nightmares? Why would your brain scare you?
In: Biology
The Freudian view is that it is a way of hiding the ‘wish’ of a dream.
So, according to Sigmund Freud, there are a bunch of changes going on called the ‘dream work’, which are there to modulate a stimulus from the subconscious in a metaphorical fashion, that stimulus, always representing a subconscious wish. The problem becomes modifications that are indeed scary.
Another important thing is the source of the stimuli. All initial stimuli are from the prior day, however the modifications can be pulled from memories across your entire life (even if you can’t remember it). If you have ever felt a moment of fear (of course you have, we all have), then that can be used in a dream as a metaphorical device to hide the so called wish. Importantly, logic isn’t present in [most] dreams, and thus the child-like fears we had cannot be mitigated in dreams by our adult wisdom; so if you were scared of shadows as a child, your mind can use that fear in your dreams despite no longer being afraid of shadows as an adult.
Not everyone agrees with Freud, and after reading his 600+ page book on dreams, I definitely am skeptical to some aspects. However, it is insightful in many ways, and it takes a very different perspective to the typical science perspective. I’m a science guy (hence why I’m a med student), but I can’t help to be fascinated and curious about Freud’s ideas, and at some points, outright convinced.
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