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作夢

Why We Dream

我們為什麼會作夢

Dreams are the stories the brain tells during sleep—they’re a collection of clips, images, feelings, and memories that involuntarily occur during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of slumber. Humans typically have multiple dreams per night that grow longer as sleep draws to a close. It’s hypothesized that everyone dreams, but a small subsection of the population reports that they never remember experiencing dreams.

夢是大腦在睡眠時所講述的故事，它們集結了在REM（快速動眼期）睡眠階段時無意識中產生的片段、圖像、感覺和記憶。通常，人類每晚都會作許多的夢，而這些夢會越來越長，直到睡眠結束。據推測，每個人都會作夢，但是有一小部分的人會說他們從來都不記得有作過夢。

Dreams typically involve elements from waking lives—like known people or familiar locations—but they often take on a fantastical feel. While dreams are frequently interesting, and can allow people to act out certain scenarios that would never be possible in real life, they aren’t always positive—negative dreams, referred to as "nightmares," can create feelings of terror, anxiety, or utter despair, and can lead to psychological distress or sleep problems like insomnia.

夢一般會包含在清醒時生活中會出現的元素，像是認識的人或熟悉的地方，但是在夢裡卻會以一種不現實的感覺呈現出來。雖然夢通常都很有趣，還可以讓人在一些現實生活中永遠無法實現的場景中出現，但夢也不一定都好的。負面的夢，或稱作「惡夢」，則會創造出恐怖、不安或萬念俱灰的情緒，還會導致心理困擾或睡眠問題，例如失眠。

The big question, however, is why humans dream. Though it’s been discussed and studied for millennia, it remains one of behavioral science's greatest unanswered questions. Researchers have offered many theories—including memory consolidation or emotional regulation—but a unified one remains, well, a pipe dream. Nevertheless, people continue mining their nighttime reveries for clues to their inner lives, for creative insight, and even for premonitions.

然而，最大的問題卻是為什麼人類會作夢。雖然它已經被討論和研究了數千年，但是這仍然是行為科學中一大未解之謎。研究人員提出了許多理論，包括記憶鞏固和情緒調節，但是說到有沒有一個統一的說法，這麼說吧，目前它還只是個白日夢。儘管如此，大家仍會持續挖掘他們夜晚的遐想，尋找內在生命的線索、尋找具有創造性的見解，甚至是尋找警示的徵兆。

Dreams

夢

What do dreams mean? Humans have puzzled over this question for centuries. The ancient Egyptians believed that dreams were communications from the gods, or prophecies of what was to come. Dream interpretation as a field of psychological study took off in 1899, when Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, laying the foundation for many of his theories of the unconscious mind. Today, many experts disagree with Freud’s conclusions—and some don’t think that dreams signify anything at all—but most people still wake up after a particularly vivid dream and wonder what it could have been trying to tell them.

夢有什麼意思？幾個世紀以來，人類一直對這個問題感到不解。古埃及人相信，夢是來自於神的訊息或是對未來的預言。夢境詮釋在1899年開始成為一個心理學研究的領域，當時西格蒙德．佛洛伊德出版了「夢的解析」，為他許多關於潛意識的理論奠定了基礎。今日，許多專家不認同佛洛伊德的推論，而有些人甚至認為夢並沒有任何的意義。儘管如此，大多數的人從一個特別逼真的夢醒來之後，仍然會想知道這個夢到底是想告訴他們什麼。

Nightmares

惡夢

Terrifying dreams that rouse someone from sleep—more commonly known as nightmares—more frequently plague children. But adults aren’t spared; at least half have occasional nightmares, with less than 10 percent reporting frequent or recurring episodes. Nightmares are often confused with night terrors, but they’re not the same: Night terrors are a type of disorder that causes sleeping people to scream, bolt out of bed, or demonstrate symptoms similar to a panic attack. Unlike nightmares, which can leave unpleasant memories or leftover feelings of anxiety, night terrors are usually not remembered the next day, even though its sufferers may appear to be awake during the experience.

讓人從睡夢中驚醒的可怕的夢(更常被稱為惡夢)，常常折磨著小孩子。但成人也無法幸免於難，至少一半的人偶爾會作惡夢，不過只有不到10％的人會說常常或一直作相同的惡夢。惡夢常會與夜驚相互混淆，但它們卻不相同：夜驚是一種疾病，它會讓睡夢中的人驚叫、跳下床，或是產生類似恐慌發作的症狀。惡夢會留下不愉快的記憶或殘留焦慮的情緒，與惡夢不同的是，即使病患在發作期間可能看起來相當清醒，通常在第二天都不會記得有過夜驚。