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From: Reeses_pcs4 (Original Message) Sent: 6/8/2008 1:51 PM
Dream Facts

REM and NREM

In 1953 it was discovered that when a sleeper is experiencing rapid eye movement (REM), he or she is dreaming. During REM, blood pressure and heart rate increase. The mind is active, but the body has little to no movement (though some people's facial muscles and limbs will move).

For nearly one-third of our lives we are dreaming, and most of that time is spent in REM. REM sleep occurs several times during the sleep cycle. Most people have three to give REM sleeps per night.

There are also periods of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) during sleep. These occur when the sleeper is in a deep sleep. Although dreams occur in both REM and NREM, the NREM dreams seem to have no mental content.

The body requires both REM and NREM sleep.

A normal person spends about 25 percent of her sleeping time in REM. Many factors can interfere with REM sleep, such as drugs (including prescribed sedatives and sleeping pills), alcohol, caffeine, depression, and psychological disorders.

In the early 1960s, dream researchers found that sleep and REM deprivation lead to fatigue, poor concentration, irritability, and memory loss. Total sleep deprivation causes illness and mental disorders.

Recent research has shown that people suffering from serious depression dream less often than the average. As depression sufferers start getting well they being having more REM dreams.

How your subconscious mind works:

The subconscious mind has several roles. First, it is the storehouse for memories, emotions, habits, and behavioral patterns. It is the repository for your past experiences, beliefs, values, and identity, and creates reactions based on this stored information. It is highly adaptive and 'runs' your life as best it can with the choices it has available.

Second, it is responsible for the running of your physical body, with all its complex systems and chemical processes. Luckily, the subconscious mind can handle and process innumerable items of information simultaneously without becoming weighed down. It only stores, sorts, and filters data.

Third, the subconscious mind helps mediate between the conscious and the higher conscious minds. One of its main functions is to communicate directly with the higher conscious mind. The subconscious mind receives information from the higher consciousness as intuition, and then it passes it to the conscious mind.

One of the first dream psychologists:

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

In his work The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud said: "I shall bring forward proof that there is a psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret our dreams." Freud felt that all drams were driven by our sexual libido. He believed that dreams are "the royal road to the unconscious," coded messages that come from the subconscious to advise of repressed desires and instincts. His hypothesis about dreams was associated with illness rather than wellness, but he paved the way for us to search our dreams for information about ourselves.

Sharing dreams can help the dying:

Dreams can have a particularly powerful meaning for the dying. People who are near death often have profound dreams containing vital information that cn allow them to complete the process of dying. Being able to talk about dreams or visions is therapeutic for people who are dying - it helps them understand their own concerns. Encourage people in this situation to tell you the details, and help them interpret their dreams. Sometimes a death dream may come to someone other than the dying person, perhaps a close friend. Understanding this dream may allow them to give understanding and assistance to the dying person.

One of the first dream psychologists:
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)

A world-renowned psychologist and one-time protoge of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung went beyond Freud in recognizing a sublevel of the subconscious mind. He postulated that the human psyche has an impersonal level as well as the personal one. The impersonal level, which he called the "collective unconscious," contains archetypes - remnants from the evolution of the human psyche. Jung believed that we draw on archetypes in our dreams and that our subconscious mind then individualizes them to match our specific natures. Jung believed that focusing when we are awake on the symbols in a dream would reveal the dream and its conflicts to the conscious mind. He also emphasized the importance of a person's present experiences to the dream. Jung was perhaps the first to have a theory that we are dreaming all the time, and that only the distraction of our waking life leaves us unaware of the fact. He also believed that the human psyche is constantly progressing toward its goal of wholeness and maturity. Understanding and controlling our dreams enable us to move us closer to that goal.