Why does the brain, which functions fairly logically by day, seem to lose all sense of logic in dreams? Sure, a lot of dreams seem very realistic at the time, and a few even are not all that wild by light of day. But then there are those doozies of dreams that make you wonder if your brain really gets the concept or if it is just doodling in the corner while you go about your day.
I would have put this in General Questions, but I doubt there is a single scientific reason behind it – so in your humble opinion, what is going on? Is your brain schizophrenic and works “normal” by day, but parties all night?
I dreamed last night that I was helping someone look after octuplets that were maybe 6 months old. It involved a lot of moving babies from room to room and stuffing them in playpens and carseats.
I have no kids, and the only friend I have with a baby has one, and I haven’t even held the kid yet.
Yes, my brain loses it at night.
One thing I’ve wondered lately is why do we dream about real places, and we know in the dreams that they are these places, but they don’t look like the real places? I mean you spend 8 hours a day at work, but then in your dreams the place that is “work” doesn’t really look right. Why not?! We see it 40 hours a week isn’t that enough to give your brain a good mental picture of the place? Even worse is houses you lived in…
I’ll give ya bizarre… My husband told me about a dream he had:
“I went to the market* and there was a guy selling antique bacon from the 18th century for $150. He was that guy with the weird hair from the 5th Element.”
Me: “Ruby Rhod?”
“Yeah, him. I went up to him and said 'This can’t really be antique bacon. You’re just re-labeling regular bacon, aren’t you?” He says ‘Okay, you caught me, but look-- these idiots are actually buying it!’"
I don’t know what to make of this, other than I find the concept of antique bacon to be hilarious.
You’ve got it backwards. The brain only seems rational by day because the stuff that’s going on in your subconscious mind is filtered out. When you sleep, the filters turn off and you become aware of it.
If you want details, track down a copy of The Cerebral Symphony by William H. Calvin.
Maybe wish fulfillment?
I dreamed I was the only nurse caring for 25 critically ill babies… in a library! The beds and cribs were in the aisles between the books. It took half my dream just to find them all!
I had a dream the other night that my boss got fired because I didn’t finish a report on time. She was pissed at me.
Was I living out some kind of weird fantasy? Was I seeing the future? Or was it just another brain fart like the time I dreamt I was having a threesome Japanese twins? No wait, that was a fantasy too.
The same thing happens with people, in my head. I’m dreaming about Mom, and I know it’s Mom, although the person acts, looks, and talks completely unlike Mom. Weird.
Hm, now I’ve gotten my curiosity all up in a knot. I’ll have to visit the library for some books on the neurophysiology behind dreams.
The curious thing is the layers involved in a dream. I was telling my mom something that happened in a dream recently, because I thought it provided insight into my curent situation; (my marriage is either actually dead and waiting pronouncement, or it is gasping its last gasps with a DO NOT RESUSITATE order) however I had to add a detail about the locale. I mentioned that their neighbour’s dogs were skateboarding, and because of this I had to go around the block to avoid running over them.
My mother… “The dogs were skateboarding?”
Me "Well they weren’t very talented…one could never land the jump he was trying. But anyway after I circled the block… it became obvious that wearing the white sandals while driving the car was a metaphor…"Yada yada yada
Two days later it hit me. Skateboarding dogs?
The dreams I remember well are like that. An obvious “narrative” or main story…even if it shifts and so forth… but then this richly populated background
that is just a bit more bizarre.
I can usually figure out the source material for some of the dream… I know whence the white sandals but then when I get it figured out its replaced by something even more bizarre.
I had a nightmare a few years ago in which the stapler in my house had somehow come to life and turned evil. I went into my bedroom and it was adhering to the wall like a spider or insect. Just below that, it had attached its jelly-like eggsac which was filled with little unhatched staplers. I was as filled with revulsion as I would be if I came across a spider and its eggsac in real life (I have a horrible fear of spiders). Once I saw the stapler and its brood, I tried to slowly and quietly turn around and leave the room so as not to alert it to my presence. But it sensed me, flew off the wall at me, and began biting (stapling) my hand. The only part of the dream after that that I remember was trying to drown the stapler in the swimming pool (we don’t really have a pool).
You could commit me to the asylum for all the weird dreams I have. But guess what? I enjoy most of them, it’s something I almost look forward to at night.
I forget where I read it, but the quote filtered down to what distinguishes humans is our retreat into insanity every night, i.e. all those synapses firing memories and impressions in random/possibly meaningful array. (I’ve been re-reading Connie Willis, notably Lincoln’s Dreams and Passage, so my impressions are a bit stunned by the abyss right now.)
I’m far from convinced there’s the least coherent sense to be made, in Freudian terms, in dreams. Mostly I’m snitty because when relatively unstressed I rarely dream, or least nothing notable enough to remember. My standard stress dreams are familiar and markedly uninformative, beyond obvious signs that I’m upset. The old exam nightmare: I can’t find the exam room or suddenly remember I registered for the class. Work nightmare: nothing’s where it should be. Travel nightmare: running frantically, burdened with luggage, for a connection. Free-floating Big One nightmare: married to my ex, bound in the hideousness. Totally disconnected people might float through, settings might shift illogically or I might shift around queasily. It’s very disconcerting, slowly realizing-I’m-dreaming, that I’m stark naked. Huh.
I’ve come to believe, with absolutely no rational basis, that dreams are vents. They don’t so much make sense of life as blow off id/ego dust.