There are five theories that were developed that helps to explain the reason as to why we dream. They are wish fulfillment, information processing, psychological function, activation synthesis, and cognitive development. The Wish Fulfillment theory suggests that the reason why we dream is to fulfill wishes that would be considered strange in reality. The information processing theory suggests that we dream to reorganize information and events from the recent day. The psychological function theory suggests that REM sleep helps to develop and preserve neural pathways. The activation synthesis theory suggests that REM sleep triggers random visual memories and weave them into stories. And finally the cognitive development theory states that the …show more content…
This developed from Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. Dreams are provided to be a safety net for our unconscious mind which we express often unfulfilled wishes and needs that otherwise would be considered and strange and unacceptable in reality. So because of this, our mind creates made up scenarios while we sleep so that these wishes and needs are fulfilled without actually showing them. Also according to Freud and the wish fulfillment theory, these dreams contain both a manifest, remembered, and also latent, underlying meaning, content. However, this theory lacks any scientific support because the fact that dreams does not have a single defined meaning but can be defined differently between different people.
The second theory as to why we dream is information processing. As we learn new material and skills every day, they begin to become a conglomerate of stuff learned for the day in our mind. However according to this theory, when we sleep at the end of a day after learning new material, our mind creates dreams to help organize new learned material , organize the day’s events, and also to consolidate memories so that they would be easier to remember later on if the information ever needs to be recalled. However one question that this theory does not answer is why do we dream about things that we have not