Do our dreams mean anything, or are they just random?

Hello my children!

I'm writing a research paper for english on the relevance of dreams. I think i'm supposed to pick one side, either they're relevant or random, but I don't think I can on this subject, because it's not a PROVEN fact.
Anyway, at school I have a hard time finding some research information (since most of the sites are blocked), and i'm wondering if the good people here have some valuable info to add.
Anyone have any comments?
Suggestions?
Information?
Opinions?
Anything?



Thanks,
Tanner.

I think it can happen both ways. Sometimes You think abt something all day in a obsessive way, like say you want an iphone real bad(during it first release)......been talking in the forums all day abt it, researching the web abt it and ultimately at the end of the day when u go to bed, it just come right back at ya.

Same way when you are had a real slow day, not much tired and u go to bed. You want to sleep but ur brain is not ready for the awesome sleep like the way u had 2 days back when u came back home from a day of football practice. That is when u get random dreams. However you can also get relavant dreams during the same time.

P.S I could be totally wrong.

Assuming you are in school, I would go ask the Psyc teacher.

I think New scientist has some articles - I will have a look.

Depends on what tack your paper is using, psycological or more scientific neuroscience? As far as I know modern nueroscience would say the purpose of sleep is to sort and rewire brain connections, sort of like an offline tidy up. Dreams often are random but can reflect anxieties that are being played out in real life. Most of our dreams we do not remember, but we all have dreams at night, and we all know that often sleeping on a problem will give us a solution in the morning. Its not magic, but the brain is just less pre-occupied and more able to freeform thoughts.

Sleep and dreaming are essential to our brains health, if you ever decided to starve yourself and stop yourself from sleeping, you will die from sleep deprivation first - the brain and body just shut down. Sleep deprivation is also the most effective form of torture - far more effective than pain.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreams

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn70-dream-machine.html

a lot of the info on newscientist is incomplete (subscribe) - but Doctor Who is on, so I will come back to see if I can find anything else

There have been some really good books written regarding dreams.

Tanner,

Sometimes I get involved in something difficult, especially when a decision is involved, and I'll find myself dreaming about it all night. That can make real rest hard to get...

When I was in college and studied hard for an exam, I would dream about the subject all night (especially memorizing equations).

Nothing random about either of those examples.

But when my mind is at ease, all my dreams seem off the wall and I would call those random.

Noel

If this revolves around that dream about the girl (or boy) next door, it's probably just nothing.

you could check a *gasp* library if the sites you're trying to access are blocked.

if you are at your local public library or school library and the sites are blocked talk to your librarian and tell her what project you are working on and how you need access to the sites, he/she should be able to take care of that for you

2) it sounds like you are trying to write your paper with your conclusion in mind, that is not a good way to write a research paper....choose which topic interests you, research all the information, write the paper and see where it brings you

3) in a research paper all you need to do is start with a topic and then your conclusion will prove, disprove, or say that there is not yet enough information in order to answer the topic question.

Dreams do have meaning sometimes. When I dream the same dream over and over, it will come true. There are random dreams, food influenced dreams, tv/movie influenced dreams too, But the ones I dream over and over, have come true for me. There aren't many of them though.

iMac-Knight said:

Dreams do have meaning sometimes. When I dream the same dream over and over, it will come true. There are random dreams, food influenced dreams, tv/movie influenced dreams too, But the ones I dream over and over, have come true for me. There aren't many of them though.

Click to expand...

Yea the dreams that I have dreamt over and over have come true for me too! I think that it's just our subconscious mind sort-of planning it so that they come true, if that makes sense....
If only I dreamt that I was going to win the lottery;D ... well there still is time, (goes to sleep)..

Thanks for the help everyone!

I'm writing this paper right now.
The guidelines are really, well, non existent. I just have to "Discuss the relevance of our dreams and how it relates to Murcutio and Romeo in Romeo and Juliet."
That's it.

And there's TONS of books at our school library, but it's too late in the year to look at them/check them out since they're doing inventory.

And the librarian told me NO accessing blocked sites...weird.
I've gotten on some of them from home though, obviously.

It's really a horrible time to assign a research paper, when the library is closed and it's exam week, and the last week of the year....what was he thinking.....
I just got to mush out some stuff, print it out, then print out ALL my sources. I don't know why he's making us print all our sources, this article I read is like 16 pages....that's going to waste all our ink......can't he just go to the URL in the works cited page and save us all the trouble and ink and trees?
UGH.

Anyway, i'm just going to say that there's no real definite answer.
I'll tie the play into it since Mercutio argued that dreams are random, and Romeo.....said they weren't, or something, I don't have my book in front of me (Or with me, I got locked out of school........)


Thanks everyone!