I've had a fairly high number of friendships with men over the past few decades, so I found an article I recently came across which discusses whether men and women can truly be friends - as opposed to romantic or sexual partners - to be of interest. I wanted to see how my experiences stacked up against what the so-called experts had to say about the matter. What I am going to do here is simply highlight some of the answers to a (quite unscientific) survey contained in the article from over 1,450 members of the Match.com dating site.
When asked whether individuals believed that men and women can be platonic friends, 83 percent said yes while 62 percent stated that they had had a platonic friendship which ended up crossing the line and becoming romantic or sexual.
Sixty-four percent of the men surveyed as opposed to 25 percent of the women were more likely to misinterpret the intimacy of friendship for sexual desire.
Ninety-four percent of respondents answered that it was possible to fall in love with someone who was a friend, first and foremost. Only 4 percent said it wasn't possible for them to do so.
Seventy-one percent of respondents hoped that when they did fall in love, their partner would have started out as a friend.
And, finally, respondents thought that women were better than men at keeping sex out of a platonic relationship: 67 percent thought women were better at this aspect of the friendship while only 13 percent thought men were.
D.
From "Can Men and Women Be Friends?", Camille Chatterjee, www.psychologytoday.com, September 1, 2001
About Me
- Deborah K. Hanula
- Deborah K. Hanula has a year of Journalism training from Humber College, a Political Science degree from the University of Waterloo, and a Law degree from the University of British Columbia. In addition, she has Diplomas in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Child Psychology, and Psychotherapy and Counselling as well as a Family Life Educator and Coach Certificate and Certificates in Reflexology, Assertiveness Training, and Mindfulness Meditation. She is the author of five cookbooks, primarily concerned with gluten-free and dairy-free diets, although one pertains to chocolate. As an adult, in the past she worked primarily as a lawyer, but also as a university and college lecturer, a tutor, editor, writer, counsellor, researcher and piano teacher. She enjoys a multi-faceted approach when it comes to life, work and study, in order to keep things fresh and interesting. Check out her new book: A Murder of Crows & Other Poems (2023).
Thursday, December 8, 2011
To Sleep, Perchance to Dream (And Possibly Solve a Problem or Two)
While you sleep, you enter an altered state of consciousness, a different biochemical state than while awake, and progress through a series of stages. I will highlight stage 2 sleep in this article.
Stage 2 is described as 'light' sleep. It comprises anywhere from 40 to 50 percent of your time asleep. During this stage, Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep occurs: a period of rapid eye movement accompanied by heightened brain activity that is almost at the level of that which occurs while you are awake. REM sleep usually begins about 90 minutes after falling asleep, although depressed/anxious people are thought to enter this stage much more quickly once they are asleep. A session of REM sleep can start out by lasting only 5 minutes, but as sleeping progresses, it may become longer and can eventually last up to 60 minutes. I'm sure that most of you are aware that it is during REM sleep that dreams occur. You have an average of five dreams per night though you may not remember most of what you dream. If you awaken while experiencing a dream, or right at its conclusion, you may remember some or all of its details. As the day progresses, most memories of dreams tend to fade away.
For centuries, people have wondered why people dream and what dreams mean. Theories abound. Sigmund Freud believed that dreams expressed repressed wishes - usually impulses of an infantile sexual and/or aggressive nature. Other psychoanalysts have theorized that dreams have more to do with narcissistic strivings or are compensation for feelings of inferiority. More recently, psychologists have uncovered that it is during dreaming that information is processed, memories are fixed/set, and the nervous system is restored.
Though these theories may encompass some of your dreams, they can't account for every type of dream you may have. Just as thought while you are awake can drift through everything and anything, the process of dreaming, too, can cover similar types of thought, albeit during an altered biochemical state. Simply put, the physiological demands of sleep alter the way the brain functions. The sleeping brain makes sense of things very differently than the awake brain does, but as you sleep you continue to focus on issues/problems you may be facing, circumstances and events of your day, week, months - your life in general. Simple triggers that determine some of the content of a dream can be something you noticed in an advertisment or television show, a conversation you had with someone, or some circumstance that happened during the day. Dreams can tackle problems, or deal with deep-seated longings or desires. Dreams may seem bizarre or nonsensical because the chemistry of the sleeping brain affects perception of thought, but as mentioned, the mind continues to drift through the same types of thoughts as it has during the waking hours: problems encountered, fears, worries, goals, desires, reminiscents, plans, people, ruminations or regrets.
