DREAM

Dreams are a series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of Sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not fully understood, though they have been a topic of speculation and interest throughout recorded history. The scientific study of dreams is known as oneirology.

Dream content

From the 1940s to 1985, collected more than 50,000 dream reports at WRS. In 1966 Hall and Van De Castle published The Content Analysis of Dreams in which they outlined a coding system to study 1,000 dream reports from college students.^[33] It was found that people all over the world dream of mostly the same things. Hall's complete dream reports became publicly available in the mid-1990s by Hall's protégé W.D, allowing further different analysis.

Personal experiences from the last day or week are frequently incorporated into dreams.

Emotions

The most common emotion experienced in dreams is anxiety. Other emotions include pain, abandonment, fear, joy, etc. Negative emotions are much more common than positive ones.

Sexual themes

The Hall data analysis shows that sexual dreams occur no more than 10 percent of the time and are more prevalent in young to mid teens. Another study showed that 8% of men's and women's dreams have sexual content. In some cases, sexual dreams may result in orgasm or nocturnal emission. These are commonly known as wet dreams.

Recurring dreams

While the content of most dreams is dreamt only once, many people experience recurring dreams—that is, the same dream narrative is experienced over different occasions of sleep. Up to 70% of females and 65% of males report recurrent dreams.

Common themes

Content-analysis studies have identified common reported themes in dreams. These include: situations relating to school (adolescents), being chased or attacked, running slowly in place, falling, arriving too late, a person alive in reality dead in the dream , a person who is dead in real life alive in the dream, teeth falling out, flying, future events such as birthdays, anniversaries, etc. (with different scenarios), Past events in your life (with different scenarios) embarrassing moments, falling in love with random people, failing an examination, not being able to move or focus vision, car accident

s, being accused of a crime you didn't commit, suddenly finding yourself naked, going to the toilet, losing your car, not knowing where you are and many more.

Colour vs. black and white

Twelve percent of people dream only in black and white. Recent research has suggested that those changing results may be linked to the switch from black-and-white film and TV to color media.

Dream interpretation

Dreams were historically used for healing (as in the asclepieions found in the ancient Greektemples of asclepius as well as for guidance or divine inspiration. Some Native American tribes used vision quests as a rite of passage, fasting and praying until an anticipated guiding dream was received, to be shared with the rest of the tribe upon their return.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, both Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung identified dreams as an interaction between the unconciuous and the consicous. They also assert together that the unconscious is the dominant force of the dream, and in dreams it conveys its own mental activity to the perceptive faculty. While Freud felt that there was an active censorship against the unconscious even during sleep, Jung argued that

the dream's bizarre quality is an efficient language, comparable to poetry and uniquely capable of revealing the underlying meaning.

Fritz Perls presented his theory of dreams as part of the holistic nature of Gestalt therapy. Dreams are seen as projections of parts of the self that have been ignored, rejected. Jung argued that one could consider every person in the dream to represent an aspect of the dreamer, which he called the subjective approach to dreams. Perls expanded this point of view to say that even inanimate objects in the dream may represent aspects of the dreamer. The dreamer may therefore be asked to imagine being an object in the dream and to describe it, in order to bring into awareness the characteristics of the object that correspond with the dreamer's personality.

The Great Journey

This follows a character or characters through a series of episodic adventures as they travel. It may be a sad story or a happy story, or it may even be comedic. Huckleberry Finn, Heart of Darkness, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and The Odyssey are good examples. In film, this theme can be seen in Apocalypse Now and National Lampoon's Vacation.

Loss of Innocence

Sometimes called the "coming of age story," this most commonly introduces an “innocent” character to the evil or complexity of the real/adult world. In literature, we might look at David Copperfied or most of the Nick Adams stories by Ernest Hemingway, like "Indian Camp" and "The End of Something." In film, we might look at Stand by Me.

The Noble Sacrifice

The sacrifice can be for any reason except self--a loved one, an enemy, a group of people, the whole of humanity, a dog--but the bottom line is that the protagonist sacrifices himself or herself in an effort to save others. In literature, this is demonstrated in the story of Jesus in the New Testament and King Arthur in Mallory's Morte d’Artur. This theme is used is used in the films Glory, Armageddon, The Green Mile, and in just about any war movie where the hero dies gloriously.

The Great Battle

The Iliad and A Tale of Two Cities are classic examples of this theme. It is about people or groups of people in conflict. It is sometimes a good vs. evil story like 1984 by George Orwell, but not always. The film The War of the Roses, starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas, is an example of a battle in which neither character is wholly good or evil. In theatre, we see this theme at work in Westside Story and Les Miserables. We often see this theme in horror or science fiction, like in Alien and Terminator, where the antagonist--a monster/creature/human/alien/computer/etc.-- is trying to kill the protagonist, who must fight to stay alive and/or defeat the antagonist. Sub-categories would be person vs. person, person vs. nature, person vs. society, person vs. technology and etc.

The Fall From Grace

This theme shows us people going where only God should go, doing what only God is meant to do, or attempting to do something that human beings should never do. This is always followed by misfortune, whether it is the direct result of their action or an act of God. We see this in the tales of Coyote’s theft of fire in the Native American tradition, or in the story of the Tower of Babel and the Garden of Eden in The Old Testament. Other examples would be the Prometheus myth, Pandora’s Box, and the story of Icarus. Frankenstein by Mary Shelly is another work exploring this theme, and we have seen it at work in the films Jurassic Park and Westworld.

Love and Friendship

Romeo and Juliet is a classic love story, as is the story of Lancelot and Guenivere. The films You’ve Got Mail and Message in a Bottle are also love stories. The ending may be be happy, sad, or bittersweet, but the main them is romantic love. Also included in this theme is platonic love--friendship--like in the movies Wrestling Ernest Hemingway and Midnight Cowboy. All Romance novels, whether straight or gay, fit into this category. All “buddy films” like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Thelma and Louise fit into this category.

The Capriciousness of Fate

Greek tragedies fit this category. Often, there is a major reversal of fortune. It could be from good-to-bad or from bad-to-good. Oedipus Rex is a classic work that explores the concept of fate and destiny, having an unhappy ending. Cinderella is also a reversal of fortune story, but has a happy ending. In film, we have seen this theme at work in Pretty Woman. The common element is that there is some force guiding the person’s life over which he or she has no control.

Revenge

The subject is obvious, but the outcome differs. Sometimes the outcome is good, like in the movies Revenge of the Nerds or Animal House. Sometimes the outcome is bad, as in Macbeth and Moby Dick. Other movies based on this them are Revenge, staring Anthony Quinn and Kevin Costner, and Payback, starring Mel Gibson.

The Big Trick

In this one, someone or some group of people intentionally trick someone else. Rumplestiltskin and Little Red Ridinghood are in this category. Stone Soup is an old story in which several men trick the inhabitants of a village into providing them with food. This theme was evident in Snatch, starring Brad Pitt, and The Sting, staring Robert Redford and Paul Newman.