What Are Lucid Dreams - Report Example

LUCID DREAMING Lucid Dreaming The significance of lucid dreaming was not lost upon the ical civilizations of the world. Sources from Ancient Egypt as well as Ancient Greece refer to the profound mystical implications of dream states. Troubled Egyptians would travel to sleep in temples in order to have their dreams interpreted by priests, who used tricks of language and the ancient Dream Book to answer their patrons’ questions and concerns. Earlier Greeks such as Homer posited dreams to be messages from the gods, whereas later Greeks like Aristotle kept an eye on the symbolic, interpretive meaning of dreams (McElroy, 2007). And from Aristotle down to Freud, dreams have captivated the attention of mankind for thousands of years. But even Freud recognized a certain kind of special dream, one wherein the dreamer has the capability to actively shape and manipulate the content of the experience. What are lucid dreams? Traditional conceptions of a dream were, and still are, of a passive state of semi-conscious, partial awareness during a time when the mind’s connection to the outside world is temporarily severed. Lucid dreams defy this traditional conception in that they are not “semi-conscious”, they are not “partial”, and they most certainly are not “passive”. In fact, a “lucid dream” is a conjunction of two aspects: “a dream in which the dreamer” (a) “becomes aware that he or she is dreaming”, and (b), “achieves a degree of control over the content and direction of the dream” (McElroy, 2007: 3). Thus, there seems to be a logical incongruity at work here: in what sense can we call a “lucid dream”, an experience which is fully, consciously active, a “dream”? In order to answer this question and the corresponding logical inconsistency, we will have to reformulate the conventionalist definition of a “dream” and then perform comparative analysis based on this definition between lucid dreams and non-lucid dreams. In the end, it shall be concluded that a lucid dream is different not in kind but by degree from a non-lucid dream in that both are in some sense conscious and in some sense active. What is a dream? Firstly, what is a “dream”? A dream simply appears to be “a series of mental images and emotions occurring during sleep”, but what is a dream really? Historically, to Jung, a dream was a compensation mechanism for one-sided attitudes held in waking consciousness (Jung, 2001), and to Freud, a dream was a process whereby the brain, through bad dreams, gains control over emotions resulting from distressing experiences (Carskadon, 1993). More recent psychological investigations reveal that illogical brain activity may force the brain to solidify semantic memories. During sleep, such change could happen because the information exchange between neocortex and the hippocampus is reduced (Stickgold, Hobson, Fosse, & Fosse, 2001). Thus, dreams serve a distinct oneirological function, which is to improve long-term memory. A dream, superficially, is “a series of mental images and emotions occurring during sleep”, but is actually a process whereby the brain autonomically solidifies the mind’s long-term memory mechanisms. According to these working definitions, it may not seem obvious how a lucid dream and a non-lucid dream may differ. The two categories of dreams are actually subsumed together by the concept of a “dream”, and are differentiated by various characteristics which were alluded to above. How are lucid dreams different? Here, we will focus our attention upon two very distinctive traits of lucid dreaming experiences and which run contrary to traditional conceptions of dream states, as identified by William Empson: (1) full (or almost full) consciousness by the dreamer and (2) full (or almost full) control by the dreamer. By the first, (1), we mean that the lucid dreamer experiences a fuller sense of awareness or consciousness, more akin to that of waking consciousness, than the non-lucid dreamer. This has been demonstrated by research into subjects who experienced lucid dreams, and entered them using their abilities to describe in much further detail the precise content of their dreams (and hence, lucid dreams). (1) also implies (2), a fuller sense of control, by which we mean that the lucid dreamer retains much more control over his actions and surroundings in his dream state than the non-lucid dreamer, who experiences a dream almost, if not completely, in passivity. This fuller scope of control on the lucid dreamer’s part is clearly demonstrated by his or her ability to enter the lucid state in the first place—namely, by inducing the dream experience and then acting on the opportunities presented (Empson, 1989). Do lucid dreams have greater meaning? Lucid and non-lucid dreams have been comparatively analyzed at various times in the history of psychology. Most notably in the modern period, Freud spoke of lucid dreams in the following way: “There are some people who are quite clearly aware during the night that they are asleep and dreaming and who thus seem to possess the faculty of consciously directing their dreams. If, for instance, a dreamer of this kind is dissatisfied with the turn taken by a dream, he can break it off without waking up and start it again in another direction…” (Levine, 2000: 72). So, while Freud thought of the dream, as a conceptual whole, as a means of wish-fulfillment, the lucid dream, of course, may have an agreeable or invigorating emotional aspect that other dreams do not usually possess. The lucid dream, then, fulfills the wish more easily than the non-lucid one, and thus, concepts such as symbolization and condensation used by the psychoanalytic interpreters of dreams are not as necessary (Green & McCreery, 1994). Additional differences between the two were noted by Allen Rechtschaffen in his article “The Single-mindedness and Isolation of Dreams”, wherein he says that in normal dreaming, the dreamer does not reflect on his or her own stream of consciousness. In waking consciousness, the dreamer is both reflecting and experiencing