What Dreams Are Made Of ...
By Barbara Kantrowitz
NEWSWEEK Magazine

Barbara Kantrowitz reveals why we dream ... and why we only remember some of our dreams.

In the middle of the night, we are all Fellini -– creators of a parade of fleeting images intended for an audience of one.

At times, it's an action flick, with a chase scene that seems endless ... until it dissolves and we're falling, falling, falling into ... is it a field of flowers? And who is the gardener waving at us over there? Could it be our old high-school English teacher? No, it's Jon Stewart. He wants us to sit on the couch right next to him. Are those TV cameras? And what happened to our clothes?

In the morning, when the alarm rudely arouses us, we might remember none of this — or maybe only a fraction ... perhaps the feeling of lying naked in a bed of daisies.

This, then, is the essence of dreaming — reality and unreality in a nonsensical, often mundane but sometimes bizarre mix. Dreams have captivated thinkers since ancient times, but their mystery is now closer than ever to resolution, thanks to new technology that allows scientists to watch the sleeping brain at work.

Although there are still many more questions than answers, researchers are now able to see how different parts of the brain work at night, and they're figuring out how that division of labor influences our dreams. In one sense, it's the closest we've come to recording the soul.

"If you're going to understand human behavior," says Rosalind Cartwright, chairman of psychology at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, "Here's a big piece of it. Dreaming is our own storytelling time — to help us know who we are, where we're going and how we're going to get there.
Read the full article here!

Back to library