Night Story

When answering what professor Jeffreys asked us to do - to compare Wiiliam Dement's, "Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives", and Gottschalls, "Trouble is the fat red thread that ties together the fantasies of pretend play, fiction, and dreams." Seems relatively simple.
The way I see it, Dement and Gottschall's phrases are a team.  Dement said we are permitted to be insane each and every night of our lives- but we do this quietly and safely. Bad things, in whatever form they come, are an established part of dreams, "Dreamland is, incontestably, far more threatening than the average person's waking world" (Gottschall 82).  When we dream- we are allowing our minds to play out scenarios, as Gottschall says, "giving us practice in dealing with the big dilemmas of human life"(83).  But we are doing it without the reality of causing us or anyone else real harm, (unless your an elderly man with RBD).
Why is trouble so predominant in our dreams? Dreaming is the safe zone. This is where I believe Gottschalls fat red thread fits in with Dements statement. What if Dement had left out the word "insane" from his statement? "Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quiet and safe every night of our lives" - our sleep would be pretty much the same as our waking hours. Being insane in our dreams is trouble- trouble that prepares us for potential insanity in our waking lives- this is why the fat red thread is trouble. It ties insanity and extraordinary occurrences into the fabric of our ordinary lives, preparing us for what we may experience.
I find this reasoning valid. I believe we dream to prepare ourselves, I also think we tell stories when we sleep as a coping mechanism. I found an article while searching our librarie's database called, "The Function of Dreaming", by Robert Stickgold. In the article the Activation Synthesis Model proposed by Hobson and McCarley at Harvard University, is furthered questioned. In short- the Activation Synthesis Model is a theory that explains dreams as part random and part specific. Hobson and McCarley claim that dreams, their vividness, bizarreness, and relate-ability to real life- are the workings of neurophysiology and neurochemistry- and thats it. Stickgold, along with his Harvard colleague, Erin Wamsley, found that dreams are much more. According to their research- dreams are, "Far from being a random or meaningless distraction. Spontaneous cognition during states of sleep and resting wakefulness appears to serve important functions related to processing past
memories and planning for the future" (Stickgold 12).
Dreams help us plan for the future! I'm placing "plan" and "prepare" in the same category.
I find all this very interesting because, as a biology major- what is going on in the brain- how the limbic system is allowing emotions to be processed as we sleep, while our hippocampus is actively utilizing our memory is incredible. Furthermore, these physiological occurrences are happening in tandem with our inner self. Our Intra-communication- the communication processes within us is perpetuating these dreams- these simulations. This topic is a perfect integration of both biology and human communication.

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