The Idea Of Lucid Dreaming

Madilyn Fisher
Topic Paper
1st Draft
May 19, 2016 Most people are familiar with the concept of dreaming; they go to sleep every night, and when they wake up, they remember vague details of shopping with a clown, climbing a purple tree, failing a driving test, or being chased by a ghost. However, these dreams are always remembered in a vague way; they are out of the dreamers control, and often forgotten. Once in a while, and perhaps frequently for some practiced dreamers, one may experience something called a lucid dream. A lucid dream is simply a dream where the dreamer is aware that they are in a dream and he or she has some sort of control over the characters, narrative, and environment in said dream. The term “lucid dream” was not coined

More concisely, Stephen LaBerge, the leading psychophysiologist studying lucid dreaming since the tail-end of the 20th century, claims that lucid dreaming simply involves awareness of and ability to affect the dream, (though they are not both required as one could be aware of the dream while choosing to simply observe and not interact) (LaBerge, 1994). An alternative point-of-view, that of view of an advanced, lifelong lucid dreamer, describes a lucid dream as, “when I’m asleep, I’m aware that I’m dreaming…in a virtual reality where I have some control over aspects of the scene and setting. This dream leaves impressions that are as strong or even stronger than anything I experience when I’m awake,” (Maich,

When he was initially publishing his findings, understanding the concept of lucid dreaming required a paradigm shift. “It’s true that the source of dreams is largely unconscious…but that doesn’t mean that the experience is unconscious. If you tighten up the language a little, you’d say what you mean is, a sleeping person is unconscious of the environment. It’s not the same thing as being absolutely unconscious,” LaBerge clarifies, (LaBerge,