Lesson 1: Psychology – A Look into the Past
9 - Sleep and Dreams
Several hours of our lives are spent sleeping. It is much more than just a passive activity we engage in once a day. Sleep might be boring, but the dreams we have while sleeping certainly are not! Freud found them amazing, and that interest continues.
Sleep
Do people really need eight hours of sleep a night? Some do need that length of time; others can get by on five or six hours while some people require as much as nine or ten hours.
 Why is sleep necessary? One research compared the brain to a computer that stores our memory banks. Computers must be shut down or taken “off line” occasionally and so does the brain to sort through the events of the day and recharge the memory banks. Studies of the brain indicate that, while a person is awake, many nerve impulses pass continuously through the nervous system. When the person is asleep, far fewer impulses are recorded. Sleep helps the body build resistance to stress and strengthens the immune system. Lack of sleep can lead to a number of consequences including anxiety, depression, problems with concentration and memory, poor performance at tasks, accidents, increased illness, and even personality disturbances. |
Sleep may seem like an uneventful process where nothing happens; however, people do not sleep uninterruptedly throughout the night. Psychologists speak of five stages of sleep. Sleep occurs in cycles, but the pattern of these cycles varies not only for the same individual from one night to the next but also from one individual to another. These stages are characterized as follows:
- Stage one: Also characterized as light sleep, this is the stage where a person drifts in and out of sleep and can be awakened quite easily. Eye movement slows and muscles start to relax. Some people awakened during this stage can recall seeing some images. Many also experience sudden muscle contractions accompanied by the feeling that they are falling. Their bodies start or make a jump, waking the person.
- Stage two: During this stage, eye movements stop and brain waves show a pattern much slower than when the person is awake. Occasionally a rapid, fast burst of brainwave activity occurs for a brief period of time.
- Stage three: During this stage that is also referred to as deep sleep, our brain waves become even slower and a pattern of delta waves occur with the occasional burst of smaller, faster waves. During this stage people are very difficult to awaken. They show no eye movement or muscle activity. When they are awakened, they feel disorientated and groggy. This is the stage when people experience night terrors, bed-wetting and sleep walking.
- Stage four: During this stage of deep sleep, the brain produces delta waves almost exclusively. All the effects that occur during stage three occur during this stage as well; the only difference is the absence of the fast bursts of waves.
- REM sleep: During this stage body functions accelerate. Breathing becomes more rapid, irregular, and shallow, and eyes move around rapidly in all directions. Arm and leg muscles become paralyzed, heart rate increases, and blood pressure rises. This is the stage where dreaming occurs. The amount of time a person spends in REM sleep depends on the person’s age. A baby spends 50% of its sleep in REM sleep a young adult spends 20% of sleep time in REM sleep, and a elderly person spends 15% of sleep time in REM sleep.
Sweet Dreams
| People need to dream. Sleep researchers tell us that during dream sleep the brain restores a chemical depleted during the day. This chemical is needed to focus our attention and to think logically. Those deprived of dreams have temporary changes in behaviour during waking hours, such as greater irritability, difficulty in concentrating, and some memory lapses. These changes disappear when the subjects are allowed to sleep undisturbed, during which time they dream more frequently. |
How do you know when a sleeping person is having dreams? If you closely observe a person in the deeper sleep cycles, you may notice the eyes are fluttering and moving from side to side. This phenomenon is known as rapid eye movements or REMs. The average dream is about 25 minutes in length. Dreams can be as short as a few minutes or last for over an hour. Some people say they do not dream at all, which means they don’t remember their dreams. People are sometimes disturbed or even embarrassed by their dreams. Most people will admit that, although dreams vary greatly from one episode to the next, they have a dream that repeats itself from time to time.
Sigmund Freud called dreams the royal road to the unconscious mind. Carl Jung believed that dreams speak to us through the symbols they portray. Some people attempt to advise what each dream event or dream symbol means. However, it is best to remember that dreams are one’s unconscious mind speaking. Therefore, if you want to gain a clear understanding of what your dreams mean, you must learn to interpret your own dream symbols that relate to your own personal life situation.