Why don't people who don't dream think that people who do are delusional?

I've known people who claim that they don't dream. Ever. Not a lot, but definitely a few. They have no idea what dreaming is like and say that they've never experienced it. Or, some phrase it that they obviously "must" have dreams, since after all...everybody else does. But they "don't remember it." Yet, without fail, never have any of these people ever told me that they don't believe dreams are real, and never have they ever told me that they suspect that people who claim to have dreams are delusional or crazy, and never once have they recommended that people who dream should see a psychiatrist.

Why not?

Have you ever met anyone who didn't believe in dreams, or thought that people who had them were crazy simply because they had never experienced dreams themselves? I haven't. Why is this? People have no problem saying that they've never experienced an alien abduction, and there's no proof, so obviously people who believe in them are crazy. And people have no problem saying that they've never experienced astral travel or OBE's, and there's no proof, so obviously people who think they have are just having unusually vivid dreams. And people have no problem saying that they've never experienced God, and there's no proof, so obviously people who believe in God are weak minded sheep.

What's to stop someone who doesn't dream from claiming that people who think they do are delusional, crazy, and quite literally insane to the point of hallucinating unreal experiences? Well...nothing really. I do have dreams, but I can't offer any evidence that I'm not insane and hallucinating. Sleep and dream studies don't really offer anything either. Rapid eye movement? So what? People who don't dream do that too. Doesn't mean anything. And how do you go from "your eyes move around a lot when you sleep" to "experience fantastic world where anything can happen, but that nobody else can see"? Doesn't make any sense. What about electroencephalographs? They don't prove anything at all. Your brain changes its electrical activity when you sleep. How is that any evidence of fantasy experiences? And even if people are having these experiences...again, so what? Delusional psychotics have brain activity too.

Everybody who says they dream could very well be psychotics, experiencing delusions and hallucinations. In fact, isn't "hallucination" an excellent way to describe what dreams are? Only you see them. They don't effect anyone or anything else around you. It's just you.

If somebody were to claim that dreamers are experiencing hallucinations as the result of a mild form of insanity...could anyone give any evidence that this isn't true? I can't. Not even circumstantially. Lots of people who dream are able to function in society, but so what? Ted Bundy blended in just fine in between his bouts of killing people and having sex with their corpses.

And yet...people who don't dream seem to passively believe others who claim that they do, and assume that's it's perfectly natural and ok. Some think that they just don't for some reason, and others assume they do and come up with excuses: "Oh...obviously I have dreams. Everybody does. I just...don't remember ever having had any for some reason. I guess I just don't remember them. That's all."

Excuse me?

When was the last time you heard somebody say "Oh, obviously I'm abducted by aliens. Obviously there's a God. Obviously I have astral travels and OBE's. I just don't remember. That's all. These things are all perfectly real and normal. I just don't have any direct experience of them, that's all."

Who's to say that a lot of the people claiming to have dreams really don't, and are simply "hopping on the bandwagon" and pretending that they do?

Why don't people who don't dream accept and believe that dreams are real, and that they're not a sign of insanity? Why don't people who don't dream believe that those who do are simply crazy?

This question, while interesting, is largely intended to provide perspective on other issues of belief unrelated to dreams.

Discuss.

Any dream is an estrangement of life. Any dream is delusional, because it is out of the norms of scoiety. (Unless it is negative liberty and looking for your choice of footall club). People who want a better society are delusional. They are people who want a 'better' reality and are stupid for it. Unless of course they are proved right. Then they get attacked personally, and that is to the death.

I have no idea why anyone would think that.I will always feel sorry for those who dont dream or those who dont ever remember dreaming.Now that I can have lucid dreams they are more fun than ever.

My grandmother used to not have dreams. When my mother would tell her about her dreams my grandma would tell her to quit lying. Evidently she didn't realize that my mother wasn't lying, she was just telling her about her dream. Later on in life my grandmother began to have dreams and I think she apologized to my mom after that. I often get the idea that people who say they have lucid dreams or OBE's are lying or stretching their imaginations, but I guess I just have to keep an open mind to what I have never experienced.

cancerian42
When my mother would tell her about her dreams
my grandma would tell her to quit lying.

Yes...I've never looked into the history of it, but I wouldn't be surprised if at some times in some places people who claimed to have dreams were ridiculed, thrown into mental wards or given to the preisthood for excorcism. Or, I suppose...told the stories and became the local shaman.

I often get the idea that people who say they have lucid
dreams or OBE's are lying or stretching their imaginations

Well, it's hard to say. I have experienced both what I'd call lucid dreams as well as OBE's, but even so my experiences don't match the descriptions given by some other people. In fact there's a thread discussing it right now. Are the people in that thread even talking about the same thing? No way to know.

