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Scientific studies have shown that almost a third of a person's life is spent on sleep. As we all know, people tend to dream when they sleep. Regarding dreams and dreams, people in ancient and modern China and abroad have always been studying.
Research on dreams
For example, there is a Chinese saying: "Thinking about it every day, dreaming at night." This expresses that dreams, in the eyes of the ancients, are actually a reflection of daytime behavior and thinking.
Similarly, texts such as the Zhou Gong Dream Interpretation prove the idea that these connections are even thought to be universal and can be summed up through empirical records.
Similarly, in the Western world, people are also curious about dreams. In ancient Greece, for example, dreams were thought to have supernatural apocalyptic powers, from certain wills from God and the gods.
Emile Albert Gruppe believed that dreams could be an explanation of past memories or a prediction of the future, more moderate; Aristotle creatively believed that dreams were a mental activity of the individual in sleep, completing a transcendence of mysticism.
By the time when the natural and social sciences of modern times had achieved great development, the West had produced many famous psychologists.
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, is one of them, and his study of dreams can be regarded as a theory that is more in line with people's understanding and can be more affirmed.
The special role of dreams
In Freud's view, the reason why people dream is because dreams have several special functions.
1. Dreams are the dissolution of emotions in life
I believe that many people will see their deceased relatives in their dreams, and they feel empathy in their dreams, which is very sad; sometimes they also dream of the ta who was once deeply loved but separated for various reasons, and they are often particularly heartbroken at this time.
Sometimes I also dream about people who do not have a particularly good relationship with themselves in real life, and I believe that even in dreams, there will be a feeling of blood pressure rising and not hitting.
The reason for this situation is that dreams actually have a very important function of elimination and digestion in Freud's view, and will have a very obvious role in discharging various things and emotions experienced by individuals in real life.
There was a related survey that showed that 60% of the researchers had ever come out of the pain of losing a loved one with the help of dreams.
For us, emotional loss is inevitable, and only by reducing it in time can we continue to live.
2. Dreams are the strengthening and consolidation of daytime memories
Freud believed that dreams are a kind of "reprocessing" of daytime thinking information for individuals.
I don't know if you've ever had the experience of having something happen during exam week, during exam preparation, or when you're concentrating on something, even if you're dreaming. This is a significant manifestation of the memory enhancement function of dreams.
The results of a related study show that in individuals during REM sleep (the stage of high incidence of dreams), the low-frequency lambda wave of the frontal lobe of the brain is more active, which is similar to the state of learning, storing and remembering information when people are awake.
Relatively speaking, if a person cannot guarantee that he has a good sleep quality for a long time, or even often insomnia, then it will often be inefficient during the day, and even normal communication and interaction are difficult to complete, which is the negative confirmation of the function of dreams to strengthen memory.
Therefore, as a student, it is still necessary to ensure the quality of sleep. Staying up late to raid review is often an act of "doing half the work".
3. Dreams can help us predict some potential dangers
I believe that many people have experienced such a scene in their dreams: falling from a high place, being chased by dangerous people or wild beasts, being in a desperate situation but helpless...
A similar scene will make people feel hopeless in their dreams, which is a typical nightmare.
However, it is also such a scenario that can confirm another function of dreams - to help individuals predict and even avoid some impending dangers to a certain extent.
Evolution is a major theory proposed from the perspective of biological development, and the related derivation theory holds that individuals have more significant animal habits when they have not evolved to today's form, that is, they have a more prominent animal habit, that is, foresaw and avoid danger. From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, then, nightmares have a "special role" in helping people predict the future.
Even after a long period of evolution, human beings have detached themselves from bestiality and have a highly civilized society, but this perception and prediction of danger is still preserved.
When you experience some dangerous scenes in your dreams that are usually entirely possible, or when someone in your life has made a very frightening behavior, I believe that after you wake up, in addition to adjusting your emotions in time, I believe that you will also prevent these things from happening to a large extent, after all, the heart of prevention is indispensable.
4. Dreams are a key to opening up parallel worlds
The ancients tended to think that dreams were related to future events, and although this was not confirmed by the development of science, people tended to think that the connection between the two was a simple materialist connection.
However, research by psychologists such as Carl Gustav Jung believes that when individuals sleep, their information interference is greatly reduced.
And in the dream state, consciousness can have some kind of connection with the "collective subconscious" of human beings, and it will be more sensitive to external feelings, so it can also perceive some "foreseeing the future" related information that the individual usually has no way to detect when he is awake.
The future is uncertain, but consciousness, as a pre-existing basis for human understanding and transformation of the world, can play a certain guiding role in the future direction.
For a simple example, when a person is in the current confused life and does not know what to do, if in the dream, there are frequent occupations and affairs that he can engage in, then even if he does not believe it, I believe that he will try it with an attitude of trying it.
When it is finally successful, when you look back, you will find that it is actually the dream at that time that gave itself a kind of guidance, which can also be regarded as opening the door to the parallel world.
Of course, the future is still difficult to predict, and it is difficult to change your life just by dreaming, but you still have to work hard to change your life.
To sum up, the reason why people dream is that on the one hand, dreams are a biological behavior, as long as people sleep, they will dream; secondly, the existence of dreams is not meaningless, but there are many "special functions".
Make good use of these functions of dreams, and life will change from a dream.
- The End -
Author | Tommy
The First Psychological Writing Group | A group of young people who like to look up at the stars
参考资料：Vogel, D. L., & Wester, S. R. (2003). To seek help or not to seek help: The risks of self-disclosure. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 50(3), 351.