Dreams　夢的祕密

你有沒有想過夢境是否有任何意義？夢能告訴你有關自己目前生活嗎？你做夢的頻率為何？還有，你為什麼會做夢？

撰文及考題設計／British Council 英協教育中心Nicholas Gray 　　中譯／陳怡君

Have you ever wondered whether your dreams have any meaning? Can they tell you anything about your life? How often do you dream? Why do you dream?

你有沒有想過夢境是否有任何意義？夢能告訴你有關自己目前生活嗎？你做夢的頻率為何？還有，你為什麼會做夢？

The answers to some of these questions might surprise you. First, everyone dreams every night. Most people have 4 to 7 dreams a night and spend between 1 and 2 hours dreaming in 10-30 minute periods of a stage of sleep called REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. If you think you don’t dream, it’s much more likely that you weren’t in the REM stage of sleep when you woke up, and therefore can’t remember; it is estimated that we forget over 90% of our dreams. Second, it’s believed that pets dream too. There’s no way to confirm this as we can’t ask our dogs or cats, but they have the same brain activity as humans do when they’re dreaming. Third, although experts disagree about whether newborn babies dream or not, babies do spend half of their sleeping time in REM sleep, and given that they spend 18 hours a night sleeping, this is around 9 hours every night when they might be dreaming.

這些問題的部分答案可能會讓你感到驚訝。首先，每個人每晚都會做夢。大部分的人一個晚上會花一到二小時做四到七個夢，這些夢發生於「快速動眼期」（REM）睡眠階段，每個週期約持續10至30分鐘。如果你認為你沒有在做夢，比較有可能的情況是當你醒來時不是在REM 階段，因此不會記得。一般估計我們會忘記超過百分之九十的夢境；第二，據信寵物也會做夢，即使我們無法由身邊的貓狗口中證實，但牠們在做夢時會表現出和人類大腦相同的腦波活動；第三，儘管科學家對於新生兒是否會做夢沒有一致看法，但小寶寶確實有一半的睡眠時間處在REM階段。鑒於他們一晚須睡上18 小時，因此大約有9小時的時間處於夢境中。

Dreams can be powerful and are often bizarre, and if we all have them every night, dreaming must have a purpose. One popular idea about why we dream is Crick and Mitchison’s (1983) ‘We dream to forget’ theory. The idea of this is that when we are dreaming, the brain is sifting through all the information we have taken in during the day – the sights, sounds, smells, ideas etc. – and helping us to keep and organize what is important, and forget what is unimportant. The images we see in dreams are the product of this process. Another lesser known theory is that dreams might help us solve our problems. The idea behind this is that when we go to sleep with a mental or emotional problem, our brain compares that problem to problems we have had before and helps us to solve it.

夢境可以極具張力，且情節通常很詭異，若以我們每晚都會做夢的觀點來看，夢的存在就一定有其目的。「為什麼我們會做夢？」其中一個極受歡迎的觀點，是克理克（Crick）與米其森（Mitchison）於1983年提出的「為了遺忘而做夢」理論。這個理論的概念是：當我們做夢的時候，大腦會仔細檢查我們在白天所接收的訊息，像是影像、聲音、氣味與想法等等，有助我們篩選、整理出重要的資訊加以保存，而忘記不重要的訊息。我們在夢中看到的影像，即是這項過程的產物。另一個較少為人所知的理論，認為做夢或許有助我們解決問題。意思是當我們懷著心理或情緒上的困擾入睡，大腦會把新問題拿去和過去曾有的問題做比較，並幫助我們尋求解方。

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Another way of looking at dreams that has generated a lot of interest is thinking about whether dreams can tell us anything about our lives. A quick search online will lead to many ‘dream dictionary’ websites that tell us the meanings of some of our common and less common dreams: falling dreams may mean that your anxious about some situation in your life, being chased could mean that you’re running away from a problem, and flying might indicate that you are feeling powerful. All of this should be taken with a pinch of salt, however; although there are some common themes and some of the interpretations might contain some truth, there is little scientific evidence and websites often contradict each other and offer very different expla¬nations of the same dream.

關於夢的探討，另一個引起眾多興趣的方式，是探討我們能否透過夢境來詮釋我們的生活。只要在網路快速檢索，就會出現許多「夢境辭典」網站，煞有其事地解析那些常見或是少見的夢境。例如，「下墜的夢」代表你對生活中某些環節的焦慮感；「被追趕的夢」意味著現實生活中你試圖逃避某些問題；「飛行的夢」則表示你感到自信滿滿。然而，這些說法也應並不宜全信， 因為即使一些常見的情節解析可能亦含有部分事實，但仍是少有科學根據，且針對相同的夢境，不同網站間的評析往往也彼此衝突，提供完全不同的解釋。

Sigmund Freud, known as the father of psycho¬analysis, believed that dreams were the key to our unconscious minds. He had his patients recall their dreams in detail and used this information to help treat their psychological problems, believing that dreams can tell us all about our unconscious fears and wishes. Not everyone agrees with Freud, and even those that do acknowledge that interpreting dreams is tricky. However, other scientists say that a better way of understanding dreams is to think about the feeling in the dream; even if the dream doesn’t seem to make sense, it might be allowing you to experience some difficult but important feelings.

人稱「精神分析之父」的西格蒙德．佛洛伊德， 認為夢是一把通往潛意識的鑰匙。他讓病患鉅細靡遺地回想夢境，並利用這些資訊來協助治療他們的心理問題，他認為夢境能告訴我們潛意識中的恐懼與希望。然而有些人雖同意解析夢境是微妙的，但並不贊同佛洛伊德的看法；其他科學家認為，要理解夢境更好的方法，是去思考夢境中的感受，縱使夢中的情境有時並不合理，但它仍能讓你體會某些難捱但重要的感受。

Another aspect of dreaming is that has generated interest is whether we can control our dreams. Imagine this: you’re in a dream and it’s as vivid and as real as any waking experience, except there are no rules and you can do anything you want. This is known as lucid dreaming. Sometimes it happens by accident – you’re dreaming and you become aware that you’re dreaming, but you continue dreaming. Other people use various techniques to do this; it takes a lot of practice, but those who do it say that it leads to a greater understanding of our life experience, and it can be really enjoyable engaging in activities such as flying, that they can’t do in waking life.

另一個亦引起諸多興趣的面向，是探討我們是否能左右夢境的發展。試想：你正在夢境中，生動清晰正如真實清醒般的經歷，差別在於它沒有規範且你可以隨心所欲，這就是所謂的清醒夢，有時候不經意地發生，你正在做夢而你亦意識到自己正在做夢，但你仍持續做夢。其他人會利用各種技巧來經歷清醒夢，這需要很多練習，但做到的人表示可以經由清醒夢來讓我們更能去理解生活體驗，且藉由從事現實中無法做到的事─例如飛翔─來達到樂趣。

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