A few weeks ago, my Psychology teacher asked our class to write an essay. The prompt was this:
“Are dreams a useful psychological tool?”
Obviously, we were studying about dreams.
I went to Google, the most prominent search engine in the Internet today (Yahoo and MSN probably have more searches overall, but Google has the most visits for a website initially designed to search the Web).
Obviously, dreams are a really broad topic. Dreams have always been associated with the supernatural aspects of life.
So I’m not saying that saying that Google is bad. You shouldn’t even use it for research papers. I just needed an interesting title. And I really couldn’t think of one. Anyways, back to the psychology paper…
Movies such as Dreamscape, about a who uses psychic powers to enter people’s dreams and help them, are prevalent in society, which made searching for my essay difficult.
The Internet is a powerful tool, if used wisely. But it also has a lot of junk, which is what I found.
So I’ve written my essay, with a bibliography below (APA form) to help anyone out there who has a similar essay topic as mine, or just likes to learn, I guess:
The Purpose(less) Nature of Dreams
He was running through the forest. He could feel the lions chasing him. He had to run faster. And faster. Suddenly, he was at the end of a 500-foot cliff. He couldn’t jump. They were catching up. But he couldn’t jump. The lions eventually caught up. The male leader jump and sank his teeth into his neck and –
Dreams. Dreams are special. Many of the images that we see in our dreams are also things that we can see in our everyday lives. We can defy gravity and have superhuman strength. Or we can be weak and trapped. The feeling of being in a dream is so real and vivid, yet it is so far away from us. This aura of mystery and thrill that accompanies a dream is what makes it so marketable and easy to use for movie producers in Hollywood and fortune tellers. Movies such as Final Destination and its sequels have been based entirely upon the theory that whatever we dream could become true. Although many people and prominent psychologists feel that dreams are psychologically useful, in the end, dreams may have some purpose, but not a psychological purpose.
One of the first people to come up with a psychological theory of the purpose of dreams was Sigmund Freud. Truly a great psychologist and innovator, Freud (1899) stated that the purpose of dreams was that people would dream about what they wanted, or what they wished (p. 122). So for example, a child wanting to have a toy would dream about playing with that toy. Or a man who wants to go on a date with the women in the café might dream about being on a date with her. However, there are a few flaws in his theory. For example, many people dream about things that they don’t want – death, pain, war. In a study done by Dr. Jennifer Parker of the University of the West of England, 30% of women had nightmares while 19% of men had nightmares in their most recent dreams. Thus, it’s clear that Freud’s (1899) “fulfilled wishes” only are partly true, and that his theories can’t be psychologically proven, let alone be psychologically useful (p. 200).
The other most prominent dream psychologist was Carl Jung. Jung followed Freud’s ideas, although he later created his own theories and ideas. According to Dotson, Jung had a “compensation theory” where we dreamed about aspects of our lives that were missing. So for example, if Larry has a dream about his family dying, Jung might’ve said that Larry had that dream because Larry had neglected his family for his whole life. Larry’s dream about his family compensated his neglect for his family. However, a study done by Calvin Hall, a psychologist, disproves this theory with a study involving dream journals because it shows that people dream about what they see and think in daily life. Many students dream about their upcoming tests, or athletes dream about their upcoming games. These are all events that play a big role in peoples’ lives. As a result, although Jung’s theories of compensation any present a valid point, there’s not enough evidence to support that it’s really the truth, and psychologically useful.
Other than psychologists such as Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, there are many other theories out there in the world today, written by many different scientists. One such theory is that dreams are a “cleaning-up operations” for the brain. In essence, the brain organizes and cleans up the brain while we sleep, which is why we might see things that come out in our daily lives. However, according to Domhoff, we don’t usually dream about what exactly happens in the day before. We usually dream about hypothetical possibilities, or events that happened long ago in the past. Therefore, it’s not likely that the brain defragments information in our brain through our dreams while we’re sleeping.
Finally, another theory that has gained popularity over the years is that of a dream giving us the solution to solve our problems, like a problem-solver. According to David G. Myers, author of the Exploring Psychology textbook series (2003), assuming that an average person sleeps about 7-8 hours, the average person has REM sleep, the phase of sleep most related to dreaming, about 5 times. That means about 5 dreams per night (p. 201). Seeing that most people can only remember, according to Jim Pagel (2008), an average of one to two dreams a week, which means we only remember about 0.5% of our dreams. However, according to scientist and writer Domhoff, if dreams really helped us by showing us the solutions to our daily problems while our sleep, then evolution would’ve made us remember more dreams, rather than the measly 0.5% that most people remember. As a result, if dreams really helped us solve our problems, evolution probably would’ve made us able to remember a higher percentage of them.
In conclusion, the paragraphs above show why it’s not likely that dreams have any real psychological uses. As a result, humans have created all sorts of superstition and practical uses for dreams, such as fortune telling, weather prediction, story telling, and many more. Freud’s theories are disproved by the fact that we dream about depressing and the negative aspects of life. Jung’s compensation theory is counted out by the fact that we dream about things that we do in life. The “cleaning-up” process isn’t structured and consistent enough to be true. And the problem-solving theory is too subjective, and historical records haven’t shown us evolving to remember our dreams more, which signifies that remembering dreams isn’t as useful as once thought. Like the boy running away from the lions, perhaps we’ll never know the psychological purpose of dreams. But we can always wake up at the brink of destruction, and realize that we can only move forward.
The works cited (APA form) will be here (works-cited) in this attached file, because all the indents and stuff make it complicated to upload.
