Research Paper on:
Dreaming and its Purpose

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
that suggest that dreams are essentially meaningless. Although most concur that dreams have some psychological significance, evidence is weak in that domain. Still, physiological evidence is presented in terms of  theta rhythm as seen in animals and how this might provide clues to the meaning of dreams in humans. The paper concludes that more research needs to be done on  this very complex and illusive subject. I. Introduction Roberta Ossana edits the nations largest dream magazine and claims that people see  beauty, meaning, and purpose in the symbols and metaphors which are contained in their dreams (Wientraub, 1993). Indeed, people love to tell about their dreams, look up the dream  symbols in an interpretive book and try to find what their night experiences really mean. Are dreams a door to past lives, other dimensions, or are they telling the individual  something about their unconscious selves? While the latter is somewhat accepted at least in Freudian psychology, it helps to also realize that dreaming is a physiological function. People need to  sleep and dream for a variety of reasons. The state of ones brain matters in terms of ones dream life. Damage to certain regions of the brain for  example does produce definite and specific effects in respect to the subjective experience of dreams (Solms, 1997). At the same time, damage to these structures does not have an  appreciable effect on the subjective experience of dreaming (1997). In truth, everyone dreams from infants to dogs to the elderly. No one is exempt and while some have richer  dream lives than others, dreaming serves a purpose for every human being. II. Review of the Literature and Theories on the Purpose of Dreaming During the