From research conducted in sleep laboratories, we know that dream erections occur irrespective of the kinds of dreams a man is having, even if the dreams have nothing to do with sex. Male erections coincide with each period of REM sleep night after night without exception. It is difficult to explain with Freud’s theory why all males from young boys to geriatrics have exclusively sexual dreams every time. I think dream erections are a basic physiological function of the body and have little to do with the psychology of the mind or the contents of dreams.

My explanation of dream erections is a scientific one. Whenever we want to understand the importance of some biological function of the body, we try to observe what happens if that function fails, as perhaps, in some illness. In the case of dream erections, we look at the illnesses that prevent erections even during REM sleep. This condition is called secondary impotence, in which the patient is unable to have an erection at any time after a physical illness. W. Masters and V. Johnson of The Reproductive Biology Research Foundation in Missouri are leading sex therapists. In their book Human Sexual Response they state: ‘… data … suggest that the penis of the secondarily impotent male attains states of pathological hyperinvolution (when compared to previously established norms), after two to four years of unremitting impotence.’ In other words, the size of the penis begins to shrink. Many geriatric patients with secondary impotence have shrunken penises—some of them are nearly non-existent. Hence, if the penis is not in use for a period of time, it involutes and becomes functionless.

This in fact happens to other biological functions. If a part of our body is put out of use, it will waste away. Paraplegics, often the unfortunate victims of car accidents, completely lose the use of their legs. After a few years the muscles of the legs are wasted and shrunken because they have been unable to function for so long. However, the arms are very muscular and well developed, much more so than before the accident. This is because they have the regular exercise of pushing a wheelchair.

We read in the Bible how man first came to populate this plane’ Adam ate the forbidden apple, and Eve got pregnant. From the on there were little Adams and little Eves. Of course, with the apple alone, Eve could not have got pregnant. Our Great Creator ha developed a special exercise program for Adam’s penis. Whether Adam liked it or not, his penis was being exercised regularly nigh after night whenever he entered REM sleep. This regular exercise prepared Adam with a strong equipment, so that he could use ‘ on the night he ate the apple.

My theory states that dream erections are physiological function important for the propagation of mankind. Further support for t” theory could be obtained by studying other animals to see if they have dream erections during REM sleep, as this may be essential for the propagation of their populations. Of course one can still argue that the animal is having a sexual dream.

*17/23/6*

Some people complain of a recurring dream and seek analysis. They are convinced that there is a hidden important message in the dream and that is why they keep dreaming it night after night. What really happens in that these people keep on thinking about the riddle in their dream day after day and their mind is occupied with these same ideas day after day. Consequently these ideas will appear in the dream night after night.

Nightmares arise from a failure in the dream works. Our primitive driving forces and anxieties are not handled effectively by the dream works, and these express themselves as horrible feelings in our dreams. When we wake up, we are anxious and fearful about the dream we have just had. Nightmares are called ‘dream anxiety attacks’. Recurrent nightmares are recurring bad dreams.

If you wake up from a nightmare, the best thing to do is to say to yourself, ‘Thank God, it is only a dream’, relax, and fall back into sleep. Nightmares, like any other dreams, will be forgotten in the morning. Recurring nightmares happen because you believe that there is some bad message in the dream and, because you keep thinking about it, you remember it. Once it is recalled and repeated in your memory again and again, it will certainly appear in your dream night after night. Next time, if you wake up from any nightmare, do not go over it. If you. cannot stop thinking about it, get out of bed immediately and get back to the real world; do something relaxing like watching the television or reading the newspaper. Your nightmare will then vanish and will not reoccur. Incidentally, some modern medicines for blood pressure can cause nightmares. It may be wise to check with your doctor if the nightmares persist and if you are taking these medications.

Dreams are to be forgotten, but can we really forget them, even if we think we do not remember them?

D?j? vu can be an experience closely related to these apparently forgotten dreams. Occasionally we have some vague idea, perhaps that we have been to a place before and yet we are certain that this is not possible. This vague familiar feeling of recognition is called deja vu. How do we explain this? I think the answer lies in the many, many dreams that we dream every night but whic we apparently forget.

Memory is one of those interesting psychological myths that w are still trying to understand. All of us have had the embarrassin experience of meeting an old friend that we have not contact for years, and fail to remember his name. You try to call him b his name, but fail to remember; you know it starts with J, one those—John, James, or Jack. The name is at the tip of your tongu but it just does not come. Finally he gives you his business ñ and tells you to call him one day. After he leaves, you lookthe card and recognize his name immediately. It is a name you know—James Bond. Memory works in three stages:

* Registration—information is passed on to the memory bank

* Retention—this information is stored in the memory bank

* Recall—retrieval of this information, when required, from the memory bank.

Whether the information is remembered or not depends on the ability to recall. Inability to recall does not mean we have forgotten about it Given the right cue, we may begin to remember more and more. Of course, as in the above case, looking at the business card and recognizing James Bond implies you have not really forgotten him.

