Dreams

[theintensifier 0]

I've read in numerous psychology books that dreams cannot be distinguished. Is that true? Or can you pull a meaning out of your dreams?

 

Also, if people speak during their sleep, what does that mean?

 

Like if someone says this during their sleep, what does it mean:

 

"I want to go shopping."

[Wyld Cannon 0]

I don't think you can ever use one of those dream dictionaries to find an exact meaning for your dream, but I think if you really concentrate and breakdown where you were, what you were feeling, and the more important aspects you can get an idea of what your dream was about.

 

And then sometimes a fucked up dream is just a fucked up dream.

 

Keeping a dream journal is something I've done on and off over the past couple years, and eventually you start to notice small recurring patterns and happenings. They'll help you lucid dream if thats something that interests you as well.

[vivalaultra 0]

Dreams are a way of subconciously sorting out the day's events. Different theories say different things about the act and importance of dreaming.

 

Joe Griffin formulated a hypothesis in which he says that dreams act as metaphysical translations of waking expectations, wherein sensory arousal emotions not acted upon during the day are sorted out in dreams (ie, "wet dreams", dreams about wanting to go shopping). He further states that the dreaming process evaporates the emotional arousal associated with the activities metaphorically expressed during dreams, allowing the brain to complete the arousal process and "begin anew" each day.

 

Freud and Jung theorized about dreams in a psychodynamic sense, stating that images contained in dreams are representative of desires buried in the subconcious which are not "knowable" to the concious. In Freud's case, everything was sexual or violent. Similarly to Griffin's theory, Freud's theory states that dreams act as a 'fulfillment' of these repressed desires, which cannot be acted out in waking life.

 

Eugen Tarnow reworked Freud's theory, replacing the Unconcious with long-term memory. The main difference is that in Tarnow's theory, dreams are expressions/manifestations of events drawn from past or repressed memories interpreted in sometimes strange and fanciful ways due to the processes of long-term memory.

 

Rene Descartes stated that a person dreaming is not able to distinguish, at the time of the dream, whether events are real or imaginary. Therefore, the dreamer, at the time of the dream, cannot be sure if he is awake or asleep. He used this hypothesis to argue against scepticism, coming to the conclusion that the only way a person knows if he is actually in the "real world" (the "awake" world) at a given time is because of faith.

 

Carl Jung expanded a bit on this paradox of the real/dream world in his use of Embodied Imagination in dream therapy. The central idea of embodied imagination is that the soul is a multiple entity, constantly living in any number of autonomous states. Therefore, dreaming springs from the soul (similar to Freud's unconcious) and dreamed events are actually "real" events that are entered by the soul which, when explored in a hypnagogic state, can be interpreted in order to gain new insight.

 

Another interesting phenomenon is called Dreams of absent-minded transgression (DAMT). These are dreams where persons act out actions that they have been trying to stop or stifle in real life, such as having an affair, doing drugs, going on a murderous rampage, etc.

 

Something else that's interesting is that a person can only dream of things that they have experienced. This concept has roots in Lockean principles, in that life is made up from experience. No matter how fantastic or fanciful a dream may seem, everything contained in that dream must be based on some real-life experience the dreamer has had, i.e., everything in the dream will have touchstones in the person's real life, whether the dream be rife with anachronims, malaproprisms, or other isms. That is why a person can dream about themselves being deceased, but not actually dying. A person can have a dream where they die, but the dream will always end before the person's death is actually complete. Because no living person has actually died in their own life, they cannot experience this sensation in a dream. A dream where a person is experiencing sensations such as flying or falling or some other superhuman activity is merely an approximation of that experience and activity based on things actually experienced by the person in their real life as opposed to the actual activity.

[randomguy 0]

A lot of my dreams make perfect sense and are easily understandable.

[NoCalMike 0]

Sometimes I will dream that I am taking a never-ending piss, and it keeps going on and on, until eventually my brain tells me to wake up and go to the bathroom.

[Black Lushus 0]

Sometimes I will dream that I am taking a never-ending piss, and it keeps going on and on, until eventually my brain tells me to wake up and go to the bathroom.

 

haha yeah I have those dreams...it's so real it almost feels like you really are pissing!

