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In the psychology subfield of oneirology, a lucid dream is a type of dream in which the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming whilst dreaming. The capacity to have lucid dreams is a trainable cognitive skill. During a lucid dream, the dreamer may gain some amount of volitional control over the dream characters, narrative, or environment, although this control of dream content is not the salient feature of lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming has been studied and reported for many years. Prominent figures from ancient to modern times have been fascinated by lucid dreams and have sought ways to better understand their causes and purpose.
A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, although the dreamer may perceive the dream as being much longer than this.
A nightmare, also known as a bad dream, is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong emotional response from the mind, typically fear but also despair, anxiety, disgust or sadness. The dream may contain situations of discomfort, psychological or physical terror, or panic. After a nightmare, a person will often awaken in a state of distress and may be unable to return to sleep for a short period of time. Recurrent nightmares may require medical help, as they can interfere with sleeping patterns and cause insomnia.
Neurosis is a term mainly used today by followers of Freudian thinking to describe mental disorders caused by past anxiety, often that has been repressed. In recent history, the term has been used to refer to anxiety-related conditions more generally.
Dream interpretation is the process of assigning meaning to dreams.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental and behavioral disorder that develops from experiencing a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence, or other threats on a person's life or well-being. Symptoms may include disturbing thoughts, feelings, or dreams related to the events, mental or physical distress to trauma-related cues, attempts to avoid trauma-related cues, alterations in the way a person thinks and feels, and an increase in the fight-or-flight response. These symptoms last for more than a month after the event. Young children are less likely to show distress, but instead may express their memories through play. A person with PTSD is at a higher risk of suicide and intentional self-harm.
Sleep paralysis is a state, during waking up or falling asleep, in which one is conscious but in a complete state of full-body paralysis. During an episode, one may hallucinate, which often results in fear. Episodes generally last no more than a few minutes. It can recur multiple times or occur as a single episode.
Nightmare disorder is a sleep disorder characterized by repeated intense nightmares that most often center on threats to physical safety and security. The nightmares usually occur during the REM stage of sleep, and the person who experiences the nightmares typically remembers them well upon waking. More specifically, nightmare disorder is a type of parasomnia, a subset of sleep disorders categorized by abnormal movement or behavior or verbal actions during sleep or shortly before or after. Other parasomnias include sleepwalking, sleep terrors, bedwetting, and sleep paralysis.
Psychological trauma is an emotional response caused by severe distressing events that are outside the normal range of human experiences, with extreme examples being violence, rape, or a terrorist attack. The event must be understood by the affected person as directly threatening the affected person or their loved ones with death, severe bodily injury, or sexual violence; indirect exposure, such as from watching television news, may be extremely distressing and can produce an involuntary and possibly overwhelming physiological stress response, but does not produce trauma per se.
A false awakening is a vivid and convincing dream about awakening from sleep, while the dreamer in reality continues to sleep. After a false awakening, subjects often dream they are performing daily morning routine such as showering, cooking, cleaning, eating, and using the bathroom. False awakenings, mainly those in which one dreams that they have awoken from a sleep that featured dreams, take on aspects of a double dream or a dream within a dream. A classic example is the double false awakening of the protagonist in Gogol's Portrait (1835).
In the field of psychology, the subfield of oneirology is the scientific study of dreams. Current research seeks correlations between dreaming and current knowledge about the functions of the brain, as well as an understanding of how the brain works during dreaming as pertains to memory formation and mental disorders. The study of oneirology can be distinguished from dream interpretation in that the aim is to quantitatively study the process of dreams instead of analyzing the meaning behind them.
A flashback, or involuntary recurrent memory, is a psychological phenomenon in which an individual has a sudden, usually powerful, re-experiencing of a past experience or elements of a past experience. These experiences can be frightful, happy, sad, exciting, or any number of other emotions. The term is used particularly when the memory is recalled involuntarily, especially when it is so intense that the person "relives" the experience, and is unable to fully recognize it as memory of a past experience and not something that is happening in "real time".
