Dream Content Within the Partially Lucid REM Period: A Single Subject Content Analysis

Abstract

Despite ten years of increasing research attention to lucid dreaming, quantitative content analysis is almost nonexistent. Most research describing their content has dealt almost exclusively with those qualities of the dreamer's consciousness that by definition serve to differentiate lucid dreams from their non-lucid counterparts. But aside from obvious differences in self-awareness and cognitive ability, in what ways do lucid and non-lucid dreams differ? While discussing the relevance of findings on lucid dreaming to dreaming in general, Foulkes asked: When you change ordinary dreaming by adding a self which intends and reflects, what else changes alongside this change? This is one way of evaluating the role played by the absence of self [-awareness] in ordinary dreaming, and is perhaps the point at which lucid dreaming data could be most relevant to ordinary dream psychology. However, at present there seems to be no systematic data comparing the REM-monitored lucid versus non-lucid dreams of the same dreamer.