Are your dreams trying to tell you something?

SOCRATES looked on them as representatives of the voice of conscience. Voltaire dismissed them as random products of physical indispositions. Sigmund Freud called them "the royal road to the unconscious."

However one feels about dreams, they are an enduring source of fascination.
After research carried out two decades at the Washington State University, investigators concluded that dreams fall into three categories, namely: "tension dreamers," "social dreamers," and "reward dreamers."

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"Tension dreamers," researchers say, were people who reflected anxiety, hostility, or frustration, hypochondriacs who could not concentrate on their work.

"Social dreamers," on the other hand, always dreamt of pleasant relationships with other people: having good times at parties, always getting the best and always being the center of attraction. Researchers reckoned that such dreams were compensation for the people concerned who, in real life, were invariably shy and retiring.

In the third category, "reward dreamers" are those having visions of winning the lottery, getting an acting award or Oscar trophy (even a Nobel Prize), or receiving a knighthood. These people were self-confident people with dominant personalities. Their dreams simply complemented their actual living characters.
Scientists say most dreams last only about -- hold your breath! -- ten minutes, no more no less. If you consider that fact, it is astonishing indeed that dreams can present such clues to character.

Dr. Alfred Maury, a noted French psychologist, carried out a series of tests in 1949 and proved, to his own satisfaction at least, that dreams seldom last more than 15 seconds. Yet to a person with a lively imagination, an incredible amount of dream-experience can be crammed into that time.

One subject took over half-an-hour to detail to Dr. Maury the events that had occurred in a dream that the psychologist reckoned has lasted only nine seconds.

The most comprehensive survey of dreams ever carried out, however, was made by Professor Calvin S. Hall, an American psychologist. His work, done at about the same time as that of Dr. Maury, charted over 10,000 dreams provided by healthy men and women, aged between 18 and 80.

One significant finding was that most people seldom dreamt about their work and, rightly or wrongly, Professor Hall reasoned that this was because they had aversion to it. Nevertheless, although not concerned with work, most dreams were set in surroundings.

Dwellings were the scene for 35 percent of all those analyzed; vehicles, general cars, 13 percent; places of recreation, 10 percent; streets and other outdoor locations, both 9 percent; shops and classrooms, 4 percent each.

Only one percent had an office or factory background, and churches, restaurants, clubs and battlefields between them comprised about 14 percent.

In dreams, Prof. Hall found that we rarely sit but most frequently are running, walking or dancing.

Again, the inevitable question is: Why do we dream? Do we really need to dream?

"A dream is a personal document, a letter to oneself," explains Professor Hall.

He says that each of us has secret fears, hostilities and desires that pursue us. We may work hard at dodging or denying them, but no one can effectively escape emotions that they produce.

Dreams, Prof. Hall further says, "provide a stage on which to express problems that are painful, anxiety-producing and seemingly unresolvable."

Dreams, however, can do much more, according to psychologist Loriene Chase, co-author of The Human Miracle: Transcendent Psychology.

"Most dreams, at least those you remember most vividly," points out Dr. Chase, "deal with something unresolved in your life, something which needs finalizing or clarifying. These dreams are important messages, transmitting signals to alert you to the fact that all is not well."

Meanwhile, the assumption that dreams can be understood only with the help of psychoanalysis or therapists is misleading and limiting.

A British dream researcher and author of two helpful books, Dream Power and The Dream Game, Dr. Ann Faraday, says, "While it is true that there are disturbed people who cannot cope with life without therapeutic help, there are also millions of intelligent and basically normal people who are perfectly capable of exploring their own dreams for greater self-knowledge."

Dreams researchers often quote the remark of a certain Kekule, who ended a speech to a scientific congress concerning his discovery of the structure of benzene by telling his skeptical audience: "Let us learn how to dream, gentlemen, and then perhaps, we will discover the truth."