Meaning of Dreams💭: Mysteries, Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience
Every night, eyes closed, we slip into the most immersive of cinemas. No screen, no controller: our brain becomes at once the director, the screenwriter, and the captive spectator of a real-time virtual reality. A true procedural rendering engine drawing on our memories and anxieties.
But what do these nocturnal scenarios really mean? Divine prophecies, repressed desires, or mere maintenance of our neuronal hard drive? A dive into humanity’s most intimate mystery.
🏛️ Antiquity: Dreams as messengers of the divine
Before the rise of science, dreaming was a sacred matter, an open door to the invisible world.
- In ancient Egypt: Priests already used interpretation manuals to decode the messages of the gods.
- In ancient Greece: The practice of incubation involved sleeping in the temples of Asclepius to receive a healing vision. Morpheus, god of dreams, personified this power.
It would take the Greek philosopher Aristotle for a rational theory to emerge: according to him, dreams do not come from the gods but from internal bodily sensations. The first crack in mysticism had been born.
🛋️ Psychoanalysis: The dream as a window onto the unconscious
Sigmund Freud’s approach: The encrypted desire
In 1900, the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams caused a sensation. For Freud, the dream is the “royal road to the unconscious”. His theory rests on a clear principle: the dream is the disguised fulfilment of a repressed desire.
To protect our sleep and avoid shocking ourselves with our own unacceptable impulses, our psyche “encrypts” the message through condensation and displacement. The dream acts as an emotional safety valve.
Carl Jung’s view: The collective unconscious
A former disciple of Freud, Jung widened the lens. For him, the dream does not only contain our personal neuroses; it draws on the collective unconscious. He saw archetypes (the Hero, the Shadow, the Animus) common to all humanity. For Jung, the dream has a compensatory and spiritual function: it guides us towards self-realisation.
🔬 Neuroscience: System maintenance
Today, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) offers a more mechanical, yet equally dizzying view of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep.
🧹 Clean-up and sorting
The brain clears toxins (glymphatic system) and sorts the day’s information, consolidating useful memory and discarding the rest.
🎭 Threat simulation
The simulation theory (Revonsuo) suggests that dreaming is a safe virtual-reality environment in which to rehearse facing dangers.
📚 Sources and references
- Freud, S. (1900). The Interpretation of Dreams. Various editions.
- Jung, C. G. (1964). Man and His Symbols. Doubleday.
- Revonsuo, A. (2000). The reinterpretation of dreams: An evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
- Walker, M. (2017). Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. Scribner.
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