Dreams and Reality

The reality level of dreams varies in terms of time orientation and level of
consciousness. Regarding time orientation, dreams earlier in the night contain
more themes dealing with the distant past�"such as childhood for an
adult�"while dreams closer toward waking up tend to be richer in content
and have more present themes�"such as a current concern. The future is
emphasized in oneironmancy, the belief that dreams are prophetic and can
warn the dreamer of events to come.

The unconscious mind contains material that is rarely accessible or completely
inaccessible to awareness. The personal unconscious may resurrect
dream images of experiences that a person normally cannot voluntarily recall.
For example, a woman may dream about kindergarten classmates
about whom she could not remember anything while awake. The psychologist
Carl Jung proposed that dreams could sometimes include material from
the collective unconscious�"a repository of shared human memories. Thus,
a dream in which evil is represented by a snake may reflect a universal human
inclination to regard snakes as dangerous.

When waking reality, rather than unconscious thoughts, intrude upon
dreaming, lucid dreams occur. Lucid dreams are characterized by the
dreamer’s awareness in the dream that he or she is dreaming. Stephen
LaBerge’s research has revealed that lucid dreams occur only in REM sleep
and that people can be trained to experience lucidity, whereby they can exercise
some degree of control over the content of their dreams.