Most lucid dreaming guidebooks – at least, most of the ones I’ve read – are focused on providing readers with practical information about things like sleep cycles, and presenting techniques for developing relevant skills (e.g., visualization, memory) and helpful habits of awareness (e.g., dreamsigns, state testing). Most guidebooks also provide readers with inspiration in the form of first-hand accounts showcasing some of the amazing experiences that are possible in lucid dreams. But advice for overcoming problems tends to be very limited. Obvious obstacles like trying too hard or not sticking with techniques long enough to make them work might be addressed, but nothing beyond that.

I suspect that the assumption of most authors is that just about everyone will be able to experience dream lucidity through consistently applying the techniques they offer, and so they don’t feel the need to address the possibility of continued lack of success. I also suspect that this assumption is wrong, and that the failure to address further problems with attaining lucidity, or persistent problems with the quality or content of lucid dreams, is probably due to not wanting to consider the most likely source of these problems: the same sort of mental blocks and hang-ups that every other human endeavor is subject to. They are not lucid dreaming problems per se: they are more general problems manifesting in the particular arena of lucid dreaming.

We live in a world in which “normal” is usually pretty far from healthy and is currently even farther than it usually is. I think this and its consequences are mainly what the dream book authors are failing to consider. in their approaches. Aside from all the pervasive large-scale problems that are too obvious to need mentioning, successful adaptation to an unhealthy environment also causes its share of problems. It may result in having a life that seems as if it “should” be happy but which is empty and unfulfilling for no clear reason. Either way, as long as people’s problems remain on the “everyday” level of unhealthy, or on the same level as the people around them, they may never even try to address them. In trying to accomplish something like lucid dreaming, which is decidedly outside the mainstream, it may be easy to overlook how the “everyday” sorts of unhealthy beliefs, habits, and attitudes manifest and serve as obstacles; they may seem strange and exotic, as if they belonged to a completely different world. But I think the assumption of those dream book authors is probably right in that, once psychological barriers to attaining lucidity are addressed, it really is a simple matter of developing relevant skills and formulating strategies that make sense.

In addressing these barriers, the value of a psychological approach which lays the emphasis on awareness should be obvious. This is exactly what Gestalt psychology is – the practical wing of it, that is, rather than the experimental, which is more concerned with things like those little “incomplete” pictures in Entering the World of Lucid Dreaming. Essentially, Gestalt psychology is concerned with bringing disturbances of awareness into awareness – distortions, holes, rigid patterns, etc. – and allowing it to relax into its natural state of openness through bringing the various kinds of underlying internal conflicts into awareness, where they can be resolved in an appropriate way.

I should say at this point that I’m neither a therapist nor an authority on this topic, and anything I say here should be considered in light of that. I’ve been familiar with Gestalt theory through secondary sources for a long time, mostly through its approaches to dreamwork, but it’s only recently that I decided to pick up its foundational texts. While this was for reasons completely unrelated to dreaming, it was immediately obvious to me that its conceptual framework could yield all sorts of fascinating hypotheses, insights, and possibly solutions when applied to the unique problems and concerns of lucid dreamers. I intend to explore a few of them here, in this thread. Carl Jung has a thread already, so why not give Fritz Perls his due?

I welcome any feedback, questions, suggestions, or independent contributions that anybody here on Dream Views may have. This is the sort of thing that would just go into my journal ordinarily, and while I’m sure some of it will probably end up not being interesting to anyone other than me, I do intend to try to model real problems here which may be relevant to someone somewhere. In any case, since I’m still exploring the topic myself (and also because I don’t want this to take forever), my entries here will definitely be on the order of rough drafts, so please feel free to bug me about clarification as well.