Our memory bank is bombarded with a variety of information from the dreams we have night after night. We never seem to remember the dreams, and as far as we are concerned they are not in our memory. However, one day we visit a place we have never been before. This place has some features similar to those in one of our forgotten dreams. We recognize some of the similar features, which gives us the feeling that we know the place and have been there before. This is d?j? vu, and I think our forgotten dreams have a lot to do with it.

*14/23/6*

The total amount of REM sleep at night occupies about 25 per cent of the total sleep time and this proportion stays relatively constant throughout life. Hence we now know that one-quarter of our sleep is spent in dreams, and dreams are part of a healthy nightly sleep.

Now what is the importance of REM sleep and dreams? Physiologically it appears that we cannot do without REM sleep; it is an important part of the sleep cycle. Dr William Dement, the leading sleep expert, performed the following experiment with his sleep subjects. On the first night, whenever he was sure that his subjects were beginning to enter REM sleep, he woke them up and hen allowed them to fall back to sleep again. This deprived his subjects of any REM sleep and hence dreams. To his surprise, the subjects appeared to enter REM sleep again and again, and more and more frequently as the morning approached. As many as 30 or more awakenings were required to prevent REM sleep from starting again. In other words, the more you try to prevent someone from dreaming, the more he has to.

The next night, Dement’s subjects were allowed to have a normal sleep without any disturbance. It was observed that they now had an excessively large proportion of REM sleep and dreams. Dement suggested that there was a need to dream. After the deprivation of REM sleep, there is a rebound as if to make up for the debt of REM sleep, and this is called REM rebound. More recent studies, however, show that suppression of REM sleep does not lead to any physiological and psychological ill-effect. The real significance of REM sleep has yet to be determined.

*10/23/6*

Why do we move our eyes when we dream during REM sleep?

Initially it was thought that, when we dream, we are looking at the dream while we are asleep. Considerable research was conducted in an attempt to support this theory. Ian Oswald, the sleep expert at Edinburgh, attempted to distinguish the kind of dreams his subjects had by observing the rapidity of the eye movements and the direction of the last eye movement just before they were awoken from their dreams. He questioned the dreamer after he had woken up about the last event in the dream. He then tried to correlate the direction of the last movement of the eyes with the direction of the last event in the dream.

Later he tried to distinguish two kinds of dream, the active and the passive. He postulated that, in an active dream, such as watching a game of tennis on a tennis court, the eyes would have to be moving from side to side intensely, whereas, in a passive dream, such as watching tennis on television, the eyes would not be moving much at all. With this in mind, he questioned the dreamers about their dreams and tried to correlate the dreams with the amount of their eye movement. Oswald found there was a close relationship between the dream contents and the amount of eye movement.

Oswald conducted another study to find out if blind people display rapid eye movement. His theory was that blind people who had been blind all their lives would not be able to look at their dreams, as they would not have any experience of moving their eyes to look at the world. He obtained an EOG recording from three blind people while they were sleeping but could not trace any REM sleep in them. He thought this confirmed his theory that dreamers were looking at their dreams and blind dreamers could not look at their dreams and hence had no REM sleep. This was proved to be wrong, as it was later learned that the electrodes used by Oswald were not sensitive enough and could not record eye movement in blind people whose eyes had defective retinas.

Charles Fisher, a psychiatrist in New York, repeated the same experiments with blind people, but used more sensitive devices to record the movements of the eyelids. He demonstrated rapid eye movements in these blind people just like in everyone else. Blind people, during REM sleep, have dreams which are very much based on their everyday experiences. They consist of touch, smell, sound, and images that they are used to when asleep.

Nowadays it is believed that rapid eye movements have nothing to do with looking at dreams, but rather are signs of brain activity. Profuse eye movement means a high level of brain activity which implies very active dreams. Our eyes are in fact part of our brain and are placed immediately below the front part of the brain. The eye movements are controlled by small muscles around the eyeballs, which are in turn activated by nerves that originate in the midbrain. The mid-brain is now considered the seat of the sleep centre which initiates and controls sleep. Hence by looking at the movements of the eyes while dreaming, we are really looking at the activities of the brain and the sleep centre itself. Dreams that are peaceful and calm will have less rapid eye movements, whereas dreams that are very active and emotional will have a great deal of eye movements. Much research is now going on to determine whether there is a REM sleep centre outside the normal sleep centre. The REM sleep centre will initiate dreams and its associated phenomena. My guess is that if this centre is eventually found it will be very close to the centre that controls the movement of the eyes.

*7/23/6*

How much sleep is enough? This question is not easy to answer, and is very subjective. Some think they need at least seven hours, some say ten. In fact this varies from person to person and also with age. It has been shown that babies sleep nearly all day. As they get older, they need less and less sleep. It is well known that the older we are, the less sleep we need. One of the common complaints of the elderly is that they cannot sleep. They hate to be awake and alone at night. They take sleeping pills, as they feel distressed when they cannot sleep.

