[costello]

I know there is a separate section on this site for discussions of dreaming, but I wanted to talk about it from the point of view of psychosis.

Ever since I heard about lucid dreams a couple of years ago, I've really wanted to have one. Apparently you can teach yourself to have them. I was talking to my son about them a month or so ago, and he says he has them all the time. He also has described psychosis as being like a waking dream. That's got me curious about the links between psychosis and dreaming. I googled "lucid dream and psychosis" and got some interesting hits, including this article:

New Links Between Lucid Dreaming And Psychosis Could Revive Dream Therapy In Psychiatry

ScienceDaily (July 28, 2009) — Similarities in brain activity during lucid dreaming and psychosis suggest that dream therapy may be useful in psychiatric treatment, a European Science Foundation (ESF) workshop has found. This is strengthened by the potential evolutionary relationship between dreams and psychosis.

Lucid dreaming – when you are aware you are dreaming – is a hybrid state between sleeping and being awake. It creates distinct patterns of electrical activity in the brain that have similarities to the patterns made by psychotic conditions such as schizophrenia. Confirming links between lucid dreaming and psychotic conditions offers potential for new therapeutic routes based on how healthy dreaming differs from the unstable states associated with neurological and psychiatric disorders.

New data affirms the connection by showing that while dreaming lucidly the brain is in a dissociated state, according to Ursula Voss from the University of Frankfurt in Germany. Dissociation involves losing conscious control over mental processes, such as logical thinking or emotional reaction. In some psychiatric conditions this state is also known to occur while people are awake.

"In the field of psychiatry, the interest in patients' dreams has progressively fallen out of both clinical practice and research. But this new work seems to show that we may be able to make comparisons between lucid dreaming and some psychiatric conditions that involve an abnormal dissociation of consciousness while awake, such as psychosis, depersonalisation and pseudoseizures." said the workshop's convenor Silvio Scarone, from the Università degli Studi di Milano in Milan, Italy.

Meanwhile, the previously discredited idea of treating some conditions with dream therapy has attracted interest from clinicians. An example is people suffering from nightmares can sometimes be treated by training them to dream lucidly so they can consciously wake up.

"On the one hand, basic dream researchers could now apply their knowledge to psychiatric patients with the aim of building a useful tool for psychiatry, reviving interest in patients' dreams," continues Scarone. "On the other hand, neuroscience investigators could explore how to extend their work to psychiatric conditions, using approaches from sleep research to interpret data from acute psychotic and dissociated states of the brain-mind."

The existence of such psychotic conditions may be rooted in the evolutionary role of dreams, where dreaming is thought to have emerged to enable early humans to rehearse responses to the many dangerous events they faced in real life. Developed by Antti Revonsuo at University of Turku in Finland, if this threat simulation theory is correct it may have origins even further back in evolution, given that other mammals such as dogs also exhibit the characteristic electrical activity of dreaming.

Researchers also looked at the idea that paranoid delusions and other hallucinatory phenomena occur when the dissociative dreaming state involving replay of threatening situations is carried through into wakefulness.

"Exposure to real threatening events supposedly activates the dream system, so that it produces simulations that are realistic rehearsals of threatening events in terms of perception and behaviour," said Scarone. "This theory works on the basis that the environment in which the human brain evolved included frequent dangerous events that posed threats to human reproduction. These would have been a serious selection pressure on ancestral human populations and would have fully activated the threat simulation mechanisms."

However, dreaming is unlikely to have evolved purely to recreate threats. It may also have a role in the learning process, according to Allan Hobson, a psychiatrist and dream researcher recently retired from Harvard University in the US. Contents are added while you are awake and integrated with the automatic program of dream consciousness during sleep. This works with observations that daytime learning is consolidated by night-time sleeping, leading to the phenomenon where people remember facts better the day after they have learnt them than at the time.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0728184831.htm

Any thoughts? Does anyone else here have lucid dreams? Has anyone tried dream therapy as an approach to psychosis?

I'm fascinated by both dreams and sleep, so this is really exciting to me.

[costello]

This looks interesting. I haven't had a chance to read it yet.