[Wyld Cannon 0]

"Really, it’s just about the two opposing states of consciousness which don’t really oppose, at all. See, in the waking world, the neural system inhibits the activation of the vividness of memories. And this makes evolutionary sense. See you’d be maladapted for the perceptual image of a predator to be mistaken for the memory of one, and vice-versa. If the memory of a predator conjured up a perceptual image, we would be running off to the bathroom every time we had a scary thought. So you have these serotonic neurons that inhibit hallucinations that they themselves are inhibited during REM sleep. See this allows dreams to appear real, while preventing competition from other perceptual processes. This is why dreams are mistaken for reality. To the functional system of neural activity that creates our world, there is no difference between dreaming a perception and an action, and actually the waking perception and action."

- Waking Life

 

So its the same feeling as peeing. Same goes for sex dreams.

[Twisted Intestine 0]

Sometimes I will dream that I am taking a never-ending piss, and it keeps going on and on, until eventually my brain tells me to wake up and go to the bathroom.

 

haha yeah I have those dreams...it's so real it almost feels like you really are pissing!

 

I had a dream like that, where I was driving then pulled over to take a piss on the sidewalk. When I woke up, I had actually pissed the bed.

 

I was like 12 okay? Whatever.

[theintensifier 0]

Thanks for those who had some input.

 

What about talking during sleep though? My current girlfriends mumbled her ex-boyfriends name a few times over the 8+ months we've been together. She swears up and down theres no emotional connection anymore.

[Wyld Cannon 0]

Thanks for those who had some input.

 

What about talking during sleep though? My current girlfriends mumbled her ex-boyfriends name a few times over the 8+ months we've been together. She swears up and down theres no emotional connection anymore.

 

Charlie: Who's Ralph?

Harriet: Oh, she's my friend.

Charlie: RALPH. SHE'S your friend. RALPH.

 

I think your girlfriend is a liar and you should probably go chop her head off or something.

[2GOLD 0]

Sounds like your girlfriend has past issues with her ex boyfriends that she needs to confront or she is about to leave you. Mumbling the names of the ex's or anyone you actually know is never just a thing, there is something subconscious going on.

[Brett Favre 0]

People usually say stuff that they said in the day, or thought of, during the day, when they speak at night. So she's probably thinking of her ex-boyfriends during the day, or talking about 'em.

[Guest RayCo]

Nostradamus and Mother Shipton dreampt about things that came true. They are called prophets.

[The Niggardly King 0]

How likely is it for someone to insert themselves inside of someone else's dream, just by lightly talking to them while they're sleeping? I know I've had a dream where I'm winning the Super Bowl with Will Smith, Carlton, and Uncle Phil because I have fallen asleep while watching Fresh Prince late at night.

[theintensifier 0]

Sounds like your girlfriend has past issues with her ex boyfriends that she needs to confront or she is about to leave you. Mumbling the names of the ex's or anyone you actually know is never just a thing, there is something subconscious going on.

Highly unlikely. She does have past issues with her ex. Her and I have discussed it, and everything is good now.

[Man Who Sold The World 0]

Anybody ever have a dream where you're falling from something and right when you hit the destination, BOOM, you wake up and it feels like you actually fell? I hate those.

 

 

Anyways, I had this dream I was on a cruise ship and there was an awesome storm going on around me. Tidal waves from every direction, although they never actually came close to hitting the ship. Almost as if they were preying on us (TIDAL WAVES, yeah), waiting for an opportunity to do us in. It was pretty strange, because throughout the ship, I ran across these people I've never seen before, but I could detail what they looked like almost to a "T". Definately freaky.

[Anorak 0]

Anybody ever have a dream where you're falling from something and right when you hit the destination, BOOM, you wake up and it feels like you actually fell? I hate those.

 

That often happens to me, usually when i've not been asleep for very long.

[Craig Th 0]

I just had a dream that this girl was telling me different types of Zombies and how they die. Then my alarm went off.

[Smartly Pretty 0]

I had a dream where I actually died in a plane crash, and then when I died I woke up.

[Red Baron 0]

I had a dream last night, that I got a hole-in-one. Then after the tournament I was disqualified for not signing my scorecard.

[NoCalMike 0]

On thursday night I was dreaming that I was at an employment office, and the lady behind the desk had her cat in the office. So we are talking and the cat jumps on my shoulder, and after awhile I wake up with a soar shoulder because my fucking cat is laying across my shoulder.....LOL.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

For those not in the know, my longtime girlfriend broke up with me two months ago. Last week, I had a dream that we were back together. I woke up and I don't think the cold hand of reality has ever slapped me as hard across the face.

