What A Dream!

Decoding the science behind dreams and why they occur…

Adults dream for about two hours a night, on an average – that’s one-twelfth of their lives, adding up to more than six years of dreaming during an 80-year life. World literature is filled with dreams. Dreams play an outsized role in Shakespeare’s plays, from ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Macbeth’ to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Old Testament patriarchs were dreamers on a cosmic scale: Jacob dreamed of a ladder leading up to heaven; Joseph got a job interpreting dreams for Pharaoh.

Indeed, explaining dreams has, over the centuries, been a good way to earn a living. In some societies, shamans use dreams to diagnose illness, expose adultery, predict pregnancy and the weather, or locate game. Under the influence of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theories, dreams passed into the domain of the psychiatrist, and many people undergoing analysis spend their 50 minutes unravelling their dreams.

Dreams may seem to have little or nothing to do with physical health, but they are an integral part of sleep and thus are essential to life. We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” as Prospero says in ‘The Tempest’, yet dreaming remains largely a mystery. That said, we’ll try to answer some questions about dreams.

Do dreams disrupt sleep?

No, dreams are a key part of restorative sleep. Sleep has four phases, which we cycle through usually four or five times a night: REM (rapid eye movement) plus three non- REM stages. Most dreaming goes on during the REM stage, when the eyes move under the lids. Dreaming may not seem particularly restful, however, especially if you have nightmares and they occur just before waking.

Does everybody dream?