14 Amazing Psychological Facts about Dreams: Unravel the Sleep Enigma

Dreams are an innate and an integral part of our lives. For instance, a person spends six years of his life dreaming, and every night he spends two hours in a dream state. The dream world instilled with wonder, fear, joy, and even confusion really shows how creative and complex the human mind can get. Scientific study on dreams has been going on for years, and though there is much to be known, research so far has brought into light some interesting facts regarding dreams psychologically.

Now, let's proceed to discuss 14 of the most interesting psychological facts about dreams concerning their complexity, meaning, and basically everything that is going on inside our heads.

1. Your Brain is More Active When Dreaming Compared to Being Awake

While sleep is usually conceptualized as a time of rest and restoration, although the body is most certainly in a recuperative mode, one's brain is actually quite busy at work. Actually, it works harder during a dream state than it does when the person is awake.

Brain wave studies of sleep show, similarly, that during REM sleep there happens to be a storm of electrical activity. A very active process in which the brain is engaged, putting in order much information passed through during a day. It is during this very stage in sleep that your brain consolidates your memories, storing new information and processing huge emotions.

Key Takeaway: Your dreams are the way your brain interprets life, works out the processing of everyday events, sometimes solves problems for you, and files away memories.

2. Dreaming occurs within a person's subconscious.

Your conscious mind sleeps, but in its sleep, your subconscious is never at rest. Your brain shoots out thoughts and anxieties in the form of symbols, metaphors, and imagery as your mind dreams about things your conscious level of awareness may not realize.

Because your subconscious is dealing with personal experiences, many of your dreams deal with your reality, though they can be very surreal and disjointed. Well, that in itself explains why sometimes dreams can be strange or hard to decipher, because that's just your subconscious literally speaking its own peculiar language.

Key Takeaway: A dream is a projection of the subconsciousness, reflecting deep-seated feelings and unresolved issues.

3. One can only dream about the faces one has ever seen.

In fact, any face that you dream of is the one that you have viewed at one time in your life but don't consciously remember. It might be your best buddy, any stranger in the crowd, or a face that you crossed on the way, but your subconscious mind retains each and every face that comes before your eyes. The same images get flashed into your dreams, sometimes jumbled or altered in some form.

Key Takeaway: It is beyond human brain capability to invent an absolutely new face during one's dream; every face dreamed about originally appeared in real life, though the tracing might be imperfect sometimes.

4. You Can't Read in Your Dreams

Reading involves a conscious act; hence, since the conscious mind rests when one is sleeping, then it is technically not possible for a person to read or have any comprehension of a text through dreams. Even in the improbable event that a person dreams of a book or a sign, he will notice he cannot make out the words or they shift and change.

That's because humans only learned to read about 5,000 years ago, which, with regards to evolutionary history, is extremely a short time; hence the subconscious mind hasn't fully adapted to the skill and hence is not able to reiterate it in your dream.

Bottom Line: Reading, since it is based on a voluntary action, does not translate into dreams since this ability would not make much sense in your subconscious.

5. At times, sensory inputs form your dreams.

These stimuli for the dream can arise from an internal or external source. For example, if one is sleeping in a noisy place, there is a good probability that the noise will feature in one's dream. Similarly, physical discomfiture like discomfort or pressure on the bladder could form part of one's dream. This is known as sensory incorporation.

Key Takeaway: Events in the external and internal environments, including noise or bodily sensations, may provoke your dreams and engage your subconscious mind in setting up dream scenarios.

6. Men and Women Dream Differently

There are also some content differences between women and men: the research findings support that male dreams contain more physical aggression and weapons than female dreams. Female dreams deal more with emotions, relationships, and conversations; their dreams tend to be longer, and the characters in their dreams are more plentiful.

Curiously, the dreams of men feature other men twice as much, but in women's dreams, the balance between the two genders is even.

Bottom Line: Gender is thereby involved: usually in dreams, males report more action and aggressive themes whereas females more emotive and social themes.