How much sleep is required to restore, to repair, to recuperate, so that the next day we feel refreshed and satisfied?

There have been several studies of sleep deprivation. In 1959, Peter Tripp, who worked at a US radio station, went without sleep for 200 hours or 8.33 days to raise money for charity. After five days without sleep he had hallucinations and began to see things. He reported seeing flames pouring out from a drawer and worms crawling all over the doctor’s coat. He continued to do his broadcast in the daytime, but at night he was forced to stay awake. Eventually, after 200 hours, he stopped the ordeal and went to sleep. As he had not been sleeping for over eight days, he was expected to sleep for at least a couple of days, but though free to sleep for as long as he wanted, he slept continuously for only 13 hours, then woke up and felt refreshed. He was back to himself after that, although he felt depressed for a few months afterwards. Another well-known case was that of Randy Gardner. In 1964,as a 17 year old student, he decided to break a record of 260 hours without sleep for his science project. He stayed awake with the help of his friends, engaging in mental and physical activities. He did not take any drugs or stimulants. He felt extremely tired, his eyelids were heavy and burning, but he did not have any hallucinations. He managed to break the record, and stayed awake for a total of 264 hours or 11 days. He appeared to be quite well, even up to the last minute of the ordeal, and thought that he would be able to continue to do without sleep for a longer period if he wanted to. After a sleep deprivation of 264 hours, he fell asleep once he was in bed. Again, he was free to sleep as much as he wanted, but he slept a straight IS hours only. This sleep was monitored in the sleep laboratory of the San Diego Naval Hospital. After waking up, he felt well and had no after-effects.

In Edinburgh, Ian Oswald reported in 1966 the case of six medical students who went into sleep deprivation for 108 hours or 4.5 days. When the experiment was terminated, and they finally went to sleep, they slept for an average of 12 to 14 hours straight.

The following is a summary of the three reports of sleep deprivation:

Tripp 200 hours (8.33 days) without sleep—slept 13 hours

Gardner 264 hours (11.0 days) without sleep—slept 15 hours

Oswald’s students 108 hours (4.5 days) without sleep—slept 13 hours

The above studies appear to contradict what we normally estimate as the amount of sleep required. If we normally sleep 7 hours each 24 hours, then Tripp who did not sleep for 8.33 days would need 58.31 hours sleep to catch up; Gardner who did not sleep for 11 days would need 77.00 hours to recuperate; and the Oswald’s students who did not sleep for 4.5 days would need 31.50 hours sleep.

If we work out the average amount of sleep per day that these subjects had, we find that they needed only about 2 hours sleep every 24 hours:

Tripp Slept 13 hours after 8.33 days = 1.56 hours/day

Gardner Slept 15 hours after 11 days – 1.36 hours/day

Oswald’s students Slept 13 hours after 4.5 days – 2.89 hours/day

Does this imply that we need only a minimum of two to three hours sleep each day, and the rest of the time that we spend sleeping is a waste or a luxury? Of course not; we must remember that during sleep deprivation these subjects were not functioning well. Tripp was hallucinating, Gardner had heavy and tired eyes, and Oswald’s students were not enjoying the experience one bit. Hence two to three hours sleep each day is not sufficient for normal healthy functioning.

However, we can draw a few important conclusions from the above sleep deprivation reports.

* After a few sleepless nights, we do not need the same number of hours sleep that we had missed out on to recuperate. A few hours more than the normal sleep period is sufficient to feel refreshed and well again. In other words, we do not need to pay back the sleep debt we create with an equal amount of sleep.

* The duration of the sleep deprivation is not directly proportional to the number of hours spent in sleep after the ordeal. In fact, in all three reports about 13 to 15 hours was required, although Gardner had been awake twice as long as the students.

* Even when these volunteers were extremely sleepy, they could not stay asleep for more than 15 hours. There appears to be a limit to how long we can continuously sleep without waking up. Is there a waking centre in the brain?

* There is no report of serious ill-health or death arising from not sleeping. Our bodies seem to be able to withstand continuous insomnia quite well.

Nowadays it is thought that Tripp, Gardner, and Oswald’s students did not stay awake continuously during all those days of sleep deprivation. If their brain waves had been recorded continuously, there may have been records of very brief periods of sleep. Momentary sleep whilst the person is apparently still awake is called ‘microsleep’. Microsleep lasts for just a few seconds, but is very refreshing.

Microsleep occurs in less fit people, especially in the elderly. Physical activities tend to reduce the frequency of microsleep. It is well known that when we are older we need less sleep; most elderly people sleep only a few hours each day. Because the elderly have fewer physical activities in the day and are less fit, they lapse into microsleep very frequently during the day. It has been postulated that this is one of the reasons why the elderly do not require that much sleep at night.

From the above, we see that the minimum number of hours of sleep can be as little as two hours a day for a short period. We also know that there are no reports of death from insomnia, although there are millions of reports of people who have died from an overdose of the drugs that treat insomnia. So why panic when you cannot sleep for a few hours at night?

*3/23/6*