If that explanation sounds like 100% horseshit, you're on my team. There say there are age differences in color dreaming. Older people suppsoedly report far less color in their dreams than younger people. The prevailing explanation for this is based on the media they experienced while young. They claim that if the photographs, movies and television you saw as a child were all in black and white, then you are more likely to report more black-and-white dreams than color dreams. I say bullshit.
This statement raises some interesting questions. Are people really dreaming in black and white or just remembering their dreams that way after the fact? Was it as common for people to say they dreamed in black and white before these visual media were invented? There wasn’t any focused research that relied on in-the-moment dream reports back before black-and-white photos and movies existed, so we will never know.
I Dream of Jeannie" did have episodes filmed in black and white, specifically the entire first season. The show's first season, comprising 30 episodes, was originally filmed in black and white. These episodes were later colorized for wider distribution and viewing options. The decision to film the first season in black and white was partly due to the technical limitations of the time, particularly in achieving the desired visual effect for Jeannie's smoke. It was more expensive to produce the show in color at that time.
You may have also wondered whether blind people dream. They do. If a person becomes blind after age 5 or 6, their dreams will contain visual images. However, someone who is congenitally blind, or becomes blind before about age 5, will not have visual images in their dreams. Instead, their dreams contain more information from the other senses.
I take a half a Tylenol PM every night.
Works like a champ for me.
Find some for yourself and see if it works for you.
People must have originally dreamt in color from cave art and oil paintings and switched to sepia from early photos if this were true.
ReplyDeleteI think Calvin's dad explains this best. Color wasn't invented until the 1940s or so.
ReplyDeleteI remember the first time I was asked if I dream in color. I was flabbergasted. Had no idea. My subconscience must have been listening. That night my dreams had colors I don't think human eyes can see.
ReplyDeleteYears ago, when I was a medical student on the psychiatry service, we had a patient who had been deaf since birth. She communicated using American Sign Language. She was admitted during a psychotic episode claiming she was "hearing voices." The interpreter said her signing was "crazy talk." I always wondered what "voices" sounded like to her.
ReplyDeleteSo, since one teeny tiny aspect of our lives, television, was in black and white, our dreams are in black and white? My dreams aren't in black and white. I rarely remember the details of my dreams, but I know I dream. Sounds more like a correlation, not a causation. In a few years, when they find that more old people than young people dream in black and white, and none of the new group of old people have never seen black and white TV, how will they explain it then?
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