Dreams and Psychosis : A New Look at an Old Hypothesis

http://www.celiagreen.com/charlesmcc...-psychosis.pdf

[Shoe]

I have had a few lucid dreams and this one false awakening that was one of the strangest things that ever happened to me. I was sleeping in my bed when I woke up and went to turn my reading lamp on but it just clicked and didn't come on. I just thought that the light bulb must of burnt out so I got out of bed and walk downstairs and over to the light switch on the wall by the front door. When I flipped the switch the light didn't come on and then I started to get this real weird feeling that I don't think I am in Kansas any more and the next thing I know is I wake up in my bed. Since I had that false awakening I believe that I have become more energy conscious and always try to remember to turn off the lights and fan when I leave a room. Something positive came out of it I guess.
Here is an interesting book that I read before
http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Inner-Wo...9869107&sr=8-1
I think that it has one chapter on dreams and hallucinations. When they used to give schizophrenics lobotomies one of the ways they could tell if the lobotomy was performed successfully was if the patient no longer dreamed.
Stephen LaBerge is like the god father of lucid dreaming if you are really serious about trying to develop that skill. Happy trails
http://www.amazon.com/Exploring-Worl...9869443&sr=1-2

[costello]

Thanks, Shoe. That false awakening experience sounds fascinating.

I've heard of hypnogogic hallucinations that sound similar. I thought I had one once, but now I think I was dreaming that I had a hallucination. My son had just moved back home earlier this year and he was having visual hallucinations for the first time. I wanted so badly to have the experience so I could understand it better. I think I wanted to so badly that I dreamed that I had hallucinated. I was lying in bed and suddenly the whole ceiling was covered with bright lights like tiny stars.

I've seen a variety of methods for bringing on lucid dreams. So far I've only tried telling myself to have one as I'm falling asleep, trying to recall dreams in as much detail as a can in the morning, and listening to a delta binaural beat on my mp3 while I'm sleeping. The other methods I've seen seem to involve substances or interrupting sleep, and I won't do either of those. I did see someone mention that Sleepy Time Tea with valerian brings on lucid dreams for them, and I drink that tea at bedtime sometimes, but ... shrug ... nothing.

I'm a lifelong insomniac who accidently cured the insomnia a few years ago by going on a low carb diet. I still love the feeling that I can lie down, close my eyes and fall asleep - without spending hours tossing and turning. It's still a marvel. One method has you waking yourself at a certain point and then going back to sleep to try to bring on the lucid dream. I'm not willing to play with my sleep like that. I don't want to go back to insomnia.

There's another method that involves checking your watch or counting your fingers periodically throughout the day. I guess the idea is that it will be a habit that will carry on into your dreams. But if you're dreaming you're likely to have too few or too many fingers or time will move backward and forward, so that will cue you to the idea that you're in a dream. I guess I could do something like that. I don't wear a watch, though, they never seem to work on me. And what if I spend months counting my fingers only to learn that I have boring dreams in which I always have the right number of fingers?

[Shoe]

Yes, if you happen to wake up after a few hours of sleep, stay up for a couple of hours, and then go back to sleep you are a lot more likely to have a lucid dream. It is called REM rebound.
Studying your hands or watch is training yourself to notice dream signs. That is noticing that something isn't quite right while you are dreaming which makes you become conscious that you are dreaming.
I was dreaming once that I was in a small village where I currently live and as I was walking back to my car I notice that it was my old beat up VW that I own when I was in my 20's. It made me question what it was doing here and all of a sudden I became conscious that I was dreaming. I then walk over to my old car and got in the driver's seat and started to adjust the rear view mirror. When I turned the mirror to show my face I was amazed to see that I looked like I used to look when I was in my 20's. I remember thinking at the time, dam, look at my face. Not too long after that I woke up.
I think that LaBerge has a newer book that comes with a CD that I saw at amazon. I don't actively try to have LD's. They just happen sometimes and I found that they are connected to sleep paralysis as OBE's are also. I just have nice vivid dreams most of the time now. I still try to look for meaning at times as Freud and Jung thought that dreams are our unconscious trying to convey certain psychological truths to our consciousness.
I see a connection between psychosis and lucid dreams. In a schizophrenic episode our consciousness is overwhelmed by the unconscious and we are like Jung stated, living in a waking dream. In a lucid dream it is like our consciousness take a trip to the land of the unconscious. To me it is kind of an opposite direction thing to that of a psychotic episode.

