What Dreams Are Made Of: How We Use Dreams

There is a man talking calmly on a pay phone. He is a gunman. He talks casually as he blasts a machine gun up the stairs next to the pay phone, killing people. When he is out of bullets, he casually alters his weapon to use shotgun shells. He is poised, cold like steel, calm, and he kills.

People who don't remember their dreams can learn to recall them. In general, more introverted, psychologically oriented people naturally remember their dreams. Practical, concrete thinkers probably won't. It also helps to get enough sleep so you have time to dream. If you want to remember more, try to keep the REM state going by lying still and keeping your eyes closed while you repeat the dream scenario in your head to solidify it in your memory. Cartwright even suggests giving it a title, like "My Date With Brad Pitt." Keep a notebook by your bed and write down what's in your head as soon as you wake up.

Why should you care what happens in your head at night? Although there's lots of disagreement about the psychological function of dreams, researchers in recent years have come up with some tantalizing theories. One possibility is that dreaming helps the mind run tests of its Emergency Broadcast System, a way to prepare for potential disaster. So, for example, when new mothers dream about losing their babies, they may actually be rehearsing what they would do or how they would react if their worst fears were realized. There's also evidence that dreaming helps certain kinds of learning. Some researchers have found that dreaming about physical tasks, like a gymnast's floor routine, enhances performance. Dreaming can also help people find solutions to elusive problems. "Anything that is very visual may get extra help from dreams," says Deirdre Barrett, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and editor of the journal Dreaming. In her book "The Committee of Sleep," she describes how artists like Jasper Johns and Salvador Dali found inspiration in their dreams. In her own research on problem solving through dreams, Barrett has found that even ordinary people can solve simple problems in their lives (like how to fit old furniture into a new apartment) if they focus on the dilemma before they fall asleep.

Whatever the function of dreams at night, they clearly can play a role in therapy during the day. The University of Maryland's Clara Hill, who has studied the use of dreams in therapy, says that dreams are a "back door" into a patient's thinking. "Dreams reveal stuff about you that you didn't know was there," she says. The therapists she trains to work with patients' dreams are, in essence, heirs to Freud, using dream imagery to uncover hidden emotions and feelings. Dreams provide clues to the nature of more serious mental illness. Schizophrenics, for example, have poor-quality dreams, usually about objects rather than people. Cartwright has been studying depression in divorced men and women, and she is finding that "good dreamers," people who have vivid dreams with strong story lines, are less likely to remain depressed. She thinks that dreaming helps diffuse strong emotions. "Dreaming is a mental-health activity," she says.

People often deal with traumatic events through dreams. Tufts University psychiatrist Ernest Hartmann, author of "Dreams and Nightmares," analyzed dreams from the same group of people before and after September 11 (none of them lived in New York). He found that the later dreams were not necessarily more negative, but they were more intense. "The intensity is a measure of emotional arousal," he says. For people suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), dream content can be a marker of the level of distress, says psychiatrist Thomas Mellman of the Howard University School of Medicine, who studies PTSD. Dreams that mimic the real-life trauma indicate that the patient may be "stuck" in the experience. He thinks one way to help people move past the memory is through an "injury rehearsal," where they imagine a more positive scenario.

All this has led to a rethinking of Freud's great insight, that dreams are a "royal road" to the unconscious. Mapping that royal road is a daunting task for scientists who are using sophisticated imaging techniques and psychological studies in an attempt to synthesize what we know about the inner workings of the mind and the brain. Dreaming, like thinking, is what makes us human—whether we're evoking old terrors or imaging new pleasures. "We dream about unfinished business," says Domhoff. And, if we're lucky, we wake up with a little more insight to carry the day.

3 Intro: We are all Fellini in the Middle of the Night

3 Page 1: History Of Dream Research

3 Page 2: Born to be Dreamers

3 Page 3: Different Dreamers: Age And Gender