FREE ESSAY ON DREAMS

DREAMS

Dreams
For my independent study topic I researched dreams. There are many different approaches
philosophers have taken to explain dreams and what they mean. I will go through a couple
of
them. Many of you may be asking yourself "why do I dream?", there are several answers to
that
question. The first in the physiological set. We dream in order to exercise our brains.
When you're
awake, messages are constantly speeding among all your billions of brain cells to keep
you
moving and thinking and digesting an so on. So the idea is that when you're asleep,
dreams
exercise the "pathways" between brains cells. A couple of ideas that might help this make
sense
are; the first couple of years of your life are the most intense for learning which is
also when you
have the greatest amount of REM sleep-which means your dreaming a lot. Another thing is
your
brain waves during REM sleep look about the same as your brain waves while your awake.
During other parts of sleep, the brain waves look very different (a lot slower) 
There is also a psychological set of ideas about why we dream. Since psychology has to do
with
your thoughts and emotions it has been said dreams are actually about immediate concerns
in our
lives. In the bible and within a lot of cultures dreams are thought to be prophetic,
which means
they can predict the future. Sigmund Freud a famous philosopher gave us a lot of ideas on
how
our minds work and was very interested in interpreting dreams. He thought dreams
contained
symbols hidden deep within our minds and memories.
Dreaming Process Net
stage 1
stage 2 
stage 3