Why do we dream?

Dreams fascinate most of us. They are so random, creative, sometimes repetitive (recurring dreams). They bring us to an entirely different world, and most of the time we didn't know we were dreaming in our dreams. Here is some random information about dreaming:

• The word 'dream' is related to the West Germanic draugmus, (meaning deception, illusion, or phantom) or from the Old Norse draugr (ghost, apparition) or the Sanskrit druh (seek to harm or injure) 
• Most dreams occur during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage during our sleep, where brain activity is high
• On average, a person has at least 4-6 dreams per night. In one year you have about 1500 dreams.
• If you don't agree with the previous point and think that sometimes you didn't dream at all, that is just because you don't remember them. In fact, you forget 90% of your dream.
• The longest dream occur in the morning. It lasts about 40 minutes and we tend to remember this dream.
• Your eyes move with you when you dream. For example, in your dream you're hit by a car from the right, at that moment your eyeballs will suddenly turned right as well (that moment when you realise the car is there)
• People who become blind after birth also dream

There are two possible explanations for why we dream. The first one is the unexciting Biological explanation, which states that we dream because of the random firings of our neurons in our brain.

The second one comes from the Psychodynamic Approach, which is developed by Sigmund Freud, who believed that dreams are the "Royal Road to the Unconscious", i.e. dreams reveal the unconscious side of our mind.
Freud went on to suggest that there are two types of content in our dreams. Manifest content refers to what we dream about (basically the story of our dream) whereas latent content refers to the underlying meaning of our dream.
Freud argued that the symbols of the latent content of dreams are different to everyone. Also he said that not all dreams have this kind of underlying meaning, as he said 'Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.';So if you dream of a dog chasing after you, it might just be because you were chased by a dog recently.\

Dreams are an absolutely fascinating subject to me. More on dreams in later posts!