased.

The initiation segment of the synthesis hypothesis identifies with the normal activation of REM sleep as a significant aspect of the sleep cycle. When the REM factor positioned in the brain is triggered, it leads to a reduction of activities in the REM sleep. The dynamic action in the frontal cortex goes through paths which arise from the brainstem (Solms 843).

Motor, sensory, and activation information winds up stimulated as a significant aspect of the forebrain which at that point builds up an individual's dream experience. The relation of the motor and sensory perception is arranged by dreams into unique structures and receives a significant contribution from the dreamer's earlier experiences and needs (Hobson and Robert 1342).

In the REM state, hallucinatory dreamscapes which are produced by activities in the visual cortex' higher levels are vividly visible. Majority of the regions that process emotions, that is, the limbic system, are similarly active. Additionally, the zone which puts more consideration and forces top-down legal reasoning are entirely neutralized (Solms 844). Along these lines, dreams can then become hyperemotional. It is also a recommendation that dreaming enables humans to process emotional occasions in their lives.

These concealed desires could be revealed in dreams during sleep. Dreaming is a spot for the utmost prohibited and secret desires to be satisfied with no dread and after which are forgotten and suppressed when one wakes up. They uncover things that an individual probably did not think about themselves, associations with others, and issues in their regular day to day existence (Morewedge and Norton 250). Dreams thus help in seeing one's prospects and giving knowledge on the best way to take care of problems in ordinary daily survival through the oblivio...