The Need To Dream And Psychological Health
It appears that there is a need to dream in humans and animals both. The first experiments on this subject were done in 1959 at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital by William C. Dement, a psychiatrist and former student of Nathaniel Kleitman. For five nights in a row, subjects were awakened as soon as they started to dream. I mentioned this experiment in the Introduction briefly, but let us go into it in more detail now. With each night, subjects began to exhibit REM stages of sleep more and more often until by the last night, they had to be awakened twenty two times, which is quite high in comparison to the normal five to ten REM periods in a normal sleep pattern. It seems that the human brain was trying to recover the lost REM time in the succeeding nights. The subjects began to exhibit such alarming psychotic behavior that the experiment actually had to be discontinued prematurely. Originally, this experiment was supposed to be longer.
After the fifth night, Dement allowed them to have a normal night of sleep. The subjects spent more of the recovery night than normal in the REM stage. The contrasting group of subjects who were awakened just as many times, but only during NREM sleep, did not increase their dream time during the recovery night. The conclusion of the experiment was that dreaming seems to be a needed and important function for both psychological and physical health. The experiment was continued on cats and rats by Dr. Jouvet in France, and he and his colleagues determined that the prevention of dreaming produced death “while in perfect health” in these animals. They concluded that dreams are so essential to the function of life that it is less dangerous to undergo hunger and thirst than to be deprived of dreams. This further supports Jung’s theory that dreams are a self-regulatory and compensating function at the psychological level.
Gary K. Yamamoto, in his book Creative Dream Analysis (1988), says, “Research has shown dreams to be an essential part of life. If a person is kept from dreaming for any length of time, his personality will begin to change. Even if other sleep states are experienced, a single night without dreaming will cause nervousness and irritability. The longer the person goes without dreaming, the more irritable he becomes. Finally, if dreaming is prevented for a few days, definite psychological changes in behavior result.”
It has been found by a study by Ernest Hartmann, professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine, and director of two Boston sleep laboratories, that the waking life depletes the brain’s supply of particular critical chemicals. During REM sleep, these chemicals are replenished, resulting in emotional stability and through processes like learning and memory. The book Dreams & Dreaming (1990) by George Constable, Editor In Chief, covers this experiment. The books says that, “REM sleep is not always restorative, and it seems that there can be too much of a good thing. It has been found that some people who suffer from severe clinical depression pass through the initial stages of sleep to the REM phase more quickly, and stay there longer, than do healthy people… unlike healthy sleepers, who dream most frequently during the last third of the night, depressed people may dream more during the first third, another indication of a malfunction in the body’s natural sleeping rhythms. Scientists cannot explain why such disturbances occur, but they have learned that a depressed person deprived of REM sleep for two or three weeks may find the feelings of despair and apathy lessening. In some cases, this simple therapy can be as effective as an antidepressant medication.”
A study at Georgia Mental Health Institute in Atlanta showed that 50% of the subjects who were depressed showed an improvement with a course of REM deprivation. Those who did not respond to this therapy also did not respond to medication. It is believe that the inner clock of depressed patients is flawed and needs to be reprogrammed with healthy sleep patterns. This whole body of information does not support that dreaming is needed by the psychological structure, but it does show that perhaps dreaming must happen at a certain time in the sleep pattern for it to be useful or else it is not useful at all.
On the contrary, other studies spoken about in Women’s Bodies, Women’s Dreams (1988) by Patricia Garfield, Ph.D., show that dream recall decreases during a period of mental illness, especially during severe depression. Cessation of dreaming in a person who usually recalls dreams is often an indicator that suicide will be attempted, according to statistics. Remembering dreams seems to be a necessary way to stay aware of how we are feeling.
Garfield also tells us about laboratory studies conducted on dreaming and the mental functioning in the elderly. Irwin Feinberg found that the elderly who had more REM periods also had a high level of alertness. He also found that changes in the sleeping patterns of the elderly are related to impaired memory.
Another aspect of psychological and physical health is that of having a joyful countenance. Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold contend in their book Exploring the World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990) that the, “healthiest people seem to be those who enjoy pleasure, seek it out, and make it for themselves… Some people may protest that they do not have time to have fun. But as long as you have time to sleep at night, you have time to enjoy yourself in your dreams. By learning to have lucid dreams, you open for yourself a limitless amusement park full of all the delights you can imagine. Admission is free, and there are no lines!” Many believe that the greatest antidote against illness is happiness. Dreams can serve in this way, creating more happiness, thus less of a possibility for illness.
Moods are carried into waking life from the dream world. Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold explain in their book Exploring the World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990), “We can carry not only knowledge but also moods from the lucid dream state to the waking state… This carryover of positive feeling into the waking state is an important aspect of lucid dreaming. This is all the more true of inspirational lucid dreams.” These moods affect our psychological structure, and therefore affect those we come in contact with during the day. If we truly want to have a good day, perhaps having a good dream that puts us in a good mood is the first order.
There have also been studies using lucid dreams as a means for achieving psychological healing by finishing unfinished relationships. It is thought possible to achieve resolution through inner dialogues with important people in one’s life who were there were or are issues with. What was left unsaid is said or something needing to be re-interpreted in a new way about the relationship to that person is understood. It did not matter if the person was dead or alive for beneficial results to be evident. Solving conflict is a definite necessity to psychological health. Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold concluded in their book Exploring the World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990), “Lucid dreaming can help people settle unfinished emotional business with family members and intimate friends. When an important relationship ends, people often find that they are left with unresolved issues that cause anxiety and possibly even strain later relationships.”
Dreams are not only necessary for psychological health, but they can assist to rebalance psychological health once balance has been lost, simply by observing the content of the dreams and interpreting their meaning. Jeremy Taylor says in his book Dream Work (1983), “Dreams come always in the service of promoting wholeness. They have an inherently opening effect, always bringing to consciousness those aspects of our own being which we have closed out of our waking experience… Because one purpose of dreams is always to promote increasing wholeness there is always a thread of constructive self-criticism in every dream.” The dreams where we experience ourselves in ways that seem self-depreciating actually create the opportunity for us to examine our psyche and make changes where they are necessary. These may seem like bad dreams to some, but they are actually quite therapeutic by showing aspects of ourselves which need psychological healing.