Anything you've seen, heard, smelled, sensed that day, week, month, or anytime during your life may become tangled up in the seemingly nonsensical scenes in a dream. It's amazing how people in dreams can start out as one person, then become someone so completely different as the dream progresses, or how you know the person in your dream to be a certain individual, but he/she looks completely different than in 'real life'. You can also quickly move from place to place, desperately trying to escape something or someone, or deliver an envelope or brightly-wrapped package that suddenly morphs into a cello or cake. You can find yourself at school or work or public speaking in your pyjamas, or perhaps in the nude. You can soar through the sky, you can run and lift off the ground, you can swim for miles underwater without oxygen, and you can get lost. You can have anxious dreams about missing tests, or about trying to telephone for help only to find you keep getting the dialing wrong, or the phone doesn't work, or you can't properly explain to the person answering your call what your problem is. You can have recurring dreams or nightmares. On occasion, you can even break through the 'paralysis' of sleep and scream or cry out, waking yourself (and others). On and on it goes... Dreams can so often seen incoherent, bizarre - even simplistic at times.
The altered state of consciousness as you sleep gives rise to fertile ground for solving problems or finding solutions to things you couldn't quite achieve while awake because it helps you find solutions beyond your normal thought patterns. To provide just a few examples: Friedrich August Kekule came up with the structure of benzene while dreaming, Dimitry Mendeleyev came up with his final form of the periodic table of the elements and Otto Loewi devised the neuroscience experiment that won him a Nobel Prize in medicine, both while dreaming. "Modern engineers Paul Horowitz and Alan Huang dreamed designs for laser-telescope controls and laser computing, respectively. Innumerable artists and filmmakers have depicted images that came to them in their sleep. Mary Shelley dreamed the two main scenes that became Frankenstein, and Robert Louis Stevenson did the same with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Ludwig van Beethoven, Paul McCartney and Billy Joel all awoke to discover new tunes ringing in their minds. Mahatma Gandhi's call for a nonviolent protest of British rule of India was inspired by a dream." (1)
Over the past twenty years, "positron-emission tomography (PET) scans have allowed researchers to see which brain areas are involved in dreaming. Parts of the cortex associated with visual imagery and the perception of movement become activated even more dramatically than while one is awake, as do some deep brain areas associated with emotion. In contrast, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is less engaged during dreaming: this area is associated with volitional action and the evaluation of what is logical and socially appropriate. These PET results fit the characteristics of dreams well; dream reports almost always contain visual imagery and often involve movement. The prefrontal findings fit neatly with the fact that dreams have long been associated with less 'censorship' - not only in the Freudian sense of uninhibited sex and aggression, but also in terms of filtering out scenarios that are illogical or abnormal. " (2)
While you sleep, your senses continue to monitor the environment: you can smell smoke, hear intruders or a dog bark, sense temperature changes and feel actual pain. All of these may wake you up. You can also feel 'imaginary' pain inflicted on you in a dream, taste something that you are eating in a dream, or hear voices from a dream. These things, too, can wake you up. Though it is normal for a person's body to be 'paralyzed' while dreaming, sometimes individuals break through this paralysis by screaming or jumping up in order to escape whatever is happening in the dream. Some people walk around while asleep while others suffer from night terrors in which they can become agitated, violent or act out in some way as the circumstances of the dream break through the paralysis, but not the sleep.
Memory and learning are reinforced during REM sleep as the same circuits which were activated while awake continue to remain active during REM strengthening the circuits and, therefore, the memory and learning.
