The Science and Art of Dreaming

People go to bed every night, and they go to sleep, and they dream. Some remember their dreams to a much greater extent than others, and the remembered content of dreams varies as much as the minds that create them, in frequency, clarity, subject matter, colour vs. black-and-white, and every other variant imaginable. People have speculated as to the meaning of dreams, probably since before the beginning of recorded history. Science has attempted to understand the actual mechanics of dreams, through psychological and more recently through biological study. Dreams have been used as the basis for religions, forms of mysticism, predicting the future, waging war, some legitimate and some rather questionable branches of the medical and mental health professions, artistic inspiration, best-selling books, the list can be extended indefinitely.

There are nightmares, lucid, clearly remembered and highly detailed dreams, disorganised dreams, barely remembered dreams, ones that are more verbal in nature, more visual in nature, that involve the body (kinesthetics), sense of smell, falling dreams, floating, flying dreams, dreams that repeat themselves, wake you up, dreams in which the dreamer is able to say 'this can't be real... I must be dreaming,' and on, and on, and on...

Are 'dreams remembered' a valuable source of information that can contribute significantly to the body of human knowledge, or are they, as Bob Dylan jokingly claimed in one of his songs, "only in your head"? The mystic looks at dreams, and wonders if there is something here, to act as a guiding principal for life. Freud looked, and wondered at the hidden meaning in dreams, that could be unlocked by psychotherapists, to help us heal ourselves. Jung looked, and saw not-so-hidden aspects in dreams; our subconscious helping us to help ourselves. The artist looks, and doesn't necessarily see anything that needs healing, just a new and deeper way of looking at the human condition; more grist for the creative mill. The scientist looks, and asks, 'What does this mean?' Are dreams psychologically significant, or only the artifact of the brain doing its housekeeping chores?

Sigmund Freud viewed our dreams with some suspicion. His basic premise was that our dreams did have deep psychological content, but that their true meaning was disguised from us. The subconscious mind was a dark and dangerous place, filled with repressed desires, many dealing with sex, incest, sex, murder, sex, matricide, fratricide, and sex... and incest. Of course, I am exaggerating here, but in his own lifetime, Freud's Victorian mindset towards all things sexual did earn him the nickname "the Viennese Sexologist." Our dreams, so forbidden and base, the product of animal desires, had to be disguised from our mind, even in sleep. Our dreams were 'signs' of repressed desires, which were the operant forces underlying our neuroses, and mental illness. Through the process of 'DreamWorks' (psychotherapy), Freud sought to analyse the 'signs' that our dreams represented, to discover their true meaning, and to aid in curing the neurosis.

Freud's view of the subconscious was not a very uplifting one, he viewed it as a repository for all sort of deep dark forbidden and repressed desires; basically the breeding ground for mental illness. Dreams were useful tools, in that interpreting them could help in the treatment of mental illness; hysteria, neuroses, etc. The subconscious itself was intent on hiding the true meanings of our dreams from us, and only the psychologist, armed with the tools of psychotherapy could unmask the true meanings behind dreams. It is worth mentioning, that generations of Freud's followers made a better than respectable living pursuing his work. How much value their work had, and continues to have, overall, will be debated for generations to come.

Carl Jung's contribution to our understanding of dreams was quite a bit different than Freud's. Instead of viewing dreams as 'signs' which cloaked the actual, forbidden and repressed meanings of dreams, he saw them as 'symbols,' which offered direct undisguised meaning, of what the subconscious was trying to tell the viewer. Although the subconscious could be a place where pathologies might develop, the dream process was a natural and healthy one, wherein the mind offered us direct information about our subconscious state, and was there to help us heal ourselves, without the absolute need for a professional to intercede on our behalf.

Artists seized these scientific concepts of dream, and the working of the subconscious mind, as a key to a new age of artistic vision; a new way of 'seeing.' In 1924, Andre' Breton published his 'Surrealist Manifesto,' which called for the fusion of 'dream and reality into a sort of absolute reality, of surreality...' Breton, who was himself a medical doctor, had learned about Freud's theories during the First World War, but unlike Freud, he saw dreams in a more positive light, more along the lines of Jung's approach. The Surrealist Movement, which included among its ranks Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Klee, and others, developed in two separate directions; pure fantasy, and the often highly realistic reconstruction of dream imagery. When the Second World War broke out, a number of Surrealists emigrated to the United States, where their influence acted as a catalyst to modern American art movements, most notably the Abstract Expressionist Movement.

The next big advance in scientific theory of dreaming happened in 1953 at the University of Chicago, when Dr. Nathaniel Kleitman changed our notion of what sleep and dreaming were, forever. While conducting a study on sleep difficulties in infants, he observed that at various times during the sleep cycle, bursts of very rapid eye movement occurred behind the still closed eyelids of the sleeping child. When he then observed sleeping adults, the phenomenon was more pronounced, with periods of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) lasting anywhere from 3 to 55 minutes. Because the observed eye movement seemed to indicate that the person was looking at something, he awakened the subjects, and asked them what they were seeing or experiencing, if anything, and discovered that more often than not, they were dreaming. When the subjects were awakened during periods without Rapid Eye Movement, no dreams were reported. Prior to this discovery it had been assumed that when people slept, it was a single state, without any variation. It was at this point that it became apparent that the real picture was more complex.

