LUCID DREAMS + 6 OTHERS
Early references to the phenomenon are found in ancient Greek writing. For example, the philosopher Aristotle wrote: ‘often when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream’.
A lucid dream is a dream during which one is aware that one is dreaming. During a lucid dream, one may gain some amount of control over the dream characters, narrative, and environment. The term ‘lucid dream’ was coined by Dutch author and psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden in his 1913 article A Study of Dreams, though descriptions of dreamers being aware that they are dreaming predates the actual term. Frederik Van Eeden studied his personal dreams since 1896. He wrote down the most interesting ones, and, out of all these dreams, 352 were what we know now as “lucid dreams”. Throughout all the data he collected from dreaming, he created different names for different types of dreams. He named 7 different types of dreams: initial dreams, pathological, ordinary dreaming, vivid dreaming, demoniacal, general dream-sensations, and lucid dreaming. Frederick Van Eeden said the seventh type of dreaming, lucid dreaming, was the most interesting and worthy of the most careful observation of study. Eeden studied lucid dreaming between January 20, 1898, and December 26, 1912. In this state of dreaming Eeden explains that you are completely aware of your surroundings and are able to direct your actions freely, yet the sleep is stimulating and uninterrupted.
WHY WE DREAM
Dreams are the stories the brain tells during sleep—they’re a collection of clips, images, feelings, and memories that involuntarily occur during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of slumber. Humans typically have multiple dreams per night that grow longer as sleep draws to a close. It’s hypothesized that everyone dreams, but a small subsection of the population reports that they never remember experiencing dreams.
Dreams typically involve elements from waking lives—like known people or familiar locations—but they often take on a fantastical feel. While dreams are frequently interesting and can allow people to act out certain scenarios that would never be possible in real life, they aren’t always positive—negative dreams, referred to as “nightmares,” can create feelings of terror, anxiety, or utter despair, and can lead to psychological distress or sleep problems like insomnia. – Psychology Today