Dreams and Reality- First Published in the Newsletter of the Training Institute for Mental Health, NYC

Dreams and Reality

To sleep, perchance to dream-
ay, there's the rub."

Hamlet (III, i, 65-68)

                                       Above: Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung

Hamlet’s famous lines about sleep reminds us that not all dreams are sweet ones but reflect the stress and tension of our lives ( in his case, he is contemplating suicide).

In our Post-Freudian culture, people look for all sorts of meaning in dreams—while some more sophisticated people DO think of dreams in the way Freud did, as “ The Royal Road to the Unconscious,” just as many or more think of dreams in terms of prophecy—or as directives as to future conduct ( which ranges from missions from God to how to pick numbers to win the lottery).

Many people say they never dream or that they cannot remember their dreams…studies show that these people DO dream and often have psychological blocks against remembering what they dream.

This leads us to the question: what can scientists tell us about what is going on in our brains while we are dreaming?

According the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Health, dreams are associated with a phase of sleep known as REM sleep ( for Rapid Eye Movement). The Institute says,

“When we switch into REM sleep, our breathing becomes more rapid, irregular, and shallow, our eyes jerk rapidly in various directions, and our limb muscles become temporarily paralyzed. Our heart rate increases, our blood pressure rises, and males develop penile erections. When people awaken during REM sleep, they often describe bizarre and illogical tales – dreams.”

The first REM sleep period usually occurs about 70 to 90 minutes after we fall asleep. A complete sleep cycle takes 90 to 110 minutes on average. The first sleep cycles each night contain relatively short REM periods and long periods of deep sleep. As the night progresses, REM sleep periods increase in length while deep sleep decreases. By morning, people spend nearly all their sleep time in stages 1, 2, and REM.

People awakened after sleeping more than a few minutes are usually unable to recall the last few minutes before they fell asleep. This sleep-related form of amnesia is the reason people often forget telephone calls or conversations they've had in the middle of the night. It also explains why we often do not remember our alarms ringing in the morning if we go right back to sleep after turning them off.

We all know that sleep deprivation is really bad and is often used as a form of torture. But we can have dream deprivation, too.

One sleep research center has this to say:

Mounting evidence suggests that dreaming or REM sleep is suppressed by common aspects of modern lifestyle. Many widely used medications - especially antidepressants and sleeping pills, as well as evening alcohol consumption constrain normal dreaming. And now, new findings are establishing a clear connection between the loss of dreaming and serious illness.

Dr. Rubin Naiman, clinical assistant professor of medicine and the sleep specialist for Dr. Andrew Weil's Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, stresses this concern in his new book, HEALING NIGHT: The Science and Spirit of Sleeping, Dreaming, and Awakening (Syren Book Company). Naiman believes that we are in deep and dangerous denial about the extent, causes, and consequences of dream deprivation.

Most people are unaware that many of their daily habits and routines are depriving them of their dream lives. "It's not simply about sleep loss," explains Naiman.

"We are as at least as dream deprived as we are sleep deprived." Much of what we consider sleep loss or insomnia, especially during the second half of the night, is in actuality a loss of REM or dream activity. An extended course of such dream restrictive insomnia, what Naiman refers to as DRI sleep, is the single strongest predictive factor for clinical depression.
So, dreaming is necessary for our mental health.

Interpreting Dreams

Interpreting Dreams is an important part of Freudian based psychotherapy, as just about everyone knows.

Even Freud’s colleague Carl Gustav Jung, who broke with Freud over many ideas, had this to say:

“No amount of skepticism and criticism has yet enabled me to regard dreams as negligible occurrences. Often enough they appear senseless, but it is obviously we who lack the sense and ingenuity to read the enigmatic message from the nocturnal realm of the psyche. Seeing that at least half our psychic existence is passed in that realm, and that consciousness acts upon our nightly life just as much as the unconscious overshadows our daily life, it would seem all the more incumbent on medical psychology to sharpen its senses by a systematic study of dreams. 

Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day.”

"The Practical Use of Dream Analysis" (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. pg. 325

Dreams and Therapy at the Training  Insitute

Experience has shown that a certain amount of trust has to be developed between patient and therapist to really get into dreams…sometimes the wish fulfillment aspect may be embarrassing because the patient knows enough to realize this aspect of the dream.

Different therapists will work out different ways of handling dream material with different patients…but is still hopefully a very useful therapeutic tool that will help people get in touch with their innermost selves and increase their knowledge of what they really fear or want.

During the year, experts from the Training Institute put on special sessions on topics such as Dreams and their Interpretation…we urge people who are interested  to get in touch with TIMH and find what talks may fit their particular desires for more knowledge.