[costello]

Originally Posted by Shoe

Yes, if you happen to wake up after a few hours of sleep, stay up for a couple of hours, and then go back to sleep you are a lot more likely to have a lucid dream. It is called REM rebound.

Back in the bad old days of insomnia, I had both the kind where you can't fall asleep (minimum one hour to go to sleep, often very much longer) and the kind where you wake at 2 or 3 am and think dark thoughts for hours before falling asleep again. I know that I was much more likely to remember the dreams from, let's say, between 4 am and waking. But I never had a lucid dream in all those years.

This morning actually is a good example of that. I woke at 6 and I had the sensation that I had had quite a few dreams, but try as I might I couldn't remember any of them. Finally I turned my thoughts elsewhere, and one tiny incident from one dream bobbed up into consciousness. Then I decided to sleep some more. I woke again as 8 and got up to the go to the kitchen to start my coffee. As I passed my laptop, I reached over to turn it on. My laptop was in the dreams I had in that last sleep segment, and several segments of the dream came back to me in detail. I should write them down actually. To me dreams are like morning fog. They burn off fairly quickly. I can sit and think about the dream and even try to commit it to memory as soon as I wake up, but if I don't write it down, I'll usually have forgotten it by the end of the day. Weird, uh?

Studying your hands or watch is training yourself to notice dream signs. That is noticing that something isn't quite right while you are dreaming which makes you become conscious that you are dreaming.

It was in the wikipedia article I think that I read a hypothesis about some part of the brain - the laterodorsal prefrontal cortex? - that's implicated in LD. It should be switched off while dreaming. If it's not, you can become aware you're dreaming. See, I have lots of really weird things happen in dreams, and none of it ever cues me to the fact that I'm dreaming. Not ever. I just go with it. Whatever the brain part is, it must be firmly shut off in me.

I think that LaBerge has a newer book that comes with a CD that I saw at amazon. I don't actively try to have LD's. They just happen sometimes and I found that they are connected to sleep paralysis as OBE's are also.

I'll look into it.

I just have nice vivid dreams most of the time now.

I don't think I've ever had a vivid dream either.

I still try to look for meaning at times as Freud and Jung thought that dreams are our unconscious trying to convey certain psychological truths to our consciousness.

I agree there's meaning in dreams sometimes. Most of my dreams, though, seem to be random crap from my day thrown up in some odd combination.

I did have a series of dreams, not recurring but all with a theme. The first was when I was 15. The last I would guess was 10 or 12 years ago. There were probably a dozen or so during those years. It always involved a house or occasionally some other kind of building. Usually I owned it; sometimes I was just visiting. Sometimes I'd owned it for many years, sometimes I'd just bought it. But I would realize in the dream there was a section of the house I'd never known was there before. Sometimes it was an attic or a section hidden behind a wall. Once the building was a duplex, and I'd never realized it before. It was always full of interesting stuff the previous owners had left. It's almost always really exciting, because I now have all this stuff I can rummage through. Sometimes it was like a time capsule, because the stuff had been stored there untouched since the 1950's or whatever. (I'm actually smiling as I type this.) Once the dream was one of those nightmares you wake up from with your heart pounding. I'd just bought a house from the estate of an old woman who had died there. I was looking the house over, and I decided to check out the attic. I could feel evil eminating from there and I knew it was the previous owner's spirit. I refused to let her scare me, and I started climbing. When I got to the attic, I realized there was another attic above it. I kept climbing and kept finding more attics and each time the evil got more intense. (That was a common theme in these dreams - a series of progressively smaller rooms which become more intense as you go.) Finally I got to one set of stairs where the evil flowing down them was so powerful, I couldn't face it. I turned and ran, and that's when I woke up.

