Lainey Marquiss Marquiss Page 1

Professor VanGrimbergen

English 1101-01

20 November 2018

Why Dream Analysis Should Be Taken as a Serious Study

Nowadays when it comes to scientific research, most people invest in the more discussed

issues just because it seems like the easiest thing to do. They do this instead of doing their own

research for themselves to see which field of study needs it at the moment. The research topic

that is being described is dream analysis. When this certain topic comes up in discussion most

people would assume that dream analysis is just nonsense and that there is no need for a serious

study. Despite this fact, there will be a very interesting argument about whether or not this study

should be taken seriously. If you think about it, the general population doesn’t even know or

invest themselves in the world of dream analysis. It’s not a usual topic to discuss but it is

important to believe it or not. To sum it up, Dream analysis should be considered a serious field

of science that should be explored and invested in.

When it comes down to it dream analysis is a topic that you don’t think about on a daily

basis, but it does affect your daily life. It is proven that you dream every time you go to sleep

even if you don’t remember it. What happens in those dreams is usually based on emotions

according to Anita C Jones, Salomé Schulze, and Inge Sonnekus. Who researched and studied

teen girls to help prove their point. In their article “The role of dream analysis for exploring

emotional content during early adolescence” they describe how dreams come across in themes.
They claim that “In all instances, the emotional problems of the female adolescents in the sample

were revealed by recurring themes in their dreams. For example, the theme of “fall-

ing” could be associated with helplessness and anxiety.” (Jones, Schulze, and Sonnekus:

Paragraph 70). They go on to talking about how knowing what the themes mean can lead to very

helpful findings in each teens personality that not even they know about. In other words, we can

discover aggression, social isolation, negative self-concepts and depression all throughout the

themes of their dreams. Uncovering this information can help those who are showing signs of

these types of dreams so that they are able to fix them more efficiently. These types of emotions

can be revealed by focusing on the content of the dream as well as the details found within each

one. As you can see dream analysis can be used as a way to help people find the meaning of their

dreams and to see if it’s a good meaning or a bad meaning.

It’s not every day that you can remember every part of your dream because most likely

you can’t even make out more than 50% after just 10 minutes of being awake. Not only do

dreams reveal what your true feelings are, but according to Michael Price, they also can

influence your decision making. In his article “You are what you dream” he describes the study

that Social psychologists Carey Morewedge and Michael Norton conducted where they asked

Boston commuters to consider which of the four scenarios they stated would most likely change

their flight plans. The four scenarios were, the government raising the national threat level,

consciously imagining a plane crash, learning an actual flight crashed along your route and

dreaming about a plane crash. The results were very interesting because the article claimed that

“Commuters said the dream would be just as unsettling as a real crash and more unsettling than

consciously imagining a crash or a government warning.” (Price, Paragraph 4). Which proves
that dreams don’t just reveal what’s going on inside mentally, but they can also affect your

attitude on the outside.

On the other hand, there are still professionals out there which believe that dream analysis

isn’t even worth studying. Scientist claim this because when they took the time to research as

much as they can about dream analysis their results were much different than the stories told

above. It’s stated that some modern neuroscientists believe that dreams are just a side effect of

more fundamental neurological processes. Which means that when you’re sleeping your brain is

just trying to make a “...simply attempt to make sense of the neural activity that has taken place.

This is why dreams seem so illogical and strange.” (Feldman, Paragraph 8). According to this

scientist, dreams don’t help you discover what is going on inside your head. They only rework

your memories the way that you received them in the first place. Another popular opinion among

these professionals are that the “Scientists who have studied dreams and nevertheless post

“interpretations” of common dream themes do a disservice to both their readers and to the study

of dreams as they know full well that there are no data to support any particular interpretative

scheme over another.” (McNamara, Paragraph 6). This means that according to this article the

people who study and post about dream analysis aren’t really taking it seriously because

apparently, every real scientist who studies dream analysis knows that dreams don’t really mean

anything in the long run.

Since there are experts that do doubt dream analysis and believe that we have learned

everything there is to know. Most people would be fine with that and take the easy way out of

learning about the topic for themselves. Not here though because there is one more idea that

should be discussed. The idea is that with researching dream analysis you also go through

finding the different diseases associated with dreams. For example, Dream-reality confusion in
relation to a Borderline personality disorder, which can be described as every time a person with

these diseases falls asleep their brain confuses their dreams with reality. Every time this happens

their sleep is disturbed, they have unstable sleep and wake cycles, and all of this leads to normal

sleep-deprived warnings. Which can include depression, moodiness, difficulty in

comprehending, forgetfulness, inability to concentrate, etc; but “Due to the complex

psychopathology of BPD, numerous studies have examined different areas of functioning in

individuals with this disorder.” (eSkrzypińska and Szmigielska: Paragraph 4). If it wasn’t for

dream analysis scientist wouldn’t have known as much about this disease and wouldn’t be

helping so many people around the world.

All things considered, in this day and age not a lot of people know about the topic dream

analysis and how much scientific research is needed to make a positive difference in people's

lives. If you think about it, the general population doesn’t even know or invest themselves in the

world of dream analysis. It can help so many people who are curious about why they don’t sleep

well, or if something is going on in their lives that need a closer look into, or even suffer from

Dream-reality confusion in relation to a Borderline personality disorder. You have to be able to

give dream analysis a chance before you make conclusions about it because a lot of people who

invest their time and hard work into the study need help. It’s not a usual topic to discuss but it is

important. To sum it up, Dream analysis should be considered a serious field of science that

should be explored and invested in.

Works Cited

eSkrzypińska, Dagna. Szmigielska, Barbara D. “Dream-reality confusion in Borderline

 Personality Disorder: A theoretical analysis” Frontiers Media S.A. Frontiers in

Psychology, Vol 6, 2015. Article

https://doaj.org/article/bdeb8bb28c5a47348db16e0f29dadcde

Feldman, David B. “Do Dreams Really Mean Anything?” Sussex Publishers, LLC

Psychology Today, 19 Jan. 2018. Article

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/supersurvivors/201801/do-dreams-really-

mean-anything

Jones, Anita C. Schulze, Salomé. Sonnekus, Inge “The role of dream analysis for exploring

emotional content during early adolescence” AOSIS, Health SA Gesondheid: Journal of

Interdisciplinary Health Sciences, 2005. Article

https://doaj.org/article/597635a6a27d4652beb6fc13ed6abbe6

McNamara, Patrick. “The Folly of Dream Interpretation” Sussex Publishers, LLC Psychology

Today, 29 July 2013. Article

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dream-catcher/201307/the-folly-dream-

interpretation

Price, Michael “You are what you dream” American Psychology Association, 4 Nov. 2009.

Article https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/04/dream.aspx