Introduction
Dreams may be normal occurrences for everyone but this does not discount the fact that a certain mystery comes along with the idea of one having all that mental processes when he or she is already asleep. Children and adults often differ in their conceptions of dreams, such that this became one of the adult’s evidence that children do not know better yet, and how family treats children when they told them their dreams and/or nightmares.
Main text
Adults deemed that dream entities like all mental entities differ in several ways from concrete physical objects. For most adults, dream entities are nonphysical, which means they are not available to the dreamer’s senses or to act in the same ways as real physical objects. Additionally, dreams are private occurrences, both in the sense that they are not available to public perception, in a sense that they are not shared with other dreamers, or in other words, they are individuated.
Lastly, unlike other physical entities that may lack certain behavioral-sensory properties, dreams often have no real-world reference or origin, this is to say, they can be completely fictional So, for the adults, in coming to a mature understanding of dreams, children must first determine that dream entities are nonphysical, perceptually private and individuated, and that the dream contents can be fictional.
But, young children’s earliest conceptions of dreams may lack any similarity to those of adults on any of these dimensions. Children may first think that dream entities and events are both physical and public. Or they might first think that dreams are mental and fictional like the adults but at the same time believe that they are shared communally by dreamers or that people in general were in the same dream as they were (Woolley, et al., 1992).
In a study investigating children’s developing conceptions of dreams, children were particularly assessed to see if they understand the three primary distinctions discussed: physical versus nonphysical, perceptually public versus private and shared versus individuated. They were also probed for their understanding on both the idea of the contents of their dreams being potentially fictional in nature and the fact that dreams are spatially localizable.
The results dissuade people’s, in particular the adults’ perception that children are realists in the sense that they understand their dreams only as real in nature and the idea that children do not understand the three primary distinctions yet (Woolley, et al., 1992). Therefore, the family of the children either poked fun at the children’s account of their dreams and don’t take them seriously when the kids relay their nightmares.
Parents or the adults usually ask the wrong questions that they think the children just do not understand things yet, for example, “when you dream that you are playing in the street, where are you?” From here, it is quite obvious that the child would have the possibility of answering realistically, since the questions are unclear and seem to presuppose that the dreams are actually substantial entities, made of something and occupying some definite physical location. Moreover, if a child is going to be asked a question like “did that event in the dream really happen?” is quite misleading because by answering “Yes”, the child can be deemed clueless about the distinction between physical versus nonphysical, yet the child could have answered positively just because he or she actually dreamed about a real object or event as opposed to a fantastical one.
Asking a child where his dreams take place, just in his mind or in a specific place is equally vague and confusing as well, since dreams do not really happen in any particular place, and as mental events, they are not literally spatially localizable. Asking these deceptive questions to a child often leads to untrue information about how children understand their dreams (Woolley, et al., 1992).
In reality, children had it more complicated. As said, children in our society must confront several dualisms with respect to dreams. With this, we can say that children are more realistic when it comes to dreams ironically. They believe that dreams are external and objective phenomena, and they do not distinguish dream events and entities from objective perpetual events and objects.
This is because a child had not fully grasped the distinction between subject and object and the internal nature of thought, so that it is certain that he would be confronted by grave difficulties when he attempts to explain one of the most considered subjective of all the phenomena, dreams (Woolley, et al., 1992).
The experience of thinking about dreams, even one’s own dreams may not be a common or simple one for the children at all. The nature of dreams makes it especially complicated for the children to comprehend.
At times, dreams can seem quite real when they are occurring, and may seem to imitate our continuous contact with the physical world, or even replaying perceptual experiences.
However, there are times that they seem utterly fantasy-driven, and we are mystified with their origin or cause.
Dreams come involuntarily, only while we are in a very singular state called sleeping. In short, dreams may represent a confusing case, one that is especially difficult for the children to understand (Woolley, et al., 1992).
Also, although children basically understand that dreams are not publicly perceptible in the sense that others can see them as external physical events, most of them believe that dreams are shared between sleeping minds. But they should not be labeled as incorrect yet however, for in another perspective, their concept of sharing may be on the right track as well. That said, it is a plausible misconception especially when children are starting to build up their concepts of dreams by examining their own experiences of dreaming.
Because dreams occur while we are asleep, this sort of misconception would be less susceptible to active disconfirmation that would be the misconception that we all share the same percepts or beliefs. Furthermore, a dream as a private experience is shared in one sense, after all a dream as a private experience is shared in one sense and people have dreams generally just not on the same things or events. Dreams can be shared when we talk to other people regarding their contents. Additionally, the children can try to have understood dreams by likening them to other sorts of mental states such as pretense or imagination ((Woolley, et al., 1992).
