Dreaming has always been a mystery to science, but researchers have recently made some important discoveries about how we dream. Michael Schredl, a dream researcher, studied the brain activity of people who were dreaming in the sleep laboratory of the Central Institute for Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany. During a dream, the brain accesses the so-called dream consciousness while sleeping. To the surprise of the researchers, this consciousness is completely identical to waking consciousness. This explains why dreams can feel so real and evoke strong emotions in the dreamer. “Dreams are therefore an experience like any other,” explains Schredl. This discovery confirms the statement that dreams can be experienced as fantastic, frightening, or confusing, just like real life.
Furthermore, this means that people can learn just as much from their dream experiences as they can from waking experiences. “Dreams offer the opportunity to have experiences of all kinds – experiences that expand our waking experiences,” says Schredl. In addition to pure psychological dream research, Schredl points to the two other major fields of dream research: depth psychology and biological dream research. However, both research directions have their difficulties. For example, it is unclear whether psychoanalysis, founded by Sigmund Freud, brings generalizable results beyond case studies, regardless of clinical-therapeutic practice. In addition, dream biologists would have to recognize that the function of dreaming is not as simple as the latest research results from Schredl show.
It is important to note that the psychological understanding of dreaming also means that differences between the dreams of men and women do not have a biological basis. Rather, they must be understood as expressions of the respective life world. Therefore, there are no gender differences in dreams, only in waking life, which are then reflected in dreams. While the mystery of why we dream may still remain, these recent discoveries shed light on how we dream and the potential benefits of exploring our dream experiences.
