My Own Observations

Vitor, feel free to comment on this if you wish (the one due Friday is below this one), but this is actually meant for next Friday.

Though Freud hasn't exactly touched upon dream and REM sleep, yet (which he might get to, or I might get to in another text after Freud), I've had observations about dreaming, in general (this blog is not just about dream interpretation, it's about dreaming and all of its facets...which I might not have stated before). Therefore, I'd like to share some with you.

First, I believe I've read that we don't dream in REM sleep (i.e.: the sleep that comes first which also happens to incorporate your eyes going berserk..). 'Course that'll be clarified when I come upon a more scientific dream text. I'm sure Freud may have touched upon it, but I've forgotten. It's not that important anyways. But, for the past two weeks or so, I've been getting an average of 4 hours of sleep per day. 4 hours is generally how long REM sleep lasts, so in those two weeks, I've technically not dreamt at all (which is true, 'cause more than half of my dream entries for that week have "Forgot" or "I don't remember" written in them). So, we probably do dream in non-REM sleep. But I said more than half of the dream entries were empty or incomplete.

You're probably asking, what about the others? Well, the others obviously have dreams in them. And you're asking, well why? Didn't you say you only had 4 hours of sleep, which is essentially all REM sleep, which means you shouldn't have dreamt anything there at all? True, but you just assumed that it was all REM sleep. I have my alarm clocks set to 5:30 or 6, and/or 6:15, 6:20, 6:30, 6:40, 6:45, 7:00. Therefore, that 4 hours is actually NOT 4 hours of REM sleep. Apparently, when my alarm clock goes off, at say 6:00 am, I wake up, hit the button, and wait for another alarm clock to really wake me up. But, anyways, when I turn off the initial alarm, I can't remember anything, as if there was no dream (REM sleep). However, the next time I wake up, I usually recall something that seems like a dream. So, what I'm saying here is, when REM sleep is disturbed (i.e.: by my alarm clocks), I go straight into dreaming sleep...but only for however many minutes of sleep I have left before I have to get to school. Therefore, they're much shorter, and maybe don't have enough time to conjure up a dream vivid enough to stay in my short term memory.

The basic points here are: 1) We probably don't dream in REM sleep, and 2) If REM sleep is disturbed, we don't go back to it (I've actually touched upon this in my personal blog).

Ah, but you see, I'm not done. Like I've said, I've had a long streak of empty sleep (a personal term for sleep without dream content or significant dream content). Well, this morning I had one. For context, I went to sleep at like 11:30pm Friday night and was disturbed by my 6:00 alarm clock, my 6:20, 6:40, and 7:00 alarms (the last three from my cellphone alarm). So, 11:30 to say, 3:30, REM sleep most likely occurred, therefore dreaming occurred from 3:30 to 6:00, and in those subsequent intervals (REM was not interrupted because it had already past). So, I dreamt longer and therefore I had a more vivid dream to recall. But anyways, as I was saying, this dream was extremely interesting. Here's something interesting...let me quote my dream journal for Friday (night).

"Hopefully my dreams will find something more vivid so I can get back to analyzing." Do you see something here? What is it? A wish, you say? Why yes, it is. It's a wish! And was it fulfilled as Freud said it would be? Why yes, I did have a vivid dream. By Jove, Freud is right!

It's not that I doubted Freud's theory of wish-fulfillment, but it's just that those wishes I've come up with were obtained through lengthy analyzing, where this one is just plain obvious. But, remember that I said I had more sleep. So was it the sleep that gave me the dream? Or was it my wish? I'm not too sure. For now, I'll trust Freud.

So you're probably thinking that I'll analyze it here. Well, I'm terribly sorry, but no, I won't analyze it here. It's not as personal as those I've analyzed here before, and it's not vulgar, sexual, or anything like that. I just have personal, emotionally moral, just, reasons to not reveal it. But even if I don't, I still have a few things to say about it.

So, when I woke up, I admit, I totally forgot I had the dream to begin with. Like, I was aware that I had dreamt, but as soon as I got out of bed, it was gone, or so it seemed. So, I was checking some Latin (not Latin as in Latin America, Latin like Roman Latin) websites online, and when I did, I instantly remembered a part of my dream. Why? Well, in that part of my dream, I was reading an RPG-game manual (while inside that RPG game as a character) which resembled my Latin I book (I am in Latin IV, but have a Latin I book to review). In addition, before the Latin connection, I was thinking about "playing" ("playing" as in attempting to play an advanced level song when my skills are those of a beginner at best) a piano song called People of the Far North from the FFX Piano Collection CD. And, then I remembered a larger portion of my dream, because that piano song was being played in my dream.

So what's the point? Well, apparently, if you think you've forgotten your dream, and it's still relatively early in the morning, try exposing yourself to a variety of materials to see if any of them will connect to a part of your dream and bring it back to your memory.



To sum up my points today: 1) We probably don't dream in REM sleep, 2) If REM sleep is disturbed, we don't go back to it, and 3) If you have trouble remembering a very very recent dream, run through a lot of subject material hoping that one might bring part of your dream back.