Dreams: The stuff that real lives are made of

Actor Christopher Reeve, the actor played the original ‘Superman,’ during the late seventies and the eighties. Off-screen he also proved to be a man of steel, after a horse-riding accident in 1995 left him paralysed from the neck down.

Though wheelchair and ventilator-bound, Reeve dedicated his life to paraplegic and disability activism, using his profile to fundraise and promote awareness of disability needs. Reeve spoke of dreams and our need, no matter how dire our circumstances, to stay focused on our possibilities. His mantra, until his passing in 2004, was that “So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then seem improbable and then when we summon the will, they soon seem inevitable.” Reeve left us with what should be an ageless and immutable challenge to dream, but to make our dreams real.

Speaking of dreams, the remarkable Sigmund Freud drew attention to the importance of dreams saying that they “satisfy the unconscious wishes,” which is, I guess true if they are not nightmares and that they are “at their most profound when they seem the most crazy,” which is hardly comforting. Yet he was convinced that “Every dream will reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance.” Freud may have been a deep thinker, but I have always found him unsettling and when he makes such assertions, which cannot be proven or disproven, he evidences genius and madness, prolonging the dilemma of dreams.

We all ponder where these incredibly diverse mental, emotional, even sensory experiences we all have come from? Neuroscience has been at pains for decades, even centuries, trying to understand where dreams originate and while they are widely accepted to be multiple pseudo-sensory, emotional and motoric events since the 1950’s, more recent research has determined that most dream activity originates in the posterior parietal region of the brain, where many of our sensory responses interact to create live activities and responses. For example, a pie looks (sight) great and smells great, so we will take a bite (taste) to see if it all comes together as a pleasant experience in an atypical parietal action of fitting us into our world.

Neuroscience has for decades been trying to link, explain and progress relationships between rapid-eye-movements (REM’s) while we sleep, and our dreams, however, this has proven to be a veritable ‘rabbit warren’ where the research has prompted more questions than answers. For instance, REM/dream interactions take place predominantly in the small hours shortly before we wake, are infinitely more intense, bordering on theatrical, with a touch of fantasy, almost animated and often ‘scare’ us awake. The depth and integrity of REM-based research is coloured by the fact that subjects must offer literal documentation of their experiences, which can influence their reliability of those experiences.

Psychological research too, continues, but has thus far failed to conclusively prove any theory why we dream. Their continuity hypotheses contend that dreams and day-to-day waking life are interwoven, with common themes and content, while the alternative, their ‘discontinuity hypothesis,’ supports dream-thinking and being awake, as distinctly dissimilar. These schools of thought appear too far apart to sustain within the same scientific sector and again, probably reflect the unreliability of research subject interpretation and documentation of the meaning, let alone the content, of their experiences.

It’s an uncomfortable fact that those with mental health issues such as schizophrenia and post-traumatic disorders, anxiety and depression, identify significant unsettled daytime bad dream experiences, poor sleep patterns and more nightmares. These have in common that they are deeply personal, involuntary, illogical, often incoherent, yet eerily, in some deep manner, experience related and to awake is rarely to become safe. So, dreams challenge us, rarely comfort us and remain a divisive enigma.

Perhaps then, we should heed Mark Twain’s words: “Don’t dream away your life but live your dream.” Simple, succinct, practical and in harmony with the challenge of Christopher Reeve... a super man.