anticlimatic
Permabanned
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2013
- Messages
- 3,293
- MBTI Type
- INTP
I agree with you about dreams, though I'd also say that there is a lot of wish fufilment in dreams too, its one of the only places were you are totally free, unlike in your waking life, but that freedom can include a lot of unconscious or repressed memories, drives and desires, I think so anyway.
Whether we remember them or not I think dreams are a vital form of mental and emotional maintenance. It's one of the few pieces of solid scientific data we have on them- that they're a product of REM sleep, and that REM sleep is paramount for maintaining sanity. The first job I took after moving across country when I was 18 (out of necessity) was a third shift baker job, and it really opened my eyes to one very interesting facet of human nature: there is a trend in the way people change throughout the day, and that change is reset to default after REM sleep. I didn't notice it until I lived in a state of being freshly awake in the evenings, and worn-down tired in the mornings, but people's minds slowly begin to 'loosen' and 'unravel' as the day goes on. Thoughts and feelings once decidedly separate begin melting and 'connecting' with one another (which is why things get funnier and funnier the longer you're awake). REM sleep defrags the mental hard drive, and dreams are (I think) just a window into that process. I think they only seem random and fanciful because 1) we don't see the entire process, or even remember most of it, and 2) the parts we do see are well out of context. If you imagine the unconscious mind as a maintenance worker organizing the garage of your thoughts and feelings; with its left hand it grabs a thought that's in the wrong place and moves it across the table, while with it's right hand it grabs an emotion from the other side of the table, and as the two pass by one another in transit we notice them, and if we're lucky later remember them, and that's what we call dreams.