Introduction
Dreams are natural experiences whereby people can picture themselves doing various activities while asleep. According to the self-organization theory, dreams are due to the organization of incongruous and discontinuous neural signals to form a narrative while asleep (Zhang & Guo, 2018). Although dreams are independent from a person’s function, they represent the dreamer’s psychosocial and psychological activities, such as emotion, memory, and how they perceive external stimuli. This study will analyze a sleeping journal and use theories to interpret dreams.
Analysis of the Journal
One notable thing is that I do not go to bed at the same time every night. Sometimes I go to bed as early as 8 PM, while on other days, I may be late and sleep at 9:30 PM. I noticed that I would likely go to bed early when l was tired. However, when I am not tired, I tend to stay awake for long hours before going to bed. On average, I sleep for 8-9 hours which is enough sleep to give the body a rest. I noticed that I had a high possibility of dreaming when I was tired. According to Zhang & Guo (2018), the best sleeping hours for an adult is between 10 PM – 11 PM because it has health benefits for the heart. During this time, the body achieves the optimum benefits because it matches well with the cardiac rhythms and daytime exposure. Thus, to improve my sleep, I should change my sleeping time from 9 PM to 10 PM so that I can gain health benefits from sleep.
I analyzed my dreams and found that they would likely match my daytime events or thoughts. On day one, I dreamt with my friends playing football because we had a lengthy sports day in school. I can easily connect the dream with the day’s events because the characters in the dream were dressed the same way they were during the day in the sports event. The third dream was about classwork and connected to my daytime activities because I had spent the whole day in class.
Application of Theory
There are various theories which explain and interpret why people dream. Simgud’s theory states that dreams represent people’s desires, motivations, wish fulfilment, and thoughts (Zhang & Guo, 2018). Thus, people are driven by unconscious longing such as sexual and aggressive insticnts. This is evident because most of my dreams were driven by my daily activities, which act as my thoughts and motivations. For instance, on a sporting day, I dreamt playing football because we had spent the better part of the day playing ball.
In addition, dreams aide in memory according to the process information theory. The theory states that when people are asleep, they consolidate and process information collected during the day. Thus, when a person dreams, they process or organize information. During this process, memories are either strengthened or weakened depending on their importance. The important memories are strengthened through dreaming while weaker ones fade away. This is evident because, on the third day, when I dream of having exams, I strengthened my memory of the context learned and could remember it vividly on the following day.
Conclusion
According to Sigmund’s theory, dreams have a significant meaning in life as they help keep the most important memories and let the less important ones fade. However, when a person is more tired, they are more likely to dream than when they are not tired; which implies the body and mental activities of the day determine a person’s ability to dream. Thus, this study has found a connection between daytime activities, meomories, motivation and dreams.
References
Zhang, W., & Guo, B. (2018). Freud’s dream interpretation: A different perspective based on the self-organization theory of dreaming. Frontiers in Psychology, 9(1553).