Where do we go when we dream? According to a leading expert on the subject, the human brain is the real ‘Dreamweaver,’ adding shape and color to the stuff of daily life to create those magical, sometimes scary ‘home movies’ in our heads. “They’re the short stories we tell ourselves, picture-stories, “said Dr. G. William Domhoff of the University of California, Santa Cruz. “I think dreaming is a form of thinking that’s going on during sleep,’ he explained, ‘but it’s a pictorial form of thinking.” Psychology giants Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung dominated dream theory for most of the previous century, holding that dreams represented an expression of ‘unconscious’ fears and desires suppressed in walking life. “For long, when I was first involved in dream research we tested those theories-in the 1960’s. And we finally gave up on them, Domhoff said. “The parts of the brain that we use the most in waking aren’t used at all in dreaming.” Instead, research is now focusing on a ‘neurocognitive’ theory of dreams, which holds that various parts of the brain work in concert to turning emotionally-charged thought processes into dreams. [Happy dreams to you, and may you meet yourself again.]