simultaneously; but, in non-lucid dream states, one is only experiencing. The lucid dreamer, on the other hand, does reflect on his experience, which is perhaps one of the most decisive defining features of a lucid dream state (Green & McCreery, 1994). Rechtschaffen also suggests that the dreamer, in a non-lucid state, cannot “imagine” entities or events within dream states, writing, “I cannot remember a dream report which took the form, ‘Well, I was dreaming of such and such, but as I was dreaming this I was imagining a different scene which was completely unrelated’” (Rechtschaffen, 1978: 102). Lucid dreamers have, however, on occasion “imagined” certain events or entities which were not in their immediate consciousness. And we may lastly distinguish between lucid and non-lucid in the memorability of the dream once the dreamer is in waking consciousness. As everyone knows, non-lucid dreams are quite easily look past and forget. It is known, however, that lucid dreamers “do not suffer from the tendency to a subsequent loss of memory to anything like the same degree as normal dreamers” (Green, 1968). Why are lucid dreams considered ‘dreams’? But there is still remains the logical incongruity which was introduced earlier in this examination: the incongruity arising from the seemingly contradictory notions of dreaming which are denoted by “lucid” and “non-lucid” respectively. One possesses almost full conscious control over the experience and one seemingly does not (at least according to the popular conception of the latter). In addition, we generally regard sleep as a time wherein we are not conscious and have no capacity for imagination in the same sense in which we have that capacity in our waking lives. Imagination, it is said, is a faculty only realizable when there is something in our conscious backgrounds with which we can contrast the content of our imaginations. For instance, I need a conscious awareness of my sitting in a classroom, listening to a professor’s lecture, in order to imagine running through a field of roses. And in non-lucid dream states, this background simply does not exist. Also, if one truly thinks about lucid dreaming, the very act of dreaming lucidly is predicated on the existence of logical incongruities. To induce lucid dreams, the dreamer must first recognize that he is in a dream, whether by landmarks or by absurd events which could not happen in reality. Only by recognizing these strange events can one even enter a lucid dream in the first place. Taken together, the logical incongruities make lucid dreaming, as well as its relationship to non-lucid dreams, a matter of almost sheer paradox. The jump between dreams and lucidity How do we bridge the gap between the two? That is, how do we rescue the concept of “dream” which subsumes both lucidity and non-lucidity despite ostensibly irreconcilable dissimilarities? The first step is to recognize the distinction between difference in kind and difference by degree. Two things are different in kind if the two things have no commensurable characteristics, and are members of separate categories of being. Two things are different by degree if the two things do have commensurable characteristics, but differ in magnitude. For instance, a t-shirt and a refrigerator are different in kind insofar as they have no specific commensurable characteristics; however, a t-shirt and a sweatshirt are different by degree insofar as they are both shirts, even though their designs, thickness, and so on, differ. The difference between lucid and non-lucid dream states, likewise, is a difference by degree: even non-lucid dreams give the dreamer some degree of consciousness and, to a lesser extent, some degree of control (even if that control is not intentional). Thus, we may say that all dreams are lucid in the weak sense of that term, in contrast to the strong sense in which the dreamer has full control and full consciousness. And hence, we may derive a final definition for lucid dreaming, a dream state which is different by degree from non-lucidity, as “the recognition and ability to manipulate dreams”—or, “the recognition of a dream state while in that dream state”. Conclusion A lucid dream is only different from the non-lucid variety insofar as the former shares commensurable characteristics with the latter. Being that both are dreams, and both exhibit some type of awareness and control (whether this control is intentional or not is irrelevant), both deserve to be identified by the concept which classifies that quality: a dream. So, although lucid dreaming is seemingly incongruous with the traditional conception of a dream, there is no paradox here. Throughout this investigation, we have described several scientifically identified differences between the two varieties of dreams and developed meaningful definitions for both varieties with the hope of providing conceptual or philosophical support for future research in the area. Lucid dreams have a long history in the area of psychology, and have special inherent clinical applications. Future research needs to expand the horizon of these applications. Works Cited Carskadon, M. A. (1993). Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreaming. New York: Macmillan Pub. Co. Empson, W. (1989). The Structure of Complex Words. Cambridge, MS: Harvard University Press. Green, C. E., & McCreery, C. (1994). Lucid Dreaming: The Paradox of Consciousness During Sleep. New York: Routledge. Green, C. E. (1968). Lucid Dreams. London: Hamish Hamilton. Jung, C. G. (2001). Dreams. New York: Routledge. Levine, M. P. (2000). The Analytic Freud: Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge. McElroy, M. (2007). Lucid Dreaming for Beginners. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Worldwide. Rechtschaffen, A. (1978). “The Single-mindedness and Isolation of Dreams.” Sleep. Vol. 1, No. 1, 97-109. Stickgold, R., Hobson, J. A., Fosse, R., & Fosse, M. (2001). “Sleep, Learning, and Dreams: Off-Line Memory Reprocessing.” Science, New Series. Vol. 294, No. 5544 , 1052-1057. Read More