My father has claimed that he dreams in black and white only. If that's the extent of his experience, it must seem odd to him talking to people who dream in color. If he were to claim that I was making it up or "stretching my imagination" when I claimed to dream in color, would that really be any different than you or I disbeleiving aliens/religion/OBE's or anything else?

I guess I just have to keep an open mind to what I have never experienced.

Yes, it's difficult to really know. Like I said, I can't offer any proof that I dream. Probably nobody else can either. When my Christian friends tell me that they've "experienced the holy ghost" I can't relate, I've never experienced it...but it's difficult to conclude that it's wishful thinking or that they're making it up, when I can point to so many other experiences that I have had that they can't relate to because they've never experienced them themselves.

Aliens, ghost, religion experiences, dreams, astral travel...it really does seem like we're completely flooded with all sorts of experiences that some people claim, but they can't prove.

It really is the norm.


[edit on 9-11-2008 by LordBucket]

I think having dreams are a very natural part of life and for any reason whether it be for meaning or just something interesting, its great to have them either way. Some dreams can have hidden meaning to them and some others are just plain interesting.

Either way people discriminating against people who dream is as ridiculous as people complaining about other having a vivid and creative imagination.

Those who claim not to dream actually do dream, they just don't remember it. For some reason their dreams just tend not to be very vivid and spend less time actually dreaming.

I would be willing to bet after many days of REM sleep deprivation these people would start dreaming while awake. That is what happened in the 1st REM deprivation experiments. The experiment was designed to see if REM sleep was a necessary function of the human body. What they discovered was that the participants (who had undergone multiple days of REM deprivation) started seeing flashes of dream-like images take over their vision field (daytime parahypnagogia).

REM itself is necessary as it has a lot to do with procedural, spacial, and emotional memory consolidation. You can also dream in non-rem sleep, especially the lighter stages and while entering sleep (just as theta wave activity becomes the dominant brain wave). This is when hypnagogia can be seen and this too has a lot to do with certain types of memory processing. This is when things like phosphenes and the tetris effect can be seen. Strange words and seemingly random fragmented segments can be heard. Most people don't remember this at all as they just go into the deeper stages of sleep afterwards. If you wake up during this it can be quite strange. Having narcolepsy I have seen/heard these things all the time and they are indeed very strange, but nonetheless normal. Once I was having trouble learning a certain part of a song on the guitar. While falling asleep I had a very vivid hypnagogic dream of floating on a stage watching the guitarist in the band playing the song. I could hear it played perfectly and could feel exactly were to place my fingers with each note. Then I woke up and thus remember the experience. This was nothing more than memory consolidation.

So everyone does dream. Some might not do quite as much and it might be just the opposite of a "vivid dreams", but you do dream.

[edit on 14-11-2008 by cojoda]

Dreams can be wonderful, and they can also be dangerous. This distinction is dependant on how much control you have over your own dreams

To ask the question if someone should be considered delusional because they dream, while comparing it to alternate states of mind seems like pushing the limit. Perhaps a bit unfair.

OBE/Astral Projection/Lucid Dreaming or just plain uncontrolled dreaming... ask the question when is it considered delusional, where do we draw the line?

If the claim were made that a dream became real, would we simply assign the possibility of coincidental precognition?

What if it was a controlled astral projection that goes horribly wrong, and comes true... would this still be assigned to coincidental precognition?

How could the future have been seen to begin with... was it predestined could it have been changed was there a different choice that could have been made? A warning or something that could have been said or an action taken that would have altered the outcome.

Better yet for the person that controlled the astral projection, how would you suggest they disassociate the event in the real world from the actions they took in the astral plane? Should not these 2 planes of existence be separate, wherein action in one does not translate into events in the other?

Is the person this occurred to delusional when he has very real experience of a life-changing event that occurs in his own life and the coincidence connecting the 2 planes is simply overwhelming? What happens when this person actually senses the change in real time mentions it to a co-worker in passing with enough detail that later this co-worker is asking them how did you know? They see you as psychic and you truly do not see yourself as such, yet the coincidence again seems a bit out of place.

Anyway I'm rambling a bit, but the above example actually happened to me the exact details I will hold off on for now. I can say having experienced this completely changed my perception of not only what is possible but also what reality is.

Is it delusional for someone to walk up to you and say I made a dream manifest itself into reality? Not that I would ever have wanted it to but it happened.

Now if I can just repeat that one with a winning lottery ticket instead