Repetition compulsion is the unconscious tendency of a person to repeat a traumatic event or its circumstances. This may take the form of symbolically or literally re-enacting the event, or putting oneself in situations where the event is likely to occur again. Repetition compulsion can also take the form of dreams in which memories and feelings of what happened are repeated, and in cases of psychosis, may even be hallucinated.
Psychoanalytic dream interpretation is a subdivision of dream interpretation as well as a subdivision of psychoanalysis pioneered by Sigmund Freud in the early 20th century. Psychoanalytic dream interpretation is the process of explaining the meaning of the way the unconscious thoughts and emotions are processed in the mind during sleep.
Memory and trauma is the deleterious effects that physical or psychological trauma has on memory.
Derealization is an alteration in the perception of the external world, causing those with the condition to perceive it as unreal, distant, distorted or falsified. Other symptoms include feeling as if one's environment is lacking in spontaneity, emotional coloring, and depth. It is a dissociative symptom that may appear in moments of severe stress.
An anxiety dream is an unpleasant dream which can be more disturbing than a nightmare. Anxiety dreams are characterized by the feelings of unease, distress, or apprehension in the dreamer upon waking. Anxiety dreams tend to occur in rapid eye movement sleep, and usual themes involve incomplete tasks, embarrassment, falling, getting in to legal or financial trouble, failed pursuits and being pursued by another, often an unrealistic entity but other human beings can also be the pursuer. Anxiety dreams may be caused by childhood trauma, or an adult dealing with conflict. Though they create anxiety in the dreamer, anxiety dreams also serve as a way for a person's ego to reset.
Antti Revonsuo is a Finnish cognitive neuroscientist, psychologist, and philosopher of mind. His work seeks to understand consciousness as a biological phenomenon. He is one of a small number of philosophers running their own laboratories.
Oneirophobia is the fear of dreams. It is discussed in The Dream Frontier, a book by Mark Blechner, a neuro-psychoanalyst at the William Alanson White Institute.
A dream character, sometimes abbreviated as DC, is an interactable human-like entity in the person's dream, especially while the person is REM-sleeping. The topic has been profoundly addressed in the lucid dreaming community, since while experiencing a lucid dream, the person can consciously interact with dream characters.
References
- ↑ Yu, C. (2010). Recurrence of typical dreams and the instinctual and delusional predispositions of dreams. Dreaming, 20(4), 254-279
- 1 2 Delaney, G. (1997). In Your Dreams: Falling, Flying and Other Dream Themes. New York: Harper San Francisco
- ↑ Dolan, Eric W. (2023-11-22). "Dreams of teeth falling out? Here's what they might mean, according to scientific research". PsyPost. Retrieved 2023-12-24.
- ↑ Davis, J. L., Byrd, P., Rhudy, J. L., & Wright, D. C. (2007). Characteristics of chronic nightmares in a trauma-exposed treatment-seeking sample. Dreaming, 17(4), 187-198. doi:10.1037/1053-0797.17.4.187
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Barret, D. (2001) Trauma and Dreams. Harvard University Press
- ↑ Reami, D. O., Silva, D. F., Albuquerque, M. and Campos, C. J. R. (1991), Dreams and Epilepsy. Epilepsia, 32: 51–53. doi:10.1111/j.1528-1157.1991.tb05610.x
- ↑ Zadra, A., Desjardins, S., & Marcotte, E. (2006) Evolutionary function of dreams: A test of the threat simulation theory in recurrent dreams. Consciousness and Cognition, 15, 450-463
- ↑ S. LaBerge & H. Rheingold, (1990). EXPLORING THE WORLD OF LUCID DREAMING. New York: Ballantine. ISBN 0-345-37410-X The Lucidity Institute. Overcoming Nightmares [Recurrent Nightmares], http://www.lucidity.com/EWLD10.html