2024-02-09 15:38:51
By Isabelle Roussouly/February 9, 2024/26 Views Dear friend, dear friend,
There are three states in humans: awake, asleep and in REM.
REM or rapid eye movement means rapid eye movements in English(1).
REM is what we call paradoxical sleep, it is a state that resembles a coma: the brain is very active, but the body is paralyzed(1).
This is also when we have the most dreams, or at least when we remember them best(2).
Because 10% of people awakened in their deep sleep claim to have dreamed(2).
70% of them even say they had something in mind(2).
Dreaming is therefore not the sole prerogative of paradoxical sleep.
As is often the case with life, things are more complex than they first appear.
One thing is certain: dreams have always fascinated human beings.
Even today, they give rise to many debates and discussions(2).
And despite all the advances that have been made in this area, dreams remain, in many respects, a mystery(2).
A spiritual language that connects humans to each other
The interpretation of dreams or musings has long been commonplace in many cultures(3).
In Antiquity, this faculty was exercised by an onirocrit.
He starts from the dreams of those who consult him to draw lessons regarding his personal or public life, or even regarding his people, if it is a leader.
The best known of the oneirocrites is Artemidorus of Daldis (4,5).
This 2nd-century Greco-Syrian writer and philosopher practiced dream interpretation and divination. He compiled part of the knowledge of the time in a treatise called Onirocritique or The Key to Dreams (6).
This work served as a reference in the West for centuries and inspired Freud eighteen centuries later (5,6).
Among the Ancients, dreams are information that comes from the gods. It can be positive or negative, but it deserves to be taken into account(3).
Aristotle, however, opposes this vision, believing that the gods cannot address each human being in the same way(3).
Dream time or creation time
Among the Australian Aborigines, the entire creation came from a dream.
The Tjukurrpa or “dream time” is a mythical period preceding the origins of the world.
But it is also a time that continues, it is at the same time the past, the present and the future (7,8).
They believe that this dream of creation continues to shape the world and that it connects living beings together.
And human dreams would only be a form of dialogue with this time of the original dream (7,8).
For the Aborigines, the places themselves are forged by metaphysical beings linked to the original dream (7,8).
And human dreams would only be a form of dialogue with this time of the original dream.
This does not seem so far from the descriptions of Victor Hugo, a great dreamer before the Eternal, who evokes the work of giants when he depicts the coasts of the islands in The Workers of the Sea(9).
You will perhaps tell me that this takes us a little away from the “Cartesian” spirit of today.
Make no mistake, the famous Discourse on Method, supposed to lay down the perfect methodology for logical and constructed thinking, begins with a dream!
Descartes, philosopher and mathematician, thinks through dreams…
Dreams make human beings grow
And what do physiologists think of these archaic conceptions?
If, following Freud, psychoanalysts and psychologists have talked a lot regarding dreams, medicine and physiology have taken more time to analyze them.
Today, however, they are considered essential to life(2).
Dreams have a biological function(2).
However, it is less obvious than that of nutrition, respiration or digestion.
When it comes to dreams, scientists are groping a little.
One thing is certain: when we reduce dream time by, for example, suppressing paradoxical or REM sleep by taking medication, we reduce certain cognitive and behavioral abilities(2).
Dreams would be useful, even essential for:
learning new knowledge and techniques(2.10); the acquisition of new visual and motor skills (2,11); the expression of emotions (2.12); promote motivation(13); strengthen memory(10); increase creativity(2). Many researchers have claimed to have been inspired by their dreams, starting with Albert Einstein, who allegedly drew his theory of relativity from them(2).
Perhaps the most striking fact is that fetuses and newborns are the biggest dreamers of all(2).
Dreaming takes up half of their sleep time compared to 15% among older people(2).
Scientists believe this is linked to the fact that dreams help fetuses, babies and children develop.
We are not so far from the time of dreams from the origins of the world.
What do your dreams say regarding you and your life?
Long before doctors, artists and psychologists became passionate regarding the subject.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the surrealists considered that their paintings or creations were only the expression of a psychic automatism linked to dreams(14).
For Freud and psychoanalysts, dreams are a window onto the unconscious (2.15).
It reveals desires and feelings repressed since childhood (15).
It would even satisfy them by giving them the opportunity to express themselves (2.1).
Freud was especially interested in moral prohibitions.
For him, dreams allowed us to think what we really think without worrying regarding the morality of society.
But for Freud the dream was like an end, the culmination or affirmation of an archaic thought.
What physiology reveals to us is that it is above all a beginning.
Dreaming is the time for learning and creativity. It is he who guides our achievements(2).
Simply put, when you watch a tutorial to learn a new technique, your dreams the following night will help you master that technique better.
And in fact, that night, you will dream more than the previous ones.
Sleep is more than useful.
It rests you, it structures you and, through your dreams, it shapes you.
I wish you, at the start of the year 2024, to dream lying down or standing up, I wish you to dream passionately.
Naturally yours,
Augustine of Livois
1707887678
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