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Page 3 • Tuesday, October 12, 1999
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STORY BY BRIAN FLEMING
PHOTO BY GUY ROGERS
student
going
school without
clothes on has most likely
never happened. Rarely are people
chased through a misty black forest
by hungry, growling wolves. And re
ally, when was the last time someone
woke up with a snake perched on
their chest? For most, these happen
every night in the comfort of their
own homes.
Dreams have long been of inter
est to those baffled by such a
strange phenomena, the topic has
triggered number of theories, stud
ies and experiences.
In an attempt to shed light on the
subject, Dr. Steve Smith, professor of
psychology at Texas A&M, said nu
merous methods exist to explain why
people dream.
“You could take a biological [ap
proach],” Smith said. “Dreams are
associated with what is called Rapid
Eye Movement (R.E.M.), which
means while you are dreaming one
of the characteristics is that your eyes
jiggle around.”
Smith said R.E.M. sleep is necessary
for a good night’s rest.
“Studies have shown that when
people are deprived of R.E.M. sleep
they become cranky and irritable,”
Smith said. “This shows it is important
to have this sleep, and with it dreams.”
Smith said sleep in this state is
called paradoxical sleep.
“What is interesting about the
R.E.M. state is that if we look at your
brain activity and compared it with
arescm
the brain activity of someone who is
awake, it would be pretty much the
same,” Smith said.
“But if you look at the muscle tone
of a person who is dreaming, they have
very little. They do not seem particu
larly capable of moving themselves
that much.”
Smith said it is ironic the brain ap
pears awake while the body and mus
cles are asleep. Some also have sug
gested R.E.M. sleep tunes up the visual
system as well.
He said another approach to ex
plaining dreams is the Freudian or psy
choanalytical method.
“A Freudian might say that we
dream because in our day-to-day ex
periences, we experience things that
frustrate or bother us,” he said.
“These are things we are sometimes
unable to resolve.”
Smith said dreams serve as solu
tions to the problem.
“A dream provides a setting where
we can resolve, through this dream fan
tasy, these unresolved conflicts,” he
said. “For example, if there is someone
you really do not like, you are not al
lowed to kill people [in real life], but in
your dream you can.”
Smith said this approach helps peo
ple handle their daily activities.
“This serves the function of al
lowing us to get our frustrations
out,” he said.
‘So we can live
like civilized people.”
Jill Bradshaw, a biology
graduate student, said she once
dreamed because of a change in her
daily routine.
“I was on a diet,” she said. “For
nights I dreamed I was eating mass
quantities of food.”
Smith said this sort of dream is an
example of an unresolved conflict.
Dreams can be elaborate and can vary
from person to person.
“If you ask two different people to
tell a story, one might give you a
three-liner and another might go into
great detail,” he said. “That same
kind of difference is the case with our
dreams, as well.”
Smith said there are other explana
tions for why some people dream, or
recall their dreams, more than others.
“Dreams are difficult to remember,”
he said. “You wake up and begin your
day and later try to remember, ‘What
was that dream I had?’ Chances are
you won’t remember.
“If you wake up, lay still and try to
recapture some of the images and build
on that, you can get a much more vivid
recollection of what you just dreamed. ”
Jane Holden, a junior architecture
major, said she uses this method to re
member her dreams.
“A lot of my dreams involve elabo
rate plots,” she said. “[But] I can recall
everything, even down to the color of
the carpet in a building.”
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