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    Why do we dream ?: The nature and function of dreams
    Why do we dream ?: The nature and function of dreams
    Why do we dream ?: The nature and function of dreams
    Ebook141 pages1 hour

    Why do we dream ?: The nature and function of dreams

    By Peter Folmer Sørensen

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    About this ebook

    Initially this book does not ask, how do we interpret dreams, but it does ask, why do we dream. It is Scientific psychology.
    There has been many theories, why we dream, but they all seem to lack something. The book develop a new theory based on the nature of dreams, and their properties.
    The theory is supported by dreamexamples. We see how you can realize in dreams, and how it contains emotions, that are clearified in the visual, where you see clearly. Dreams are compared to a magnifying glass, where you spot the World.
    The author is a Danish licensed psychologist
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBoD
    Release dateNov 2, 2018
    ISBN9788743000754
    Why do we dream ?: The nature and function of dreams
    Author

    Peter Folmer Sørensen

    Forfatteren er autoriseret psykolog. Han har tidligere arbejdet på ægteskabs- og skilsmissehjælpen.

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      Book preview

      Why do we dream ? - Peter Folmer Sørensen

      Why do we dream ?

      Why do we dream ?

      Introduction

      Chapter 1: Dreamtheories

      Chapter 2: The nature of the dream

      Chapter 3: Lack of dream-sleep

      Chapter 4: The function of the dream

      Chapter 5: Dreamclarification

      Chapter 6: The creation of a dream

      Chapter 7: Making it clear in thought and emotion - Some evidence

      Discussion: Some objektions

      References

      Copyright

      Why do we dream ?

      Introduction

      A while ago you could read, that science now have shown, that we dream in images.

      It can hardly come as a surprice to anyone. It is something most people can ascertain by themselves after sleeping. The images are not right in front of our eyes, but still in our dreamexperience during sleep. It comes as no surprice.

      Never the less it is questioned, and apparently you can only believe meassures. This means your own experience become doubted, because only a meassure should be right. Maybe you should not believe your own eyes, and let scepticism rule out all, we only sense.

      Meassures can be doubted, and controlled by other meassureinstruments, that have to be controlled again. Meanwhile nobody ask if it is a valid meassure, so you can meassure, what is in question, that way.

      An electric signal means there are activity in this area of the brain, but it doesn´t say what kind of activity. You can colour one activity yellow, but it is still our interpretation, that it is the same activity, and it is, what we say we are going to meassure, not something else, that we haven´t thought it is.

      The belief in the small instrument-needle have as a result, that we doubt our own experience. Emotions are perceived as sources of error, that distort things, and not as a source of information. You  begin to doubt your own emotional experience.  Do I really feel that way, or is it an illusion.

      Science is not only natural science. It`s tempting to find proof by meassurement, but in the end, it is us who have to assess the method, by which these results are achieved. You can meassure another thing, that give a result, that we don´t have a clue is a result of something else, because we have simplified and excluded, or something else happened in the meanwhile.

      Its not that simple. Don´t be naive. On one side you shouldn´t be too credulous, on the other side you shouldn´t reject, what is obvious, just because there is no record of it.

      They have planted electrodes to meassure the brain inside, not outside the scull. Its not the same place to meassure, but it will come as no surprice, that during sleep you get results that match dreams, which are visual.

      The brain activity during dreams look like activity, when we are awake, and receive information from our eyes. Of course, it is because we see images during dreams. And there are naturally activity around sight, and the brainareas that are involved in visual impression.

      Our sight plays a role in our comprehension and world recognition. Important conclusions are to be made regarding our sight, that are involved in one third of the brains areas. We see things, when we understand, how the world is made.

      Unfortunately these conclusions let us wait, and dreams become no more than a riddle for natural science. Maybe in many years we will hear more, but natural science still don´t explain the level of the mind.

      Recently there have been good answers from scientific psychology, and certain scientist have devoted their reserch to dreams. I am thinking about people like Dr. Ernest Hartman and Dr. Milton Kramer, but we will return. This give things a human scientific touch.

