Other hypotheses on dreaming

There are many other hypotheses about the function of dreams, including:^[66]

• Dreams allow the repressed parts of the mind to be satisfied through fantasy while keeping the conscious mind from thoughts that would suddenly cause one to awaken from shock.^[67]

• Freud suggested that bad dreams let the brain learn to gain control over emotions resulting from distressing experiences.^[66]

• Jung suggested that dreams may compensate for one-sided attitudes held in waking consciousness.^[68]

• Ferenczi^[69] proposed that the dream, when told, may communicate something that is not being said outright.

• Dreams regulate mood.^[70]

• Hartmann^[71] says dreams may function like psychotherapy, by "making connections in a safe place" and allowing the dreamer to integrate thoughts that may be dissociated during waking life.

• More recent research by psychologist Joe Griffin, following a twelve-year review of data from all major sleep laboratories, led to the formulation of the expectation fulfilment theory of dreaming, which suggests that dreaming metaphorically completes patterns of emotional expectation in the autonomic nervous system and lowers stress levels in mammals.^[72][73]

Dream content

From the 1940s to 1985, Calvin S. Hall collected more than 50,000 dream reports at Western Reserve University. 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.^[74] 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 William Domhoff, allowing further different analysis. Personal experiences from the last day or week are frequently incorporated into dreams.^[75]

Visuals

The visual nature of dreams is generally highly phantasmagoric; that is, different locations and objects continuously blend into each other. The visuals (including locations, characters/people, objects/artifacts) are generally reflective of a person's memories and experiences, but often take on highly exaggerated and bizarre forms.

Emotions

The most common emotion experienced in dreams is anxiety. Other emotions include abandonment, anger, fear, joy, happiness, etc. Negative emotions are much more common than positive ones.^[74]

Sexual themes

The Hall data analysis shows that sexual dreams occur no more than 10% of the time and are more prevalent in young to mid-teens.^[74] Another study showed that 8% of men's and women's dreams have sexual content.^[76] In some cases, sexual dreams may result in orgasms or nocturnal emissions. These are colloquially known as wet dreams.^[77]

Recurring dreams

While the content of most dreams is dreamt only once, many people experience recurring dreams—that is, the same dream narrative or dreamscape is experienced over different occasions of sleep.

Color vs. black and white

A small minority of people say that they dream only in black and white.^[78][79]

Dream interpretations

Dream interpretation can be a result of subjective ideas and experiences. A recent study conducted by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology concluded that most people believe that "their dreams reveal meaningful hidden truths". The study was conducted in the United States, South Korea and India. 74% Indians, 65% South Koreans and 56% Americans believe in Freud’s dream theories.^[80]

According to these series of studies, we are irrational about dreams the same way we are irrational in our every day decisions. In their search for meaning, humans can turn to dreams in order to find answers and explanations. The studies find that dreams reflect the human trait of optimistic thinking since the results depict that humans tend to focus more on dreams where good things take place.