Let's now think back to Kekule who understood the structure of benzene only after dreaming of a snake made of atoms taking its tail in its mouth. (Benzene is a closed ring.) Many studies of creativity suggest that disinhibition is a crucial component of creative thought and the brain areas that usually restrict our thinking to the logical and familiar are much less active during REM sleep. As well, the "high activity in the visual areas of the sleeping brain allow it to visualize solutions more readily than in waking thought." (3) Dreams, therefore, can be quite helpful for problems that require creativity or visualization to solve. How do you take steps before you sleep to solve problems or come up with new ideas while sleeping? Thinking about them just prior to sleep can increase the chance that a solution will become apparent while dreaming.
For a more elaborate process add these two steps prior to drifting off to sleep: picture yourself dreaming about the problem, waking up, and writing on your bedside notepad. And, arrange objects connected to the problem on your bedside table. (4)
D.
All references noted above are from "Answers in Your Dreams", Dierdre Barrett, Scientific American Mind, November/December 2011, pp. 27 - 33.
Stage 2 is described as 'light' sleep. It comprises anywhere from 40 to 50 percent of your time asleep. During this stage, Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep occurs: a period of rapid eye movement accompanied by heightened brain activity that is almost at the level of that which occurs while you are awake. REM sleep usually begins about 90 minutes after falling asleep, although depressed/anxious people are thought to enter this stage much more quickly once they are asleep. A session of REM sleep can start out by lasting only 5 minutes, but as sleeping progresses, it may become longer and can eventually last up to 60 minutes. I'm sure that most of you are aware that it is during REM sleep that dreams occur. You have an average of five dreams per night though you may not remember most of what you dream. If you awaken while experiencing a dream, or right at its conclusion, you may remember some or all of its details. As the day progresses, most memories of dreams tend to fade away.
For centuries, people have wondered why people dream and what dreams mean. Theories abound. Sigmund Freud believed that dreams expressed repressed wishes - usually impulses of an infantile sexual and/or aggressive nature. Other psychoanalysts have theorized that dreams have more to do with narcissistic strivings or are compensation for feelings of inferiority. More recently, psychologists have uncovered that it is during dreaming that information is processed, memories are fixed/set, and the nervous system is restored.
Though these theories may encompass some of your dreams, they can't account for every type of dream you may have. Just as thought while you are awake can drift through everything and anything, the process of dreaming, too, can cover similar types of thought, albeit during an altered biochemical state. Simply put, the physiological demands of sleep alter the way the brain functions. The sleeping brain makes sense of things very differently than the awake brain does, but as you sleep you continue to focus on issues/problems you may be facing, circumstances and events of your day, week, months - your life in general. Simple triggers that determine some of the content of a dream can be something you noticed in an advertisment or television show, a conversation you had with someone, or some circumstance that happened during the day. Dreams can tackle problems, or deal with deep-seated longings or desires. Dreams may seem bizarre or nonsensical because the chemistry of the sleeping brain affects perception of thought, but as mentioned, the mind continues to drift through the same types of thoughts as it has during the waking hours: problems encountered, fears, worries, goals, desires, reminiscents, plans, people, ruminations or regrets.
Anything you've seen, heard, smelled, sensed that day, week, month, or anytime during your life may become tangled up in the seemingly nonsensical scenes in a dream. It's amazing how people in dreams can start out as one person, then become someone so completely different as the dream progresses, or how you know the person in your dream to be a certain individual, but he/she looks completely different than in 'real life'. You can also quickly move from place to place, desperately trying to escape something or someone, or deliver an envelope or brightly-wrapped package that suddenly morphs into a cello or cake. You can find yourself at school or work or public speaking in your pyjamas, or perhaps in the nude. You can soar through the sky, you can run and lift off the ground, you can swim for miles underwater without oxygen, and you can get lost. You can have anxious dreams about missing tests, or about trying to telephone for help only to find you keep getting the dialing wrong, or the phone doesn't work, or you can't properly explain to the person answering your call what your problem is. You can have recurring dreams or nightmares. On occasion, you can even break through the 'paralysis' of sleep and scream or cry out, waking yourself (and others). On and on it goes... Dreams can so often seen incoherent, bizarre - even simplistic at times.
