Facts about Dreams

The term "dream incorporation" is also used in research examining the degree to which preceding daytime events become elements of dreams.

Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were the first to identify dreams as an interaction between the unconscious and the conscious.

The Abrahamic faiths—Christianity, Islam, and Judaism—believe that there were two sources of dreams: God and Satan.

Whatever the cause, and there may be different types of dreams that result from different processes, it is the responsibility of the dreamer to act appropriately with regard to the dream experience.

Ancient Buddhism taught that dreams were the mental projections of a person's desires and fears, an illusory construct developed out of each person's attachment to the illusory world of waking consciousness.

The U.S. ranks the highest amongst industrialized nations for aggression in dreams, with 50 percent of U.S. males reporting aggression compared to 32 percent for Dutch men.

Men generally had more aggressive feelings in their dreams than women, and children's dreams did not have very much aggression until they reached the teenage years.

The most common emotion experienced in dreams was anxiety.

had a similar take on dreams, believing that they were the product of the senses and natural make-up of a person.

Dreams were thought to be part of a spiritual world, and were seen as messages from the gods.

The Hall data analysis shows that sexual dreams show up no more than 10 percent of the time and are more prevalent in young to mid teens.

Shamanism in various cultures saw dreams and dream-like states as connections to worlds and realms of the spirit.

In 1976, J. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarly proposed the activation synthesis theory of dreams.

Sigmund Freud arrived at his theory of dreams by research (though he rejected much of the prior work), self-analysis, and psychoanalysis of his patients.

Hobson's 1976 research suggested that the signals interpreted as dreams originated in the brain stem during REM sleep.

Sexual content is not as prevalent in dreams as one might expect.

Jung believed that archetypes such as the animus, the anima, the shadow, and others manifested themselves in dreams, as dream symbols or figures.

Up to 70 percent of females and 65 percent of males report recurrent dreams.

Many studies have underlined the importance of dreams in psychoanalysis, and therapeutic work in general.

A number of common themes have been identified in dreams.

Achieving maturity as a human being, united in mind and body, may prove necessary to be able to discern the true meaning of dreams.

The events of dreams are often impossible, or unlikely to occur, in physical reality: they are also outside the control of the dreamer.

Rather than showing a complementary or compensatory aggressive style between our thoughts and dreams, these data support the view that there is a continuity between our conscious and unconscious styles and personalities.

Dreams have long been one of the most puzzling aspects of consciousness that humankind possesses.

Both Jacob and Daniel were all given the ability to interpret dreams by God.

Both religion and science have tried to define what dreams are, where they come from, and what they mean.

Calvin S. Hall and Van De Castle published The Content Analysis of Dreams in which they outlined a coding system to study 1,000 dream reports from college students.

The theory explains that the schism between superego and id leads to "censorship" of dreams.

The continuity hypothesis suggest that the content of dreams is not remote from the waking reality, but, rather, portrays the most prominent feelings, interests, and concerns of the individual.

Ethnic groups showed different percentages of dreams of an aggressive nature.

Researchers refer to these types of dreams as "no content dream reports.

Nevertheless, dreams, and their interpretation, continue to provide a powerful therapeutic focus.

General observation shows that dreams are strongly associated with Rapid Eye Movement or REM sleep.

People all over the world throughout history have experienced and reported dreams.

The content of these dreams, although the details vary as widely as the lives of the dreamers, nonetheless has a certain universality.

Dreams are prolific in the Bible, Torah, and Qur'?n.

Rather than showing a complementary or compensatory aggressive style between our thoughts and dreams, these data support the view that there is a continuity between our conscious and unconscious styles and personalities.

Dreams were thought to be part of a spiritual world, and were seen as messages from the gods.