That series of dreams probably had a meaning and I must have "got" it because the dreams stopped. But I have no conscious knowledge of the meaning.

I see a connection between psychosis and lucid dreams. In a schizophrenic episode our consciousness is overwhelmed by the unconscious and we are like Jung stated, living in a waking dream. In a lucid dream it is like our consciousness take a trip to the land of the unconscious. To me it is kind of an opposite direction thing to that of a psychotic episode.

I agree there's a connection. And I think there's meaning in the psychosis. With my son it seems like his dream world bleeds into his real world. There's such a dream quality to much of his delusions. He had a notebook, for example, that he kept on top of the refrigerator. He told me that he believed it was a website. He'd given several of his friends "permission" to edit the site. And he believed that what he'd written there was available on the Internet. Very dream-like.

When he was psychotic, I took him to church with me several times. One day the priest told me that my son had followed a teenaged girl into the restroom and knocked on the door to the stall. Apparently he said something odd to her, but he won't tell me what. Anyway he's now very embarrassed about this incident. Last night he told me that several months after this happened, he decided that rearranging the rocks at the end of my driveway would somehow make it better. He can't remember why he thought that would help, but apparently he went out and moved some rocks around. Again, very dream-like, IMO.

[mgran]

I have lucid dreams, and then there are times when I'm awake when I feel as though I'm in a dream. Sometimes the boundary between real life and dreams gets kind of blurry, and I think I've done things which I haven't, or that I've had conversations with people that never occured. Right now I'm doing okay, but when I start having lucid dreams I worry, because generally it's a bad sign.

[costello]

That's interesting, mgran. It does seem to me that at least some of psychosis is this bleeding of dreams in "real life" and "real life" into the dream world. I wish I knew how to "fix" it.

[Shoe]

Originally Posted by costello

That's interesting, mgran. It does seem to me that at least some of psychosis is this bleeding of dreams in "real life" and "real life" into the dream world. I wish I knew how to "fix" it.

Freud said that dreams are a discharge of a build up of libido energy. One of the doctors that Mahoney quotes, Katan, states that as well plus that hallucinations and delusions are a discharge of repressed libido energy.
When I used to have psychotic episodes it was like my imagination would just run away with me. I see a strong connection between sexuality and imagination. Every time we dream we have an increased blood flow to our groin area which to me just confirms what Freud was saying.
I have to say this with a smile on my face, I once told this wise older father figure friend of mine that I read somewhere that celibate people are more creative than non-celibate people. He just sort of smiled and said, "I don't think that I want to be that creative."

[Moose72]

Interesting! I'm BP 1 and I've had lucid dreams.

[Gr3tta]

Sometimes my dreams feel more REAL to me than my "waking" world. I'm not sure if that relates, but I thought maybe it did.

[mgran]

Does anyone else ever get this thing where they see words written down and read them, then check back and they aren't there? I just had that Gr3tta with your post. I read it as "Sometimes my dreams feel more REALto me than my waking world. I'm not sure if that relates, but I thought maybe it did. I'm more real to me in my dreams."

So all the same, apart from the last sentence. Anyone else get this? (I get it a lot right now.)

[pgrundy]

I have lucid dreams. They are often recurring dreams, very vivid, and I can work on them over a number of nights.

I do not have a diagnosis of psychosis or schizophrenia, although I did have postpartum psychosis in my late 30s. I didn't have harmful feelings toward the baby, just vivid hallucinations. I also had very vivid hallucinations as an adolescent. It was like watching a movie while awake, like just sort of 'blanking out' and seeing some other scene in some other place.

My dreams often bleed into reality in weird ways that are not hallucinations but make you wonder WTF.

I think that life is a lot more mysterious than we think it is, and that life itself is a lot like a dream. You don't remember it starting, you're just in it all of a sudden. You take on faith that you were born, but you don't recall that. Dreams are like that too.

[mgran]

Costello, I was thinking about the house dreams you were talking about... it could be that the house was a symbol for you somehow, your mind, and soul and so on. And you kept discovering new things in it because different aspects of your personality were coming out at those times, you were finding out that you were bigger on the inside than you'd thought. Does that make sense?

