Chapter 7 - 10

10 Psychology

listen to a discussion in a psychology class. Fill in the diagram with the information that you hear.

W: This week, we talked about all sorts of topics relating to sleep and dreams. Stunning James is notoriously difficult, given their highly personal nature.

Still, psychologists have come up with different ways of studying dreams that has revealed some information about what dreams are and why we dream.

Aside from the more popular interpretations of dreams, who can tell us one of the ways that dreams can be used?

M: Well, Loewi talked about how it can help with creativity. Isn’t that how he came up with that experiment that won him the Nobel Prize?

W: Yep, that’s right. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this case… Dr. Otto Loewi way was a pharmacologist who was famously quoted as saying that he would have never performed his award-winning experiments if it had occurred to him while he was awake.

In that way, he supported the idea that dreams can be helpful in coming up with creative solutions because you’re less inhibited.

But anyway, what is another way that dreams are studied or used in psychology?

M: Well, this refers more specifically to lucid dreams, but I guess they can be used to promote a sense of emotional well-being or growth.

W: I’m so glad someone brought this up. I can’t believe we haven’t talked about lucid dreams. Anyway, a lucid dream is a type of dream during which a person feels as though they are awake.

By that I mean you’re simply dreaming while being aware that you’re dreaming. You can think of it as being conscious while dreaming.

Does that make sense?

M: Yeah, but how come we don’t hear more about them?

W: There are couple of reasons, actually. I mean, like I said before, it’s hard to study any kind of dream.

M: Lucid dreams are pretty rare, aren’t they?

W: Uh, huh. In fact, I just read an article that said that only about twenty percent of the population have lucid dreams on a regular basis.

M: So what is the purpose of lucid dreaming, then?

W: I guess one example I can give you that’s a little more specific is nightmare resolution. A famous case study involved a woman who had just gotten into a car accident, wait, no, she had just gotten divorced.

M: So she was having nightmares or something?

W: Right, night after night, she would have this terrifying dream that she was being swallowed up in a giant wave. But with the help of a psychologist, she was able to have a lucid dream, meaning that she could control it.

She learned to change the dream so that instead of getting swallowed up, she would swim and live.

M: I didn’t realize there was a way to induce a lucid dream. Is there a standard way of doing that?

W: Yes, actually. I mean, there are different methods, but I can share one that was popularized by the lucid dream guy, Stephen La Berge. OK, so first you’re supposed to try to memorize a dream you’ve just woken up from for a couple of minutes.

Then you have to do something that you could only really do while you’re fully awake, like reading.

M: What do you have to do that for?

W: Well, the memorization part is kind of like a rehearsal for when you go back to sleep.

Anyway, next, you get back into bed and, while you’re trying to get back to sleep, say to yourself that you want to remember what you’re dreaming the next time you began to dream.

M: Is there anymore rehearsal after that?

W: I’m not sure what you mean, exactly. After you say that to yourself, you should try to imagine yourself actually lying in bed and having the dream that you were rehearsing before.

M: And all that helped you have lucid dreams?

W: Yes, it’s been found to help.

1) What does the professor imply about studying dreams?

2) what does the professor imply when she says this: I’m so glad someone brought this out.

3) What can be inferred about inducing a lucid dream?