How Sleep Works

Chris · 08-26-2007, 06:14 AM

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For any animal living in the wild, it just doesn't seem very smart to design in a mandatory eight-hour period of near-total unconsciousness every day. Yet that is exactly what evolution has done. So there must be a pretty good reason for it!

-How Sleep Works

My dreams are nothing but random bullshit.

Gnosital · 08-26-2007, 07:00 AM

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Chris wrote

My dreams are nothing but random bullshit.

That's a cool link, thanks, I was looking for something on consciousness variations to make my online intro psych students read.

And you forget the vast majority of your dreams, it's sort of like alcohol-induced blackout while you're asleep. Very little gets consolidated. Random bullshit is probably the jettison process, there is some evidence that we do a bit of synaptic housecleaning while we're asleep.

If you don't have very significant dreams that cause you to wonder WTF for half the morning, then you probably don't have any major unresolved emotional issues nagging at your subconscious either.

Freud wasn't totally wrong about everything.

Except for that penis envy stuff. That was totally whack.

08-26-2007, 04:44 PM

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Gnosital wrote

If you don't have very significant dreams that cause you to wonder WTF for half the morning, then you probably don't have any major unresolved emotional issues nagging at your subconscious either.

I have dreamt of having sex with my sister and with my mother, in multiple instances. I do not mind (dreams are dreams after all), but what's your take on it?

08-26-2007, 05:20 PM

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skribb wrote

I have dreamt of having sex with my sister and with my mother, in multiple instances. I do not mind (dreams are dreams after all), but what's your take on it?

Intimacy issues stemming from a childhood problem, probably a disconnect in understanding between you and your female family.

Man I was heavy on dream interpretation years ago, I think it was all these recurring dreams of fighting my brother gladiator style and fighting zombies to save heroines.

Gnosital · 08-26-2007, 08:18 PM

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skribb wrote

I have dreamt of having sex with my sister and with my mother, in multiple instances. I do not mind (dreams are dreams after all), but what's your take on it?

I don't subscribe to the standardized interpretations that are in so many pop psych books. A cigar is, after all, sometimes just a cigar. And everybody sees a cigar differently.

So I wouldn't presume to tell you what your dream "means", if anything, but you could do the same things I suggested to Chris if you are wondering how to make sense of the dreams you have had.

My experience has been that if the same dream or similar kinds of dreams occur repeatedly, there's usually some issue at the crux of the biscuit. Now if you are into the idea of having sex with your mother or sister when you're awake, there's really nothing to interpret. If you aren't into the idea of shagging your mom or sis, and especially if you find the idea of it upsetting, there might be an issue. But if you aren't really bothered by the dream, and you are not interested in making it so, then it's also no big deal.

Just curious, does it become a wet dream, and are you certain about the identities of the dream women being your mom and sis? Because we are notorious for assigning labels and identities to our dream characters AFTER we awaken.

calpurnpiso · 08-26-2007, 11:27 PM

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skribb wrote

I have dreamt of having sex with my sister and with my mother, in multiple instances. I do not mind (dreams are dreams after all), but what's your take on it?

Any normal male has had this desire. It simply is nostalgia to go back to the cave of creation and have free food, with the least effort. Freud was right in this observation.

Professor Chaos · 08-26-2007, 07:08 AM

Sweet link!

I've often used sleep to question Intelligent Design proponents. What kind of all-knowing, all-powerful creator would have his creation spend 33% of their lives unconscious?

Philboid Studge · 08-26-2007, 07:23 AM

That website needs better sourcing. By better I mean "some."

It must be in there somewhere, but I couldn't find it on that busy busy webpage, and I'm loathe to cite "How Stuff Works" as an authority ... Is it compiled like Wiki? Are there in-house experts? Would it kill them to note who/where the info is coming from?

Gnosital · 08-26-2007, 07:38 AM

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Philboid Studge wrote

That website needs better sourcing. By better I mean "some."

It must be in there somewhere, but I couldn't find it on that busy busy webpage, and I'm loathe to cite "How Stuff Works" as an authority ... Is it compiled like Wiki? Are there in-house experts? Would it kill them to note who/where the info is coming from?

Yeah, citations would improve the site, but I can tell you with some authority that the content on the sleep series, at least, is accurate.

08-26-2007, 07:36 AM

I think life is best spent learning and wrestling
Polyphasic sleeping all the way
I'll have plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead

Gnosital · 08-26-2007, 07:39 AM

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Amichai2 wrote

I think life is best spent learning and wrestling
Polyphasic sleeping all the way
I'll have plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead

Death and sleep are far from similar from a neurophysiological perspective, dearie.

calpurnpiso · 08-26-2007, 11:10 AM

Sleeping is simply computer rebooting. Assimilation of quotidian perceptions
( learning) then a path to future actions could be created. One could control one's dreams to a certain extent. When this is done one can produce amazing adventures, not unlike the euphoria producing religious experiences one has while awake. Logic is non existent while one dreams, it is as if one would immersed one's conscience inside a Salvador Dali's painting enjoying its irrational epiphanies. I love going to bed at night, since I become the protagonist, audience, director of the awesome dream adventures I am about to experience.

A dream is a hint of what death would be like, but since the brain decomposes and one becomes non existent, only the introduction to death is what one would experience. The white tunnel, spirits, voices and rest of hallucinations then the neural decomposing unknown sets in with nonexistence. This can be experienced only by the person on the outside which is the doctor performing the autopsy. Our conscience dies at night then resurrects in the morning.

Chris · 08-26-2007, 12:29 PM

I was drawn to it this morning because I was trying to find out what issues I need to resolve. I'm always having reoccurring dreams about an ex boyfriend. It's been 12 years since we broke up, I can stop dreaming about him now, shesh, he wasn't even 'the best I ever had'.

calpurnpiso · 08-26-2007, 03:33 PM

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Chris wrote

I was drawn to it this morning because I was trying to find out what issues I need to resolve. I'm always having reoccurring dreams about an ex boyfriend. It's been 12 years since we broke up, I can stop dreaming about him now, shesh, he wasn't even 'the best I ever had'.

Obviously 12 years ago he did not do something you wish he had, so, this persistence surfaces at random in dreams, but since dreams are seldom remembered for they sink fast into the depths of our sub-conscience, you had not notice it this till now when you happen to grasp it making an impact and been able to remember it fondly! He must have left something unfinished.

08-26-2007, 05:21 PM

Quote:

Chris wrote

I was drawn to it this morning because I was trying to find out what issues I need to resolve. I'm always having reoccurring dreams about an ex boyfriend. It's been 12 years since we broke up, I can stop dreaming about him now, shesh, he wasn't even 'the best I ever had'.

Without more details I couldn't say, but most likely it's one of those 'what-if' doubts we all have that are holding in your sub-conscious.