Reasons-Why Do We Dream?

In ancient period

In ancient period, explaining the hidden meaning of dreams was an indispensable job for royal advisors, priests, and even psychologist. Thus, people thought "Dreams were thought to be messages from the gods or the gods or the spirit world, giving warnings or revealing secrets." In addition, each person had different opinions about what is the meaning of dream. For instance, one ancient Egyptian dream book showed "If you dreamed of being naked, you'd end up an orphan." Also, in ancient Chinese dream guide showed "Dreaming of an orchard full of rope fruit predicted many children." In my opinion, this kind of reason is not scientific, because in ancient period, most of people thought dreams are miraculous and they cannot explain why they dream during sleep. In this situation, they thought dreams may from the god or the spiritual world, also, the meaning of dreams are related to the religion and belief.

 

 

Around 1900

Around 1900, an Austrian doctor named Sigmund Freud thought "Instead of being messages from the spirits, he thought dreams were messages from ourselves, revealing our secret wishes."  For example, Freud made am experiment to know the secret wishes. he knew a doctor who did not like to get up in the morning. When the doctor dreamed that he was a patient in the hospital. This dream from this doctor indicated he would found a way to go to work and stay in bed at the same time. In China, there is a famous phrase: "The thinking during the day would cause the dreaming during the night." This phrase also shows that dreams were messages from ourselves, granting ourselves wishes. In my opinion, Freud's explanation is people oriented and avoid the religion and belief. This is a large improvement in the research of dream, because researchers begin to study dreams from themselves.   

 

Around 1950s                                    

During the 1950s period, scientists began to find some problems with Freud's ideas, because some dreams are not about wishes. In this period, researchers discovered the sleep cycle which contains five different levels of sleep, completing a cycle about every ninety minutes. Stage one is characterizing by the complete lack of spindles and by low voltage non-periodic activity with occasional bursts of alpha; Stage two is characterizing by spindling against a low voltage background; Stage three and four by slowing high voltage activity and Stage five is called rapid eye movement sleep (REM), which long, vivid dreams are happened in this stage. In this stage, your eyes move quickly and your brain becomes quite active. Researchers found that "Dreaming was starting to look less like a secret message and more like a body function, such as breathing or a heartbeat."