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Sleep Amnesia: Why Do We Forget Our Dreams?
By Vicki Santillano, Divine Caroline
Do you ever have nights so filled with dreams that you wake up feeling like you haven’t slept at all? I hate nights like that. But what worries me more are the nights when my head hits the pillow and it seems like one minute later, the alarm’s going off and I have no idea where my mind has been for the past eight hours. Everyone experiences dreamless nights at least once in a while, so unless we’re all terrible at remembering dreams, something else must be going on. Does it mean the dreams were too intense for our minds to handle? Is it possible we didn’t dream at all?
No Sleep Without Dreams
Well, we can rule out one of the aforementioned scenarios. We have dreams every night, whether we remember them or not come morning. According to Scientific American, we have five dreams per night on average, which translates to 1,825 dreams per year. Why we don’t remember all of them is less clear.
In general, we tend to forget more than we recall. Unless we make a point of writing down our dreams’ content immediately upon waking, chances are we’ll lose at least half of it a few minutes after we start our day. Several theories attempt to make sense of the complexities of dream recall (or lack thereof); most are content based–that is, they propose that something about these forgotten dreams stops them from reaching our conscious selves.
A Theory of Repression
When it comes to dream recall, Freud’s theory of repression is by far the most well known. In his book The Interpretation of Dreams, he argues that all dream content is a product of wish fulfillment. So when we don’t remember certain aspects of a dream, it’s our brain’s way of blocking out wishes or longings that we’re not emotionally equipped to handle. Freud also believed that a lack of dream recall signals repression as a form of self-preservation–our brains don’t want us remember certain content because it’s simply too traumatic. And, of course (this is Freud we’re discussing, after all), he felt that most repression (and dream symbols in general) are rooted in sexual desires.
Alternatives to Freudian Fear
Many other content-based theories besides Freud’s take a crack at dream recall. They also adopt simpler, less psychological stances on the topic. Salience theory, for instance, postulates that we forget some dreams simply because they’re not interesting enough; if nothing remarkable happens in a dream, it’s less likely to stay with us when we wake up. Another theory–this one by L. Strumpell, a dream analyst during Freud’s time–suggests that dream content isn’t organized enough for us to comprehend its events in waking life. However, studies have yet to prove this idea.
The Mind in Sleep: Psychology and Psychophysiology mentions dream kinesthesia as a potential suspect. It happens when we lose the physical movements in our sleep as soon as we physically move after waking up (such as when we reach for the alarm clock). Another possibility is that our memories are formed through repetition and finding connections to other parts of our lives. So when dreams are especially unique (read: crazy) or too undefined to be relatable, it’s harder to tie them to real-life events and remember them.
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31 comments
add your comment »I sometimes wake up from a dream and the first idea I get is: write it down before you forget it. I never do, so....
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i love dreaming :D
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I like dreaming
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I've always thought it's fascinating how I never actually die in my dreams - even when I'm on the verge, I always wake myself up just in time.
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I think dream journaling is key remembering dreams - I'd never remember any of them without mine.
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It's so important to have a dream journal. Keep one by your bed and write down everything and anything you can remember about a dream.
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I think Rita B. is correct. I remember learning that dreams were intentionally forgotten so that in case a lion was about to attack, we didn't have to question "Is this real? Should I run?" Regardless, good to know that I still dream. Sometimes I worry that my mind is just DONE for the day.
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Clint sez: "I remember no more than a dozen dreams in a year. Combining all these theories, it boils down to your mind processing information, be it traumatic, sexual, complex, etc. I believe I handle my life as much as is possible, so the dreams I have trying to "fix" or figure things out, come to no conclusions, so no need to keep them clear enough upon waking."
If this is how you treat your dream life, I and many others would say that you are cheating yourself out of a wealth of perspectives and intuitive resources. By keeping an on-going relationship with our dreaming side, we are much more prepared for any new challenge or opportunity we may encounter in our waking lives which, it turns out, can be considered just dream threads that got 'stuck' - through use of lucid dreaming techniques, the waking dream can be unstuck, allowing everything to become magical or even miraculous!
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Dreams are the result of our daily activity . Whatever we done in the day we saw the dreams of that. But when we wake up the dreams have been forgotten by us.
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I remember no more than a dozen dreams in a year. Combining all these theories, it boils down to your mind processing information, be it traumatic, sexual, complex, etc. I believe I handle my life as much as is possible, so the dreams I have trying to "fix" or figure things out, come to no conclusions, so no need to keep them clear enough upon waking.
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