Clinical Applications for Consciousness in Sleep

Abstract

A bit more than ten years ago a new wave of systematic research began into dream "consciousness". The experience of knowing one is dreaming while the dream is ongoing left the quagmire of parapsychology and gained scientific respectability. Interest in "lucid dreaming" has since mushroomed beyond the few dissertations of the late 1970's to a body of work most recently organized and presented in Gackenbach and LaBerge's Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain(1988). From a sleep researchers perspective several key lines of inquiry have been pursued in investigations of dream lucidity. These include, its psychophysiological bases, the content of the dream experience, who spontaneously experiences these dreams, how to induce lucidity while asleep, and clinical applications of dreaming lucidly. It should be noted that other disciplines also take this dream experience seriously with lines of discussion emerging in philosophy, religion, and anthropology.