Melissa Stencil
Olympian High School: Psychology
August 29, 2011
Dreams: Taking People to Faraway Places; an Altered State of Consciousness
Flying in the night sky over dozens of mile high skyscrapers, taking center stage as the
prima ballerina in The Nutcracker, or simply grabbing a bite to eat with some friends at the local
pizzeria, are all visions that have played out in one person’s or another’s dreams. Dreams are
interesting concepts that draw the attention of both scientists and psychologists; mysterious
occurrences that take place every night, whether the person is aware they are dreaming or not. In
fact, in the average lifespan, a person spends a total of six years dreaming, which simplifies to
about two hours every night.1 Consciousness is defined as “awareness of things inside and
outside ourselves”2 and there is much debate about whether dreams are an altered state of
consciousness. However, due to the fact that while dreaming a person’s notion of themselves and
the world around them changes, dreams are in fact a departure from the waking state of
consciousness, with the exception of lucid dreaming.
Dreams are defined by Wikipedia as “successions of images, ideas, emotions, and
sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.”3 The word
involuntarily suggests that dreams occur against one’s conscious will and are outside of the
control of the dreamer. Dreams occur during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep where the brain
“Dream”, (last modified August 11, 2011), Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream on August 28,
2011.
2
Spencer A. Rathus, Psychology: Principles in Practice, (San Diego: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston; 2007), 103.
3
“Dream”, (last modified August 11, 2011), Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream on August 28,
2011.
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wave patterns are most similar to those of the waking state, but they are nevertheless slightly
different. Although being similar in this aspect to a conscious state, dreams differ in other factors
that distinguish them from being classified as part of the normal conscious state of a person. Due
to the fact that the dreamer is not “self- aware” in their dreams,4 they accept even the most
bizarre events as being purely real and the images are clear, rather than being vague and
unrealistic, as would be the case when a person is consciously imagining something. According
to the Psychosomatic Theory, dreams are the result of “dissociated imagination”5 and are, either
partially or completely, interruptions of the normal accord or harmony of a person’s
consciousness. When a person is dreaming, they can do or see things that would be impossible to
experience in the waking state of consciousness or the ‘real world’, all with vividness and
verisimilitude. Playing on the moon with your dog doesn’t seem so unordinary or as hard to
conceive when you’re dreaming, because you aren’t at the same level of consciousness as you
are when you’re awake.
Dreams possess certain qualities that put them on the far end of the spectrum from a
normal waking state, but not all dreams are in fact a divergence from conscious thought. Dreams
in which the dreamer can consciously perceive that they are in a state of dreaming are called
lucid dreams. In lucid dreams, a person can have control over the characters in their dreams as
well as the setting in which their dream takes place and the actions themselves and others take in
the dream. Lucid dreaming was first studied in the 1970’s by Dr. Dement and Stephen LaBerge.6
Only 1 out of 5 people dream lucidly naturally, however, up to 60% of people can have lucid
dreams with practice and training through methods such as Mnemonic Induction of Lucid
4
Ibid.
Ibid.
6
Stuart A. Kallen, Dreams, (San Diego, California: Lucent Books, 2004), 21.
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Dreams (MILD).7 This technique includes relaxation and repetitive self talk so as to instruct
yourself to be in control of your dreams and become in tune with them; consciously knowing
when you enter a dream and when the dream ends. During lucid dreaming, the dreamer can
signal when they are dreaming by moving their eyeballs in certain patterns such as left to right or
right to left,8 which is different from REM sleep in which the eyes are moving rapidly and
uncontrollably under our eyelids. Managing to gain control of your eye movements, as LaBerge
did, allows for varying degrees of manipulation of your dreams. In this situation, dreams are no
longer an altered state of consciousness because the dreamer is knowingly aware that they are
having a dream, however this rare occurrence does not mean that all dreams are not altered states
of consciousness.
With the exception of the afore mentioned lucid dreams, dreams do constitute an altered
state of consciousness because of some key components in which they differ in our perception of
the world when we are awake versus when we are asleep. According to Tony Crisp, while we are
dreaming our subconscious has created a seemingly real environment that is “personal to us” and
not experienced or witnessed by anybody else.9 While dreaming, we see the world differently
than anybody else would which makes it an altered state of consciousness based on the accepted
definition being that an altered state of consciousness is when a “person’s sense of self or sense
of the world changes.”10 In addition, the reason that an overwhelming majority of dreams cannot
be remembered is that they take place during a distinct state of consciousness, different from the
normal waking state. When people move in and out of different states of consciousness, memory
is not as keen as when a person is staying in one state of consciousness. By the time a person
7
Ibid, 22.
Ibid, 22.
9
Tony Crisp, “Altered States of Consciousness”, (last modified in 2010) Retrieved from
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/altered-states-of-consciousness/ on August 28, 2011.
10
Spencer A. Rathus, Psychology: Principles in Practice, 106.
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wakes up, they are not in REM sleep where the dream occurred, and are therefore more in the
waking state of consciousness. For this reason, some scientists call dreaming a third state of
existence where people in their dreams do not conform to the logic, science, and reality of the
real world.11
In final thought, dreams can be considered an altered state of consciousness, because of
how they change our perception of ourselves and the world. While some dreams consist of
normal and ordinary images, other images are surreal and bizarre and with the exception of lucid
dreaming, the events that take place while we are dreaming are out of our conscious awareness
and control.
11
Stuart A. Kallen, Dreams, 11.
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Bibliography
Crisp, Tony. Altered States of Consciousness. (1999), accessed August 28, 2011.
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/altered-states-of-consciousness/.
“Dream”. Last modified August 11, 2011, accessed August 28, 2011.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream.
Kallen, Stuart. Dreams. (San Diego: Lucent Books, 2004).
Rathus, Spencer. Psychology: Principles in Practice. (San Diego: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston; 2007).
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