Children’s beliefs in shared dreams may therefore have arisen by their comparing of their dreams to their own experiences of shared pretenses or to their experiences of shared fantasy upon hearing a fictional story (Woolley, et al., 1992).
Adults won’t have any of this, and the families of the children either dissuade the children from their beliefs or study other options and theories to analyze dreams. Many therefore had set out to discover the link between dreaming and wakefulness, especially in the field of psychology. Freud was one of them in his Interpretation of Dreams and giving us the concept that dreaming serves to fulfill wishes in his (Greenberg et. al, 1972).
Subsequent development in research proved limitations on his theory ever since. Currently, there is the supposition that dreaming is involved in adaptation to traumatic experiences and more significantly, it is concerned with the formulation of solutions to current focal conflicts of the dreamer (Greenberg et. al, 1972).
There are also studies based on current psychophysiological concepts of sleep that dreaming during the REM stage is involved in the processing of new experiences.
Dreaming works over and segregates recently perceived input into already existing structures that are familiar to the dreamer. This includes the idea of adding recent experiences to existing structures for adaptive purposes. The REM stage here or dreaming becomes the time for the programming process to take place in the brain. Daily experiences may arouse repressed conflicts, memories or feelings and when one dreams, these new experiences interact with the previously repressed material that results in a reinstitution of patterns that have previously been used to deal with this kind of experience (Greenberg et. al, 1972).
Dreaming affects a person’s ability to deal with anxiety-inducing situations. When an individual meets a situation that is stressful for him, the stressfulness is due to the arousal of memories of prior difficulties with similar situations. The person would therefore initially defend himself or react to the situation in a general or emergency type (Greenberg et. al, 1972).
In a study that examined the idea that a critical intervening process in adaptation to a stressful situation is dreaming or the REM stage of sleep, a group of voluntary subjects was subjected to a stressful movie on 2 consecutive days. During the night between these two viewings, some subjects were REM deprived, some awakened several times during NREM sleep and some allowed an undisturbed sleep. Psychological and physiological measures of anxiety were obtained in relation to these events (Greenberg et. al, 1972).
The results showed that the subjects who were REM deprived showed significantly less habituation to the second viewing, compared to the others. This proves that dreaming serves to integrate memories of similar experiences to the current stress, allowing the individual to use his characteristic defenses. Dreaming would integrate past feelings from the past with the current stressful stimulus, and the person’s characteristic defenses for that particular set of emotions and memories are used to deal with the current threat. If the stress is re-experienced, the person has now available to him his characteristic means of dealing with the threat. That said, re-exposure to the stress should not produce the same initial degree of anxiety, and is now reduced comparatively.
This is because by dreaming or going to the REM stage of sleep, they could now use their characteristic and more efficient defenses to deal with the anxiety-provoking aspects of the film.
REM deprived subjects however showed a decreased ability to adapt to the specific stress (Greenberg et. al, 1972).
But this is what the adults do to dreams, they give it concepts and theories that would make them seem less mysterious. In reality, there is much that adults do not understand about the nature of dreams, as most adults believe that dream entities are not real in the sense that they are nonphysical, they are private because they are not available to public perception and are not directly shared with other dreamers, and lastly, dreams are typically fictional in content. But, children’s conceptions of dreams vary greatly and these perceptions are an important component of their development. Dreams may be regarded as salient mental experiences for most adults but this is more so for young children. This is evident in the fact that bad dreams or nightmares are commonly reported childhood experiences (Woolley, et al., 1992).
Conclusion
There is nothing wrong with how adults set out to believe their dreams to be. They put in theories and concepts to understand the phenomena better. Their studies are fruitful in the sense that they do provide additional lucid information about dreaming and its function in our daily lives. They established distinctions in order to make people more aware of what dreams are.
But, by discounting children’s conceptions about dreams, they are missing out a lot. They could not see or understand that children know more than what adults are giving them credit on, and that really, no matter how adults theorize dreams, they are still going to remain mysterious one way or another.
References
Greenberg, Ramon, et al. (1972) The Effect of Dream (Stage REM) Deprivation on Adaptation to Stress. Psychosomatic Medicine Vol.34 No.3 pp. 257-262.
Woolley, Jacqueline D, et al. (1992) Children’s Conceptions of Dreams. Cogntive Development Vol. 7 pp. 365-380.