Facts About Dreams Part 3

1. William Shakespeare (1564-1616), like his Greek playwright predecessors, used dreams in his dramas to help advance plot and develop characters. For example, dreams in Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard the III, Romeo and Juliet, and King Lear offer key psychological and symbolic insights into the motives and internal landscapes of important characters.
2. Colors in dreams can be interpreted only in the context of the dreamer’s relationship with that color.
3. Large bodies of water often symbolize the unconscious, so dreams of drowning may indicate being overwhelmed by unconscious, repressed issues. Drowning can also symbolize that the dreamer is entering a new stage of development and that the old self is “dying.”
4. Forests, like water, are often symbols of the unconscious. Traveling into a forest indicates exploration of the unconscious realm or represents a comforting refuge from the demands of everyday life.
5. A house in a dream is often a symbol of our body, so a mansion in a dream can represent a “rich” or even exaggerated sense of self. A mansion might also represent our future potential.^e
6. Expectant parents often have dreams about miscarriages, but this is almost always a symbol of their anxiety about the baby rather than a prediction. Miscarriage dreams are also powerful symbols of projects or business deals that have gone wrong.
7. Because nightmares were thought to be from menacing spirits, such as witches, folklore suggests placing a knife under the foot of the bed. Evil spirits were thought to be repelled by the steel on the knife.
8. Famous French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) asserts in his essay “Dream, Imagination, and Existence” that dreams are the origin of the human soul. He also posits that dreams about death are the most important type of dream because they are the moment life reaches its fulfillment.
9. As related in the epic Gilgamesh, dreams were highly regarded in ancient Mesopotamia as omens of the future or ways in which a dreamer could access other realities, such as the afterlife.
10. In ancient Greece, dreams were regarded as messages from the gods. Incubation, or the practice of seeking significant dreams by sleeping in a sacred place, also was popular, particularly in the healing cult of Asclepius at Epidaurus.
11. Falling dreams typically occur at the beginning of the night, in Stage I sleep. These dreams are often accompanied by muscle spasms, called myoclonic jerks, and are common in many mammals.^g
12. Many people have made discoveries while dreaming—such as Friedrich August von Kekule (1829-1896), who dreamed of a snake biting its own tail and discovered that certain organic compounds are closed chains or rings.
13. Vitamin B complex (B6) and St. John’s Wort have been shown to produce more vivid dreams.
14. Flying dreams are found around the world and have existed since ancient times, even before the invention of airplanes.
15. The Beatty Papyrus, written around 1350 B.C. and discovered at Thebes, is the oldest dream dictionary existing today. It describes special dream-interpreting priests called “Masters of the Secret Things” or “Learned Ones of the Magic Library.”
16. After the printing press was invented, a dream dictionary called Oneirocritica (The Interpretation of Dreams) by second-century author Artemidorus Daldianus became one of the first best-sellers, comparable only to the Bible in popularity.
17. Sigmund Freud’s (1856-1939) landmark work, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), which became a milestone in dream interpretation, sold only 415 copies in the first two years.
18. Dreams played an important part in the life of Muhammad (570-632), who received his first revelation during a dream. His initiation into the mysteries of the cosmos occurred during a dream known as the “Night Journey.” the site of which is now commemorated by the Dome of the Rock.
19. In contrast to modern dream interpretation, which is psychologically oriented, ancient dream interpretation was concerned with discovering clues to the future.
20. The Iroquois have an annual dream-sharing festival in which they act out their dreams, either literally or in pantomime.
21. Tertullian, a third-century lawyer-turned-priest, argued in his Treatise on the Soul that the ongoing activity of the mind in dreams while the body was motionless proved that the soul was independent of the body and, thus, immortal.
22. The fourth-century Christian writer Macrobius' text, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, was the most influential dream book of medieval Europe. He appears to be the first person to introduce incubi and succubi, which were rooted in earlier Jewish folklore, into Christianity.
23. The memory-recording processes of the brain seems to switch off during sleep. In so-called non-dreamers, this memory shutdown is more complete than it is for the rest. Dreams may be forgotten because they are incoherent or because they contain repressed material that the conscious mind does not wish to remember.
24. Dreams occupy a prevalent role in movies, including Fritz Lang’s Woman in the Window (1944); Hitchcock’s Spellbound, Psycho, and Marnie, and Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz.
25. St. Jerome’s mistranslation of certain key biblical passages led Medieval Christians to fear their dreams and to view them as the devil’s invitation to sin.
26. Abraham, the ancestor of the Hebrew nation, was one of the most prolific dreamers in the Hebrew Bible. The first dream in the Bible is in Genesis 15:12-16 and is a dream by Abraham.
27. According to psychologists, daydreaming and dreams during sleep may be related, but different cognitive processes seem to be involved.
28. Philosopher and mathematician René Descartes (1596-1650) struggled with the question of whether or not the mind’s perception of dreams represented reality.
29. Common dream motifs that transcend cultural and socio-economic boundaries include falling, flying, nakedness in public, and unpreparedness. Such shared dreams arise from experiences and anxieties fundamental to all people.
30. Psychologists speculate that falling dreams are rooted in our early experiences as toddlers taking our first steps on two legs. Some sociobiologists argue that our fear of falling derives from the experiences of prehistorical ancestors afraid of tumbling out of trees during the night.
31. Flying dreams can express both our hopes and fears in life—we can be “flying high” or “risen above” something. Freud associated flying with sexual desire, Alfred Adler with the will to dominate others, and Carl Jung with the desire to break free from restriction.

These facts were found using the link below.
http://facts.randomhistory.com/interesting-facts-about-dreams.html