I have always had a certain fascination with dreams and why we have them. How do we take everyday events and turn them into fantasy (both wonderful and terrifying) when we drift off to sleep? I have obtained numerous dream interpretation resources to try and analyze and hopefully discover what signals my own dreams are sending me. The observations and studies of Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung have helped me get on the right track in finding the true meaning of my dreams. In the following pages, I will reveal what I have learned related to the different stages of sleep, the three types of dreams you can have, and the stage in which you actually dream. Also, through the dream stage, I will compare and contrast Freudian theories with Jungian theories on the subject of dream explanations, analysis, and symbolism. By studying dreams, we can gain important knowledge of how our inner mind works; we can learn of any existing differences between our conscious,
             social, and public self as well as our internal forces (Piotrowski, 9).
             Dream interpretations help to remove the blinders from our eyes. Freud once said, "A dream is a wish-fulfillment" (Stekel vol. 1, 3). So one might reply with the question, "What about nightmares?" Do people actually wish for awful things to happen to them in their lives? Or, is Freud's statement true only to positive dreams? No one actually knows for sure the reasons or situations involved in when and why we dream. There can only be educated hypotheses when it comes to these phenomena.
             There are two clearly distinguishable states of sleep that exist. The first state, called S-synchronized sleep, or NREM-sleep (non-rapid-eye-movement sleep), takes up most of the sleep period and is associated with a relatively low pulse and blood pressure, little activation of the autonomic nervous system, and few or no reports of dreaming (Piotrowski, 44). The second type of sleep, known as D-sleep (dreaming, or ...