Author: Derek Beres / Source: Big Think
Carl Jung believed dreams represent archetypal realities obscured during waking consciousness. Dreams reveal more than they conceal, he wrote, countering Freud’s idea that subconscious movies were by design secretive. Dreams are an integral component of Jung’s theory of individuation, in which our conscious and unconscious lives are integrated.
Michio Kaku on the science of dreams Michio Kaku
In Jungian philosophy, the conflict and chaos experienced in dreams ultimately bring order to our lives. While Jung’s more mystical theories are debatable given our current knowledge of neuroscience, he was not mistaken about the importance of dreaming. As it turns out, their absence is terrible for our health.
Rowan Hooper, the managing editor at New Scientist, reports that chronic dream deprivation is damaging our waking hours in numerous ways. As I wrote about last year, 40 percent of Americans get less than seven hours of sleep every night; Hooper claims that number is 60 percent in the UK.
This trend is wreaking havoc on our immune and metabolic systems, leading to a variety of diseases and obesity. Forget about focus: the devices that keep us up late at night are ruining our sleep patterns, which has long-term consequences on our memory system. One study showed that denying mice adequate amounts of REM sleep, the cycle in which we dream, the mice couldn’t consolidate memories.
We might think this is just a sleep problem, but dreaming is inseparable from our nighttime sojourn through the darkness. Dream problems and sleep problems go hand in hand.
We sleep in cycles, each lasting about ninety minutes; we go through three cycles before hitting REM. The longer we sleep, the more time we spend in REM, which is why we are often dreaming when waking up in the morning. If we sleep less than seven hours, however, it becomes harder to achieve this level of REM.
This makes us more than a little groggy. As Hooper writes, sleep problems and digestive issues are also related. Besides mood disorders, missing sleep raises our stress level during the day, which affects how we digest food. The digestive process is interrupted when we don’t get the proper amount of shut-eye.
Hooper points out a connection between the digestion of food and the digestion of emotions. Memory consolidation is a critical reason for dreaming at all. The combination of sleeping and dreaming acts as an emotional stabilizer. We’re able to integrate…
The post The serious health consequences of not dreaming appeared first on FeedBox.