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

That sucks, Al.

 

On the lighter side, I had a dream I was grocery shopping and David Byrne was the cashier. He kept making little Byrnian comments about my purchases, like "I see you bought oranges. it's always important to eat oranges for their vitamin C." or "That's some box of cereal. Cereal is good because it's easy to make. I had it once." Have you seen the self-interview on Stop Making Sense? He talked like that in my dream.

[Guest Smues]

For those not in the know, my longtime girlfriend broke up with me two months ago. Last week, I had a dream that we were back together. I woke up and I don't think the cold hand of reality has ever slapped me as hard across the face.

 

Those dreams are the absolute worst. Where something really good happens then you wake up and realize it was a dream. I usually have just the opposite though. I constantly dream something really terrible happens, and spend the whole dream miserable because of it. Then I wake up and the relief is great.

[fazzle 0]

Ok, last night I had one of the most fucked up dreams ever.

 

It was about a hockey team, that I was playing against. And they were fucking killer aliens. They looked like regular humans, but then they had big ass retractable claws they used to attack people. One of the aliens? Was a girl who works down at the strip club.

 

 

Like I said, fucked up.

[NoCalMike 0]

Once I had a dream that I was eating ribs, and a piece of meat got stuck in between my teeth, so I went to pull the meat out, and my tooth came out, then another, and another, soon I was pulling out all my teeth with ease, even my gums were coming out.....then I woke up and the first thing I did was stick my hand in my mouth to see if I still had my teeth.....the dream really did feel THAT REAL.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Well on the lighter note, I once woke up from laughing in a dream.

[Matt Young 0]

This was my most recent dream from last night. I woke up and fell back asleep afterwards, so i don't remember all the details, but I can recall most of it.

 

Someone's wedding had just finished, which myself, Marc Mero, and Sable had attended. We were on South Livingston Street in Springfield, Illinois, where my great grandma lives. Some people were chasing us, and we ran down the street away from them. We took refuge in a restaurant/bar on the corner, which is where 709 Liquors currently operates.

 

Sable and I got inside, and Mero went back out to take care of business. After he returned, bloody, we realized that he was the bad guy and had killed the good guys, the ones chasing us.

 

He took us to a house on top of a big hill, Which was old and boarded up. It was dirty and dusty, and there was a big room filled with 4 beds and several slot machines and other types of coin operated contraptions. There were others already there, and Mero threatened to kill or maim anyone who touched his coins he had lying around from scoring various jackpots.

 

Soon after our arrival, one woman's hand was cut off and a man shot dead by Mero for that very reason. It was somewhere around this point that Sable changed into Candice Michelle. I wasn't complaining.

 

Aside from Mero, it was me, Candice, some mermaid whose arms had been amputated, a couple other nameless women, and my friend Chris Delgado. We were held there for weeks, as sex slaves, and were forced to have sex with crumple-horned snorkacks, who had insatiable sexual appetites.

 

Eventually, we were given some freedoms, such as getting to eat chocolate pudding, and Candice and I got to have sex. Something else happened to distract Mero, and we all tried to escape.

 

First, 2 random people tried to get out, but were shot in the head by Marc Mero. Unfortunately, it was just a regular handgun, not a Badd Blaster. Candice and I were trying to escape along with the amputee mermaid and Zack Morris (I don't know either) but Mero was onto us.

 

Just before he got to us, there was a loud crash upstairs. He ran upstairs to check on it, and it turned out to be his son (???). His son, who had been held captive for an indeterminate length of time, shot lightning at Mero and then sucked out his soul, allowing us to escape.

 

Once we realized what happened, we saved the son, who requested that we take him to McDonalds so he could see what a Happy Meal was like before we went on our way.

 

That's all I remember.

[FroGG_NeaL 0]

Once I had a dream that I was eating ribs, and a piece of meat got stuck in between my teeth, so I went to pull the meat out, and my tooth came out, then another, and another, soon I was pulling out all my teeth with ease, even my gums were coming out.....then I woke up and the first thing I did was stick my hand in my mouth to see if I still had my teeth.....the dream really did feel THAT REAL.

 

http://www.dreammoods.com/cgibin/teethdrea...arch=teethintro

[Brett Favre 0]

I had a dream I beat Prince Albert one on one in basketball.