When we sleep, we first drift into deeper and deeper levels of what is called Non-REM (NREM) sleep, and our brainwaves become wide and slow. After an hour or two, the first REM period occurs, lasting only a few minutes, and then we cycle back into a Non-REM period, the entire cycle lasting about 90 minutes. As the night progresses, the REM periods become longer, and the NREM periods shorter, and not as deep. During NREM sleep there are several different stages, with varying EEG (Electroncephaloram - a test used to determine electrical activity on the surface of the brain) patterns, none of which are similar to the awakened state. During REM periods of sleep, in addition to Rapid Eye Movement, EEG patterns are more like waking patterns. During REM sleep, most of the signals that normally would cause the body to act are also cut off in the brain, causing a state of semi-paralysis.

There is an interesting shift here, in the focus of what is being studied. Freud and Jung focused on the content of dreams, and the meaning of such content, and did not pay much attention to the physical properties of dreaming, i.e. what happens to the physical body, especially the brain, while people are sleeping. This is most likely a function of advances in scientific technology, more than anything else. Without the modern tools of science, there was little to study except the content of the dreams themselves.

Some of the tools science now uses in its study of sleep and dreaming are:

* EEG: the electroencephalogram, which determines electrical activity on the surface of the brain,
* EOG: the electrooculogram, which measures eye movements, and
* EMG: the electromyogram, which measures muscle tone.

Other measurements include 1) brain chemistry, 2) EKG, to measure heart rate, 3) respiration, and 4) PHG, or genital arousal. The MRI Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and other digital imaging equipment are also slowly being brought into dream and sleep studies.

Where the fine arts were greatly influenced by the 'subjective' work of Freud and Jung, thus far there has been little attention paid to these newer, more 'objective' dream studies. In the past century, 'objective' science has influenced art more than once, most notably in the cases of atomic theory being part of the groundwork upon which pointillism was based, and Picasso and Braque almost certainly having been influenced by the concepts of higher dimensions, and the concept of time as a dimension, in their development of Cubism. Fine art has yet to make a significant move in interpreting these 'drier' and more objective sleep and dream studies. The play is not over, yet, though, and the stage may be set, for the fine arts to examine 'the stuff of dreams' yet again, in an entirely new light, in the not-too-distant future.

Science plodded forward through the next few decades, studying the dream process, or more accurately the sleep process, and gradually improving its tools, and acquiring knowledge in the painfully slow and rigorous manner that scientific method requires. The picture eventually emerged, that perhaps dreams were not directly related to periods of REM sleep. While the majority of dreams that were reported by study participants did in fact happen during REM periods, and dreams during REM were more vivid and detailed, there were also some reports of dreaming in NREM periods, as well. It was then discovered that REM periods were triggered by a series of random electrical firings originating from within the brainstem (the most ancient, primitive, innermost part of the brain, that is common to earlier species, with less advanced central nrevous systems, and upon which the more advanced parts of the brain later developed), that were responsible for arousing the cortex (our 'gray matter') from it state of deep NREM sleep.

After an initial false start, where there was some speculation as to whether or not dreams actually originated in the more primitive midbrain (which doesn't really mess with this kind of process, it is more a 'basic life support' center, regulating things like body temperature, arousal, autonomic processes like heart beat, breathing, and pulling your hand away from the hot fire before you are even consciously aware of the pain, etc.), it was decided that while REM was definitely a product of the midbrain, it only served to arouse the cortex from deep sleep (for whatever physiologically necessary reason), and that then dreams proceeded in the cortex itself, as a separate and distinct operation. This went a long way towards explaining why people were able to sometimes report remembering dreams, albeit of a lower amplitude and clarity, when aroused from deep sleep. Whatever causes dreaming to happen, it wasn't REM sleep itself, it was happening during all phases of sleep, and was reported with differing levels of frequency and clarity only as a function of how deep a sleep the person was in, when awakened for a report. This discovery lead, as new discoveries often do, to the posing of yet another question: If dreaming is not limited strictly to the domain of REM sleep, but is present during all phases of sleep, what about when the person is awake? When the house is busy, during the day, with talk and activity and the TV, phone, and other things to divert one's attention, the slowly dripping faucet in the kitchen sink is not noticed. It is only at night, when the house is quiet, and our mind clear of distraction, that we notice the drip, drip, drip. Should the study of dreams be limited to the realm of sleep, as even the very title of this event (Night Visions) would suggest, or are dreams a single aspect of a larger phenomenon, that we have not yet generally considered?

It should also be noted that in addition to science discovering that sleep is not a homogeneous activity, as was earlier believed, but includes a number of different stages (REM and different levels on NREM sleep), it has also become apparent that dreams themselves are not all of a kind, either, but appear to be qualitatively different enough, so that whatever it is in brain function (or otherwise) that causes them, there is probably more than a single causative mechanism; dreams are probably at least several different kinds of animals, depending on which scientist you ask. This particular factor is called the 'Multiplicity of Dreams.'

