Notion of Lucid Dreaming

Notion of Lucid Dreaming

Introduction

The main purpose of this paper is to make an analysis on the notion of lucid dreaming. The art and science of lucid dreaming is not necessarily something that is very difficult to develop. This is not to say the process is easy but it can be cultivated with the right approach. This notion of personal gain may mean different things to different people which would be fine. The key point here is that if you wish to see come improvements in your life then you will need to take steps that can actually enhance such improvements (Wittmann, 2004). The old saying “Dare to dream” often refers to the notion that if you have dreams and desires these will inspire you to take actions. Often, it is your dreams that shape your destiny. Of course, most uses of this descriptive phrase will refer to daydreaming. The reason daydreaming is involved is because it is impossible to control one's actual dreams…or is it.

Discussion

One of most frequent arguments against lucid dreaming is the notion that lucidity disturbs the process and the function of dreaming. It's a strange critique, because the function of dreaming remains unknown. But for many clinical practitioners, dreams are thought to perform psychological duties that are best left untouched by the “tainting” force of self-awareness. The clinical disease of lucid dreaming may in part be rooted in dream theories of the fathers of psychology: Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Freud only mentions lucid dreaming in a tiny note in his later editions of Interpretation of Dreams. Freud never experienced lucid dreaming, and did not have a chance to read the works of his lucid dreaming contemporaries Frederic Van Eeden and Hervey de Saint Denys. Freud was skeptical. He thought it a “secondary revision” of memory. Furthermore, he thought that if it was possible, it would only censor the dream's message, a process he called the dream work. Carl Jung also never directly commented on self-awareness during the dream. For Jung, dreams reflect a lifelong maturation of the personality called individuation. Some Jungians today argue that lucidity disturbs the process of individuation by putting the dream ego in control of something that is much more powerful and ancient than we could possibly understand.1 It's always been a bizarre position, seems to me, as some styles of lucid dreaming have much in common with Jung's method of active imagination, a way of interacting with the dream from a relaxed waking state. As Jungian psychotherapist James Hall and psychiatrist Andrew Brylowski noted in 1991, in both active imagination and lucid dreams, we can enter into a fruitful dialogue with spontaneous imagery and narrative. Thus, as Schredl (2010) asserts, lucid dreams are even more dream like in some ways than non-lucid dreams. While a lucid dreamer retains continuity in the sense of “I” and self-reflective awareness in lucid dreams, the experience of lucid dreaming itself seems to be less congruent with the waking experience than ordinary non-lucid ...