7. Half of All Dreams Are Negative

At the same time, it has been founded that about 50% of dreams have negative emotions. The most common negative themes present in the dreams are chased, falling, paralyzed, or late, which all generally reflect stress, fear, or anxiety about situations in reality which the subconscious mind sorts through during sleep.

Key Takeaway: Negative emotions dominate our dreams: almost half of all dreams reflect one or more of the negative emotions—fear, anger, sadness.

8. Some dreams show one's anxiety or stress.

Many common scenarios dreamed—like falling, being chased, or showing up late—actually pertain to anxiety or stress in one's waking life. These may be indicative that you have not faced your issues yet or—quite obviously—are just overwhelmed.

If you are having numerous nightmares consider evaluating stressors in your life and determine what you can do to minimize them.

Key Takeaway: Anxiety or stress-producing recurring dreams may, in essence, serve to warn a person's conscious mind that unresolved tensions exist in one's life.

9. Premonition Dreams: A Glimpse into the Future?

There have been recorded cases of people who could dream about future events. Whereas for many such foresight dreams are considered coincidences, sometimes these facts were too precise. Among such historical examples is the dream about his assassination by Abraham Lincoln and the Titanic disaster foreseen in dreams by some of its victims.

But whether they really predict events or not is still being debated upon, they add an interesting twist in the mystery of dreams.

Key Takeaway: Some do relate to herald the coming of an event, which may be mere coincidence or a genuine prediction.

10. Some People See in Black and White

Vivid color dreams are not for everyone. Some people—even today—report dreaming in shades of gray or monochrome; this might be more common amongst older individuals who grew up with, for instance, black-and-white television. The age factor and the quality of media exposure influence the occurrence and intensity of color in dreams.

Bottom Line: It may also be with respect to medial exposure; a person who grew up only watching black-and-white television will exclusively dream in black and white.

11. They develop creativity.

At times, creativity and innovation have been credited as achieving through dreams. Most artists, writers, and inventors draw inspiration through dreams. Larry Page came up with an idea about Google from his dream, while Dmitri Mendeleev came to visualize the periodic table of elements through a dream.

This is because it may test situations or concepts through the mind without the sufferings of natural life and, therefore, make dreams a powerful tool for creative problems solving.

Bottom Line: This is a peculiar field of creation for the brain—to create innovations and to elaborate solutions not restricted by the thinking of being awake.

12. Dreams Alter the Course of History

Some of the greater inventions and discoveries in the world came through dreams. Historical examples are the invention of the sewing machine by Elias Howe and the discovery of the DNA double helix by James Watson. These have formed the basis for innovative ideas given a totally different perspective to make the world what it is today.

Key Takeaway: History has been able to pinpoint some of the most vital inventions and discoveries inspired by dreams.

13. Lucid Dreaming: Controlling Your Dreams

Lucid dreaming is when you realize you're dreaming during a dream. You then become somewhat able to control the content and course of your dreams. About 50% of people have had a lucid dream once in their lives, while other people practice techniques to try to induce lucid dreaming on a regular basis.

Key Takeaway: Lucid dreaming means a conscious management over one's current dream-sleep by a person, which includes elements of consciousness in a dream.

14. You dream every night even if you don't remember.

You don't always remember your dreams, but you dream every single night. Most dreams are forgotten within minutes after you wake. If you wake during your REM stage of sleep, it's more apt that you recall your dreams, and keeping a dream journal beside your bed aids in capturing those fleeing memories.

Key Takeaway: Although everyone dreams, most are forgotten quickly unless remembered during the REM stage or written down immediately upon waking.

Conclusion: The Mystery of the Dream

Some of the most interesting features of the human mind are the constant peering into our subconscious, serving as a tool for working out issues and inspiring creativity, and possibly those little windows into our emotions. They show their proud importance—from daily life reflections to changing the world—and they will, until further notice.

And who knows; as research is still evolving, it could even uncover something even more surprising to show how those dreams really affect our wakeful states. Till then, paying closer attention to dreams may unlock more than one may dream.

Let us know—what’s the most interesting dream you’ve ever had? Share your thoughts in the comments below!