The article provides an in-depth analysis of dreaming as an automatic cognitive process of the brain that involves clear and straight-forward content as a replication of an individual’s emotions in the wake of life during sleep. It is imperative to understand that evidence of play behavior has been established to be present in warm-blooded species because they experience long childhoods and have larger brains, a high-calorie diet, and a highly interactive social environment ( Bulkeley, 2019 ). Cold-blooded animals do not display such behavior because they lack adequate energy to be balanced against metabolic needs. This is possible for mammals because they have enough energy to exercise flexibility, creativity, and instinctual freedom during play.
Cyclic variations of REM and non-REM sleep are exhibited in humans during sleep, with children having higher proportions in the former as compared to adults ( Bulkeley, 2019 ). Based on these findings, it can be concluded that REM sleep patterns decrease with age for mammals who meet the criteria mentioned above, with the highest rates experienced during childhood.
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As the author notes, dreaming occurs during sleep, in what he terms as a state of temporary withdrawal from the real world. A dream's contents directly point to survival-related themes such as social relations, aggression, personal health, healthy, development, and adaptive preparation ( Bulkeley, 2019 ). Therefore, the dream-is-play perspective can be used in the practice of psychotherapy to uncover hidden messages, especially for trauma patients such as those suffering from PTSD. Through a successful interpretation of dreams, a therapist can analyze the characters and scenarios for an effective track of their progress from the administered treatment.
Reference
Bulkeley, K. (2019). Dreaming is imaginative play in sleep: A theory of the function of dreams. Dreaming , 29 (1), 1.
