For many individuals the most dramatic aspect of sleep is dreams or the jumbled, vivid, sometimes enticing, sometimes disturbing images that fill our sleeping minds.

Sleeping disorder and dreams: The psychodynamic view:

Dreams are said to express unconscious wishes or impulses. This view has existed for centuries but its influence was greatly increased by Sigmund Freud, who felt that dreams provide a useful means for probing the unconscious such as thoughts, impulses and wishes that lie outside the realm of conscious experience. In dreams, Freud believed, we can give expression to impulses and desires we find unacceptable during our waking hours. Thus, we can dream about gratifying illicit sexual desires or about inflicting painful torture on persons who have made us angry— thoughts we actively repress during the day.

Freud carefully analyzed the dreams of his patients and reported that in this manner he frequently gained important insights into the causes of their problems and disorders. However, Freud failed to provide any clear cut rules for interpreting dreams and no way of determining whether such interpretations are accurate. In view of these facts, certain psychologists believe that dreams offer a unique means for exploring the unconscious.

Sleeping disorder and dreams: The physiological view:

According to this view, dreams are simply our subjective experience of what is, in essence, random neural activity in the bran. Such activity occurs while we sleep simply because a minimal amount of stimulation is necessary for normal functioning of the brain and nervous system. Dreams then simply represent efforts by our cognitive systems to make sense out of this random neural activity. A logical extension of this view suggests that the activity of which we try to make sense is not actually random, rather it occurs primarily in the two systems of the brain that are most active when we are awake — the visual system and the motor system. Dreams are usually silent but are filled with visual images. Few individuals also report experiencing smells, touch, sensations or tastes in their dreams.