This semester I’m taking an Introduction to Psychology course. So far, we’ve been learning many interesting things about dreams. This topic really interests me because I’m curious whether or not dreams have meaning. Most of my family members believe that some dreams don’t mean anything and others do, and quite honestly, I share their opinion. I learned that many psychologists have different views on dreams. One theory is that dreams serve as a path to our unconsciousness, so we dream about things that wouldn’t be normal in the real world. Another theory is that dreams are reflections of current problems, and of course other psychologists have their own beliefs.

I’ve always had a problem remembering dreams and I never understood why, but in class, I learned that we tend to not remember dreams because our memory isn’t active when we are sleeping. Therefore, unless we re-tell or write down our dreams as soon as we wake up, we forget them. My teacher gave us an assignment to record our dreams for an entire week. She said that those that couldn’t remember dreams shouldn’t worry because they would start remembering them. When she told me that, I was hesitant. I didn’t understand why having this assignment was going to make me start remembering my dreams, but I tried it anyway – and it worked. The first night of the assignment I didn’t remember anything, but the rest of the nights I was able to remember most of my dreams.

Maybe this activity makes us remember our dreams because consciously, we know that we’re going to write them down in the morning? I’m not sure. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I know I had a dream, but I’m too tired to write it down, so I go back to sleep. In the morning, I know that I’ve have a  dream, but I can’t remember anything.

As far as what dreams mean, I still think that some dreams mean something, some don’t have any special meaning, and other dreams are just absurd. For example; I recently had a dream about being chased. In my dream I was running up and down the roof of a house. That doesn’t make sense to me and I certainly don’t think it would happen in real life. However, I’ve also had dreams in which someone called me and told me someone died. It’s eerie when I really do get a call to tell me someone passed away (it’s usually never the person in the dream). I’m not exactly sure about the meaning behind dreams, but I do think it’s up to a person’s own beliefs as to how they interpret them. What I do know is that sometimes remembering your dreams can help you tell great stories.

-Erica