Why do dreams occur?

Answer 1

The root cause is probably anxiety or a deep seated worry about some element of your life.

Answer 2

There is no definitive answer to that question, which is still being debated by neuro-scientists and psychologists, however a reasonable guess is that dreams are a byproduct of the effort of the sleeping mind to make sense of the events of the preceding day, and get its thoughts in order; you could call it the musings of the subconscious.

Answer 3

The answer to your question is very complicated. The psychologist Sigmund Freud divides the mind into a series of parts. Excitement, meaning any kind of thought, memory, or current sense, travels through the parts. The first part, in which excitement usually starts, is perception: your eyes (and ears, etc.). You see something happen. Next, the excitement travels through memory groups, which teel your mind the relationships between the things that you are seeing (you see a woman; her feet touch the street; your memory groups tell you that she is standing on the street). Next, there is the unconscious. The unconscious has a wish, that is usually very self-centered. The wish wants to result in a movement. The excitement, which during a dream is a wish, does not start in the perception. After all, your eyes are closed, so you won't see anything that the perception will pick up. It starts in the unconscious. In order to result in this movement, it must pass throught the next part of the mind, called the preconscious. But a censor, or block, is between the unconscious and preconscious. The censor will not let the wish result in a movement. The wish gives in. Meanwhile, the preconscious distorts the dream. It still contains the wish, but it makes no sense and is strange. The excitement in the mind normally travels from the perception to the memory groups to the unconscious to the preconscious to the conscious and finally to the movement. However, the dream wish, the excitement, is blocked by the censor, so it turns around. It goes back through the unconscious to the memory groups. As it passes through the memory groups, it loses all of its logic. The dream seems to contradict itself. Finally, the dream wish reaches the perception again. And so, you see the dream.

Answer 4

Dreams are produced by the subconscious mind during specific stages of the sleep cycle. Many dreams are just "brain lint" - they are rehashes of the day before, as the subconscious mind processes experiences and impressions. Other dreams can be "practice" or "rehearsal" of different ways of solving problems. Yet other dreams can involve symbols in which one image represents something else in the same way that the Bald Eagle represents the United States. Most dreams involve purely mental exercises, and it is not important to remember them all.

Some dreams, though, do contain messages that the subconscious mind sends to the conscious, waking mind. Repetitive dreams that occur over and over usually contain this sort of message. Once the dreamer figures out what the dream represents, it stops occurring.

Answer 5

Our brains are unbelievably complex electrically powered processors. They never shut down completely, except in extreme conditions of trauma, or at the time of death. But they do quiet down a lot, and sometimes they are so quiet that no neural activity reaches the level of dream state. Our sleep cycles are such that for a few periods a night, the brain is engaging in a lot of activity, but parts of our nervous system that process sensory input, and that give us voluntary control of movement, are at rest. During these times, various kinds of brain activity may register as dreams. Dreams aren't 100% different from waking consciousness, but during waking consciousness we can control a great deal of the input our brains receive, and we can be fully aware of the difference between the outer sensory world and the inner world of thoughts and mental images. While we sleep, sensory input and many other things are temporarily shut down.

Some of the mental activity taking place while we sleep is a sort of housekeeping, as the subconscious mind sorts through the thoughts, emotions and experiences of each day. Other dreams appear to use symbols and metaphors to illustrate deeply held emotions. Nightmares are often this type of dream, with the monsters taking the place of anger or jealousy. Yet other dreams seem to provide opportunities to rehearse or practice situations that might be encountered in real life. For more information than can be included here, see link attached below.

Answer 6

Dreams are involuntary, imaginary images that drift through your mind as you sleep. They are produced by the subconscious mind that sorts through the thoughts, emotions and memory of the past day(s) while your conscious mind rests in sleep. Dreams have a number of different functions, including the release of tension and stress. See the link below for further information.

Answer 7

The reason why people see things in their dreams is not stated. It is stated that it is known that many artists have received their creative ideas from their dreams.