of about 25% of a night's sleep. A newborn child's sleep can consist of as high as 50% REM type sleep (Davidmann, 1998). As I previously stated, a person would go through the sleep stage cycle four to five times a night, hence four to five dreams per night. With this in mind it can be calculated the average human being will have 136,000 dreams in a lifetime, spending about six total years in the REM stage dreaming. Mentally retarded individuals or people with low IQs tend to spend less time in the REM type sleep, but other mental disorders are capable of initiating more REM type sleep. The reason for this is unknown. Now that the diagnostics of dreams has been covered I would like to focus on the origin of dreams from a medical standpoint. As a consequence, memory, sensory, muscle-control, and cognitive areas of the brain are randomly stimulated, resulting in the higher cortical brain attempting to make some sense of it. The reason for these stimulations is unknown but various medical researchers believe they are the after effects of certain chemical reactions in the brain. This, according to the research, gives rise to the experience of a dream, but there is controversy of the question of whether dreams have intentional meaning. Many psychotherapists agree that dreams are stimulated by impulses from the brain stem but they have actual meaning and are not just hallucinations. Thus far, I have established that dreams have both a metaphysical existence and a physical. The metaphysical is the imagery within in them and their r...