The altered state of consciousness as you sleep gives rise to fertile ground for solving problems or finding solutions to things you couldn't quite achieve while awake because it helps you find solutions beyond your normal thought patterns. To provide just a few examples: Friedrich August Kekule came up with the structure of benzene while dreaming, Dimitry Mendeleyev came up with his final form of the periodic table of the elements and Otto Loewi devised the neuroscience experiment that won him a Nobel Prize in medicine, both while dreaming. "Modern engineers Paul Horowitz and Alan Huang dreamed designs for laser-telescope controls and laser computing, respectively. Innumerable artists and filmmakers have depicted images that came to them in their sleep. Mary Shelley dreamed the two main scenes that became Frankenstein, and Robert Louis Stevenson did the same with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Ludwig van Beethoven, Paul McCartney and Billy Joel all awoke to discover new tunes ringing in their minds. Mahatma Gandhi's call for a nonviolent protest of British rule of India was inspired by a dream." (1)
Over the past twenty years, "positron-emission tomography (PET) scans have allowed researchers to see which brain areas are involved in dreaming. Parts of the cortex associated with visual imagery and the perception of movement become activated even more dramatically than while one is awake, as do some deep brain areas associated with emotion. In contrast, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is less engaged during dreaming: this area is associated with volitional action and the evaluation of what is logical and socially appropriate. These PET results fit the characteristics of dreams well; dream reports almost always contain visual imagery and often involve movement. The prefrontal findings fit neatly with the fact that dreams have long been associated with less 'censorship' - not only in the Freudian sense of uninhibited sex and aggression, but also in terms of filtering out scenarios that are illogical or abnormal. " (2)
While you sleep, your senses continue to monitor the environment: you can smell smoke, hear intruders or a dog bark, sense temperature changes and feel actual pain. All of these may wake you up. You can also feel 'imaginary' pain inflicted on you in a dream, taste something that you are eating in a dream, or hear voices from a dream. These things, too, can wake you up. Though it is normal for a person's body to be 'paralyzed' while dreaming, sometimes individuals break through this paralysis by screaming or jumping up in order to escape whatever is happening in the dream. Some people walk around while asleep while others suffer from night terrors in which they can become agitated, violent or act out in some way as the circumstances of the dream break through the paralysis, but not the sleep.
Memory and learning are reinforced during REM sleep as the same circuits which were activated while awake continue to remain active during REM strengthening the circuits and, therefore, the memory and learning.
Let's now think back to Kekule who understood the structure of benzene only after dreaming of a snake made of atoms taking its tail in its mouth. (Benzene is a closed ring.) Many studies of creativity suggest that disinhibition is a crucial component of creative thought and the brain areas that usually restrict our thinking to the logical and familiar are much less active during REM sleep. As well, the "high activity in the visual areas of the sleeping brain allow it to visualize solutions more readily than in waking thought." (3) Dreams, therefore, can be quite helpful for problems that require creativity or visualization to solve. How do you take steps before you sleep to solve problems or come up with new ideas while sleeping? Thinking about them just prior to sleep can increase the chance that a solution will become apparent while dreaming.
According to Deirdre Barrett, a psychologist who teaches at Harvard Medical School, you can practice 'dream incubation' in order to try to dream about a particular problem in the hope of finding a solution to it. She suggests the following:
- write a note which outlines your problem and place it by your bed along with a pen, paper, nightlight or flashlight;
- review the problem prior to falling asleep and try to visualize it as a concrete image;
- tell yourself to dream about the problem as you start to drift off to sleep;
- upon waking, lie quietly while trying to recall details of dreams and write as many details down as you can remember. Any answers provided by the dream may not be obvious at first and may take some further thought to uncover.
For a more elaborate process add these two steps prior to drifting off to sleep: picture yourself dreaming about the problem, waking up, and writing on your bedside notepad. And, arrange objects connected to the problem on your bedside table. (4)
D.
All references noted above are from "Answers in Your Dreams", Dierdre Barrett, Scientific American Mind, November/December 2011, pp. 27 - 33.
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