      It´s not all that can be in one book. There are a lot of books about dreaminterpretation. Both for beginners and for the more experienced. For the elementary I will recomend dreamresearcher Montague Ullman: Working with dreams : Selfunderstanding, 1979.

      The meaning of dreams are in my considerations, but the interpretation itself is not the primary concern. The primary question is, why do  we dream at night, more than how do we understand, what the dream says.

      We can start by saying, that there must be a function in it, when we lay at night dreaming. Nature has granted us with important features, that will help in our survival on the planet.

      In emotions and actions you can immediately see a meaning, but what is going on, when we sleep, when there are no actions or happening anything else. This question occupies scientist, psychologists and individuals.

      If it is no use to us, we can get rid of it. You can choose never to give dreams a thought, but it is still going on. If you wake up a person in the sleep period, where there are rapid eye movements (rem-sleep), the person will tell you about vivid dreams.

      These eye movements can be seen outside the closed eyes, and it can move from side to side or up-down. If you dream of a ladder, it will go up, or are there persons to the right, the movement will go to the right.

      Now we know, that we dream every night, for every one and a half hour, even if we forget about it rushing out of bed in the morning. If we don´t write it on paper, it will soon be forgotten. Unless there are a very clear dream portraited in memory.

      Is it like the computer updating in the background, without us taking notice of it ? Comparisons can shed light on things, but there can be differences, so we are misdirected or it´s just a new name.

      Much of the stuff going on in the computer, is not something the ordinary user understand much of. You can use the computer without knowing in detail about the programming and electronics. In the brain we have cells and nerves, that are completely different.

      Psychology is not neurology or biochemistry. You don´t want to know, that something is going on in the bloodstream and nerves. It must be meaningfull on the psychological level, the level that are between people and inside people, as it is in our consciousness and in our psychological living.

      I am not going to write long theories about the consciousnes, not to mention the unconsciousness, that have been linked to our dreamworld. We are going to  see, that there is a relation between what is going on consciously, and what is in our emotional life and dreamlife.

      We dream on after our experiences, and let them continue in time and space. Something more is happening, as if we were still there, and for longer time. But it is not a nature-movie, we are watching. Its not photografic.

      We are in another state of mind, a dream country, and here we don´t have to follow the laws of gravity, if something weightless is on our mind. Here we don´t have to seperate things far apart, if they are close to our heart.

      The dreams nature are the special features, that dreams have, which decide what use, it is made for. We have to see, what it is, in order to see, what good it can do. We have to see a picture of the way dreams look, to see how they work.

      The way a dream is build says something about its purpose. Just like an instrument says something about what it can do. Its not allways easy to judge, what it is, when you see a handle, something to push and pull, and a pointed end.

      We are going to describe the dreamphenomenon, and should find clues to the causes of the dream, and how it works. We are going to know, what dreams are made of, by what means they work, and how they leave us.

      There are no reason to doubt, that dreams are visual metaphors, as the dreamresearcher Montague Ullman (-87) have pointed out. You can doubt that dreams have meaning in it self, but that is a blind alley to enter.

      We are going to see, that there are meaning in the madness. A meaning in the dreamimages, but also a meaning in the dreamphenomenon. In the dreampicture we look at things, but we are also sensing it, and having reactions. Its mainly visual. To see also means understanding. We have it in Do you see, what I mean ?.

      You can doubt the importance of dreams. To me this is lack of understanding, that something important take place there. It seems like incoherent nonsense, for those who don´t get the connections, because language distinguish between one thing and the other.

      We think by means of the language, and sometimes it is hard to step out of it, in order to think pictures instead. But an aptly picture can say more than thousind words, and something that words not really get. The main thing is in the image of a core, the essential.

      It comes to mind comparing dreams to morningpostage. We can open it and make ourselves wiser, or we can leave them untouched. The dreams are there anyway, and do what they are supposed to do.

      Let us stick to, that dreams have a natural function. They are there, because of good reasons, and because they are usefull for us. Otherwise they would not have been developed in our survival. In evolution it has got a place and plays a role.

      The purpose of dreams means something to the way, we understand them. If they are like birdsongs, they are signals for warning or localisation. If they are

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