Dreams can have a range of forms as our minds create stories and images while we Sleep. Most people do not remember their dreams but we have an average of 3-6 times per night with an average duration of 5-20 minutes.
There are a number of theories as to why people dream, most research suggests that dreams are directly linked to memory formation. The Brain consolidates learning and memory tasks, storing memories and deriving associations.
Dreams are thought to be a psychological space where overwhelming, contradictory, or highly complex notions can be brought together by the dreaming Ego, notions that would be unsettling while awake, serving the need for psychological balance and equilibrium.
There are significant differences between the neuroscientific and psychoanalytic approaches to dream analysis.
Neuroscientists are interested in the structures of dream production, dream organisation, and narratability. However, psychoanalysis concentrates on the meaning of dreams and places them in the context of relationships in the history of the dreamer.
Reports of dreams tend to be full of emotional and vivid experiences that contain themes, concerns, dream figures, and objects that correspond closely to waking life.
Dreams introduce a state of Temporal Distortion - a type of Time dilation. Time doesnât behave in the same manner in the dream state as it does in reality, most often it is perceived as elongated.
While your conscious mapping of Time is lost during Sleep, at a non-conscious level, Time continues to be catalogued by the Brain with incredible precision.
âThis dramatic deceleration of neural time may be why we believe our dream life lasts far longer than our alarm clocks otherwise assert.â (Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams)