Re: Where do our dreams come from and why do we remember some and not others?

The first part of this question has been debated for thousands of years and really has not yet been resolved. For example, the ancient Greeks believed that dreams were messages from the Gods, but Aristotle questioned this assumption.

In his famous book, The Interpretation of Dreams , Sigmund Freud viewed dreams as important and meaningful peeks at our unconscious. In fact, he called dreams the royal road to the unconscious . Freud identified two aspects of dreams called the latent and manifest content. He believed that the latent content is the more important, true meaning of the dream, while the manifest content is the disguised part that we remember.

Over the years, the origin of dreams has been the subject of numerous conjectures. For example, C.G. Jung believed that dreams were part of our collective unconscious (the part of our psyche that we inherit from all of our previous ancestors). Jung believed that dreams may have important prophetic messages for us concerning our future. On the other hand, some experts believe that dreams are nothing more than random activity of our brain cells. The bottom line is that we really do not know where dreams come from.

The second part of the question is somewhat easier to answer. We know that dreams occur during the REM (rapid eye movement) part of sleep. There are several REM stages during a normal sleep pattern and each one is approximately 90 minutes long. If you happen to wake during one of these REM stages, you are more likely to remember your dream. In fact, some experts recommend setting your alarm clock to go off in the middle of the night so that you will be able to recall more of your dreams.

Freud suggested that the reason that we do not remember our dreams is because they are repressed back to our unconscious. Although this has no scientific backing, it is clear that the best way to remember your dreams is to write them down as soon as you wake up. One word of caution about dreams. Many of the books and articles written about this subject are non-scientific and should be interpreted cautiously. On the other hand, scientists are beginning to learn a great deal more about this fascinating but mysterious subject. For more information about dreams, see In Search of Dreams by I. Strauch and B. Meier. On the internet, go to: www.iag.net/~hutchib/.dream