Barrow-Down Dreams

[Roa_Aoife]

Originally Posted by TGWBS

We're studying dreaming in Psych at the moment? What makes you think lucid dreaming is bad for the psyche? I'm not sure we can determine this withour determining the purpose of dreams.

REM sleep, which is the part where we dream, occurs as the mind ascends through various stages of sleep, ie going from Stage 4 (the deepest level of sleep, aka the rest and repair stage) to stage 3, or even from Stage 2 to Stage 1 (the lightest level of sleep, or "half-asleep.") Typically, the subconscious mind is in control of REM. With lucid dreaming , the conscious mind is in control. REM sleep's exact purpose is not known, but it is known that a lack of REM sleep causes extreme aggression and irritability, and can lead to permamnent personality changes.

Lucid dreaming in and of itself is not dangerous, but doing it all the time can actually simulate a lack of REM, due to the lack of activity from the sunconscious.

Originally Posted by TGWBS

Also, we learnt that dreams happen in real time. They may feel like they're longer, but this happens because of jumps forward in dream-time to skip dull parts of the dream. Each minute of dreaming equates to one minute of sleep.

Quite different from what I learned, though it's been a year or two since then. However, keep in mind that psychological theory is constantly changing, (just think of Freud's ideas ) so this whole thing may be moot, and lucid dreaming may be better for you than regular dreaming, but that's not the theory I learned.

Hence why we say "practicing psychologist."