All dreams are not the same, although scientists tend to not differentiate between the various forms of dreaming, when performing their studies. The most common type of dream, the 'ordinary' dream, is usually considered to be related to the brain's tasks that involve the re-organisation of memory. This type of dream can be bizarre, but usually tends to be mundane. It is by far the most common category of dreams. There are also a number of other types of dreams, which I will not examine here, but the two categories that deserve special attention, especially in artistic context, are the lucid dream, and the nightmare. First, where nightmares are concerned, it is important to remove from consideration in this discussion, the 'post-traumatic' nightmare, where an individual experiences repeated occurrences of a dream in which they re-experience the trauma they suffered.

These two forms of dreaming, the lucid dream and the nightmare, are related to one another. While the usual or mundane dream, having to do with memory organisation, is the most common, and is characterised by its being relatively clouded and confused, lucid dreams and nightmares are very clear and more easily remembered, and are probably a function of something other than memory organisation, since they are so different in nature from mundane dreams. It has been speculated that they are a function of formal or abstract self-reflection, or the creative imagination process. Now I don't know exactly what that bit of 'science-speak' means, precisely, but effectively, in terms of experience, one doesn't need to understand the words to know the difference; lucid dreams, and nightmares (which are essentially their 'dark side') are the ones with the power and clarity to cause you to leap into wakefulness, one with a feeling of bliss and euphoria, and the other, with fear and dread. Since these two very distinctive types of dreaming occur during lighter sleep, at the edge of wakefulness, they are the most remembered, and most interactive, often allowing the viewer to think 'this can't be real... I must be dreaming,' a thought that would seem entirely inappropriate to a task as mundane as memory reorganisation. Finally, it is this type of dreaming, so qualitatively different than the dim, unorganised and confused, plotless dreaming of deeper sleep states, that leads scientists to speculate that dreaming might be related to meditative states, that are experienced on the other side of the increasingly fuzzy gray line, that separates sleep from wakefulness.

The human mind and the brain that acts as its container is an amazingly complex organ; so complicated in fact, that to date, no-one can even claim to know for certain where one ends, and the other begins. In fact, new advances in brain studies seem to indicate that there is no clear separation. Our thoughts and emotions both initiate, and are initiated by, chemical reactions in the brain. Information from the outer environment can startle us, and create fear, which alters the brain's chemistry, which in turn, over time, can alter the physical tissue of the brain; causing the number and location of receptors to change, in response to the chemicals (neurotransmitters), and more recently discovered, the actual growth of nerve synapse. (previously thought to be impossible). Our thoughts can and do actually change the physical architecture of our brain. There is further speculation that such processes, repeated endlessly throughout the body (the brain is no longer considered to be a discrete organ, residing exclusively in the head, any more than our thoughts reside exclusively there, once committed to paper, etc.), might be to some small degree responsible for alterations in our DNA, in other words, the human genome. If this were in fact to be the case, then physical evolution would in some part be driven literally by our thoughts.

In this sort of context, our dreams, whatever their real genesis, might be worth serious consideration. Perhaps the ancients were correct, in ascribing great importance to dreams, although they may have been looking in the wrong direction, as to where the importance resides. Perhaps Freud and Jung both had a point, but an incomplete one. The Surrealists might have struck a little closer to the mark; the line between inner and outer realities, sleep and wakefulness, sanity and madness all becoming fuzzy. Our senses apprehend a huge amount of information per unit time; it is estimated the we process 1,000,000 times more information per minute than our consciousness is capable of being aware of, and this does not even take into consideration all of the internal processes that our brain performs. Most of the human thought process takes place outside the realm of our conscious, waking mind, and only those things that the entire mind determines are important enough, in terms of survival, are presented to the tiny sliver of mind we are aware of on a moment by moment basis.

Since our dreams are a reflection of our internal brain processes, those that we usually do not have conscious access to, they beg consideration, particularly since science is uncovering evidence that these thought... all of them, have the power to move human evolution along in ways previously unimagined. Social evolution may be seen as an event taking place outside the individual, but it is also being felt, and possibly directed as well, from within. The entire picture is incredibly complex. Our Night Visions do not end when we awaken, and dreams forgotten are never really gone, just absent from the tiny slip of our conscious awareness, so bound up as it is, in the moment... the now. When these dreams are raised up, out of wherever they come from within us, in the creative act; bound to canvas in medium and pigment, smeared across time in the rhythm of dance and music, or expressed in words, prose, poetry, lyrics, there may be content in such work, that neither artist nor audience is fully aware of, at the level of awakened consciousness. Art is, more than anything else, the resonance between intellect and emotion. Perhaps such a resonance can best be seen... heard... apprehended, in the in the place of Night Visions, between full awakening, and dreams of darkness.

References:

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Robert C Wittig
March 19, 2001
wittig@robertwittig.com
©2001, Robert C Wittig. All rights reserved.