|
Frank Cotolo
April 3, 2014 |
  |
The answer to many of your problems, says a study done about many of your problems, may be revealed
in your dreams. During sleep, your dreams may present solutions to difficulties you are having in
your life within a week after the trouble starts, researchers say.
|
  |
In a new study, 470 Canadian undergraduate psychology students never known for accomplishing any
useable information in the past recorded their dreams for a week. They rated the dreams based on how
well they recalled them, as well as the dreams' intensity, emotions and impact and ignoring any
dream including water, sex, sex with water, drinking water, waterfalls, sex at a waterfalls or
Spanish sailors.
|
  |
The next week, participants took a closer look at recent, well-recalled dreams. After that, two
independent judges - their names kept in a sealed envelope until the end of the study, at which time
the envelope was opened and everyone admitted they had never heard of either man - were called in.
Their job was to review the selected dreams and related events and decide if they contained
solutions to problems.
|
  |
The conclusion is that dreams try to offer solutions to personal problems. The result, however, did
not cover people whose dreams related to other people's problems.
|
  |
"I had a dream," said one student, that my brother should change his job. I told my brother, he
changed his job and was hit by a truck the next day."
|
  |
"The dream world sometimes works quickly," said one researcher. "Dreams are always churning insights
and advice the night after a triggering event, although they do so with symbols, metaphors and
allegories that make no sense at the time."
|
  |
"This suggests an ongoing effort to resolve a problem in dreams during the week following the
emergence of that problem," said psychology professor Don Diego Fortissimo of the University of
Zorro.
|
  |
"Something is going on in the mind that may alter the resolutions people may need," says Fortissimo,
who worked on the study while selling pretzels from an outdoor stand in Toronto.
|
  |
The solutions that surfaced after a week of study were especially significant for women.
|
  |