Thread: So I mentioned Lucid dreaming to a psychoanalyst

This was in reference to a podcast made in the website The Psych files, where the topic was Dream interpretation. The guest was a psychoanalyst who gave quite an interesting (but to most people on this forum, basic) talk regarding dreams, dream content, dream interpretation, etc. I thought I'd go and comment to see if the owner of the website knew about Lucid Dreaming. Here's my post:

Have you ever made a bit of research on lucid dreaming Michael? It’s a type of dream where you are aware that you are dreaming, which gives you many possibilities. For example, you can exercise your intent towards the dream in order to perform amazing things like flying, meeting your favorite actor, make a Safari in a imaginary land, among many other things. One of the most interesting things you can do is literally talk with dream characters, which are representations of your subconscious. They don’t act like robots, but can engage in real conversations, often knowing much about you and even giving you puzzling answers to your questions. Lucid dreaming is growing in the scientific community after it was proven in a laboratory by Keith Hearn and later by Stephen LaBerge, and it’s been researched as a tool to increase athletic performance (you can indeed practice riding a bike in a dream), help people with recurring nightmares or even PTSD (they can become aware that they are simply dreaming and either wake themselves up or just change the dream scenario), helping people recreate a scenario that is frightening to them (imagine you practicing for a job interview or a musical performance) and many other possibilities, like the study of consciousness (Lucid dreamers help scientists locate the seat of meta-consciousness in the brain) for example. It’s also extremely healthy because it promotes sleep hygiene. I’ve been a lucid dreamer for several years now, and my dreams became my playground

This was the response I got:

Ricardo: I sent your question about Lucid dreaming to Kerry Malawista. Here’s her response (thanks Kerry): “Yes, a main function of dreaming is to keep us asleep, but keep in mind that this is not the same as being unconscious. Our unconscious is very much in action during the night, busy creating our dreams. Also, dreaming has been shown as a way the brain weaves information from our current life into memory, in essence as a way to make sense of our busy lives.
A nightmare occurs when some anxiety or fear, whether conscious or unconscious, is so great that it overrides the part of our brain trying to remain asleep. When the terror becomes too threatening, we wake up to get out of the nightmare. I am sure most of us have had nightmares where we even say to ourselves, “please wake me up.”
For some, nightmares are rare events, but for others, especially those who have experienced a real trauma, nightmares can be a frequent and re-traumatizing event. Rather than a dream that disguises our worries, a nightmare plunges us directly back into the traumatic event. Yet, we can still think of the nightmare as an attempt to make sense and work through a traumatic experience.

A lucid dream is one where we are aware we are dreaming, where we can exert some control in the dream. A person who practices lucid dreaming – and yes you can get better at it—can use that type of control in their dream to direct what is happening or alter the outcome. As the listener points out, lucid dreaming can also be a useful technique to help with nightmares. The dreamer can come in and change the course of the dream to make it less terrifying.
Lucid dreaming can also be used, more simply, to help make sense of something disturbing in a dream. For example, in my interview with Michael I mentioned my own dream where I was disturbed that one of the people in my dream, a childhood friend Linda, looked nothing like the person I know in the dream. That thought kept disturbing my dream, interrupting the storyline. At that point my brain created a voice over, as one might hear at the start of a Broadway play, announcing, “The role of Linda Malm will be played by Jane Smith.” This allowed me to continue on dreaming, no longer distressed that my friend Linda looked nothing like herself. This in an example of lucid dreaming and again in this instance another way for the dreamer to remain asleep, not too distressed by the incongruous events that are occurring. There are many interesting web sites on lucid dreaming if you are interested in learning more.

Ricardo brings up a very interesting dream of his own, and a frequent one for many, where we find ourselves trapped, get free, only to be once again trapped in a similar room, tunnel, or space. Again, here I would think that the dreamer is attempting to work out some anxiety related to a feeling of being trapped. And of course only that particular dreamer can know the meaning of feeling trapped for them self. As with this dreamer’s dream, who thought the meaning was to keep the dreamer from getting “too free.” But rather than a nightmare where the panic becomes too great and the dreamer wakes up, he or she gets some reprieve, only to be once again ensnared. We can assume that the unconscious is still attempting to explore and work on this same fear, by returning us, over and over, to the exact same situation. The unconscious is nothing if not tenacious!”

Although I appreciate the response, I found quite a few errors with the speech of the psychoanalyst, which I'd say are justified by a lack of approach to this phenomenon. I'd say it is really not her fault, because lucid dreaming is still not as famous in the scientific community as many of us would like, but she ignored most of my points probably because it's not a topic she dealt with too often.

Misconception nr1: A lucid dream is one where we are aware we are dreaming, where we can exert some control in the dream
Dream control is not necessarily present.

Misconception nr2: Lucid dreaming can also be used, more simply, to help make sense of something disturbing in a dream.
I kinda disagree here. Lucidity is not something our brain is programmed to, you might call it an "accident" on the path of the dream. Although nightmares can also provoke lucidity instead of waking the dreamer up, the later is much more common. The example that she gave (in the same paragraph) is no where related to lucid dream: what happened is that the brain found a way of deceiving her, making her think she was still woken up and not dreaming.

This in an example of lucid dreaming and again in this instance another way for the dreamer to remain asleep, not too distressed by the incongruous events that are occurring.

Do you guys think lucid dreaming is another intentional mechanic of the brain to keep us asleep? Personally I don't think so, but this one is much harder to be sure.

Overall, I was very disappointed by the response. Not like I was expecting every psychoanalyst to give relevance to lucid dreams, but she didn't even touch points like the study of the consciousness, or the uses of lucid dreaming in mental health, among others things I mentioned, which I assumed it was because she wasn't very informed about the subject (it could also mean that she wanted to keep the talk within the topic). Assuming that one persons studies dreams, you could hope that there was a bit more knowledge about lucid dreams. Or maybe I'm just asking too much In the end, it does sound a bit frustrating to see that this specific subject isn't very fluent in modern psychoanalyst land.

You can find the article/podcast here.