PERSPECTIVE MAGAZINE ISSUE #3 JUNE 2017 | Page 14

dreams Why do we dream? I’m not talking about what motivates us or our goals — those are positive things that help us in our everyday lives, so they don’t really need to be questioned. Dreams and visions we get when we’re asleep, these aren’t always positive, which led me to wonder why we get them. The human brain can only remember 5% of the content our subconscious presents us with the night before. However, sometimes we can recall certain scenarios taking place when we’re asleep. Snakes, teeth falling out, falling from stairs — these are all dreams that most people experience, often not realising what they mean. Sigmund Freud is one of the most popular dream interpreters of our time, writing extensive books analysing our mind and how it works when we’re asleep, providing reason for the way we dream. He sometimes gives chilling interviews that expose people to a side of themselves even they did not know existed. One of his more notable interviews was with a man who had a recurring dream. One of him taking the place of stairs in a busy train station. People would constantly walk over him, rushing to get to their trains on time. The man had had this dream often, but it wasn’t until Freud told him to repeat every single detail of the dream out loud that he realised: it was a representation of his life. He’d let people walk over him for so long, letting them do what they wanted without ever considering his own feelings; they were unimportant to him. we