[costello]

I've often thought it had something to do with there being parts of myself that I'm not aware of. I suppose we all have aspects of ourselves that we haven't plumbed - may not even be aware of those parts.

I'd often wonder - after I'd wake up from the dream, I don't think it occurred to me during the dream - how one can own a house for many years and not notice there are whole sections you've never gone into. I mean the building would have to be noticeably bigger on the outside, because in these dreams the unexplored part of the house is often as big as the part I'm aware of. One would have to wilfully not know. That always seemed significant to me.

In at least one of the dreams I would visit the closed up part of the house periodically, but it was always a frightening journey in and out of that section - through hidden doorways and staircases behind walls. I wonder why I didn't just open it up once I'd realized it was there. In most of the dreams, once the hidden part was found, it was used as part of the house. Anyway in that dream I would take other people to that part of the house. I'd try to give them directions, but no one wanted to go alone. I'd always have to act as guide.

I kind of wish I'd written all these dreams down. I don't remember the details of most of them.

You've probably never heard the radio show This American Life. I listen to it every Saturday at noon. It often has some very good stories. One of them reminds me of my house dreams: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radi...e-on-loon-lake Act one has a group of boys going into an abandoned house. It's very, very much like these dreams - exciting but also a little scary.

[Shoe]

Here is something that I found upon doing a search :

The number of images or symbols in dreams is countless. Anything that can be 'dreamed' of can carry a deeper psychological and emotional significance for us than what may be first apparent on the surface. An example might be a dream about a house. This is a very common dream motif as often the action in a dream will take place in a particular setting. A dream of a house may be about a particular place we know or have lived in or may be a fantasized unreal place that we might never have imagined in waking life. The meaning of a house often suggests either the psychological or physical place that we inhabit. The house and what is going on in it may suggest something of what is occurring in our body or our mind during our waking life. The house may remind us of our childhood home with its attendant feelings of belonging and alienation, security and insecurity, conflict and harmony. The house is a psychological extension of our identity and physical being in the world. The different areas of the house may represent different areas of our inner psyche. Sometimes the house or some of its rooms may be unfamiliar representing unexplored areas of potential within the personality. Exploring an unfamiliar house may represent a new journey of exploration into our own personalities or to work out some psychological problem that resides within our emotional living space. It is fairly common to dream of returning to a house that you knew in childhood. It may represent a return to a familiar situation but with new possibilities. The feelings and reaction to the house and its inhabitants or contents is crucial to understanding the significance of the house in the dream. It may represent a wish to return to a time of childhood innocence or of a need to move on and leave home by getting on with some unfinished part of one's life.

Here is the link if anyone wants to read more

http://www.stanford.edu/~corelli/dreams.html

[costello]

Very interesting, Shoe. I always think that to really understand the dream you have to know quite a bit about the person and their circumstances. Symbols can be so personal. Some of my dreams are so obvious that I know immediately what they mean. Some are nonsense. Others - like the house dreams - seem significant to me, but I confess I don't spend a lot of time trying to work them out. Seems like it would do the dream violence in some way. I guess I think if my subconscious is trying to talk to me in symbols I shouldn't try to force it into some kind of logical narrative.

I can only remember one tiny bit of my dream last night. I was walking around the lake I live at (which I had been thinking about doing before I fell asleep). Just as I got to the dam I saw a large reptile - a crocodile or alligator - running up the spillway toward me, but then it stopped. Then I looked down and saw a wild cat (a cougar?) walking next to me, just like a dog heeling. Then it disappeared. There was another wild animal in the same sequence, but I can't remember what. The funny thing is I was trying to remember what that third animal was in a later part of the dream. Reminds me of porcupine's totems.

P.S. I just checked wikipedia. It was definitely a cougar in my dream. And the reptile was an American alligator. Neither animal lives in my area, of course.

What's funny is how clearly I saw that alligator. Even though I have no interest in alligators and haven't studied them closely, I somehow had a very accurate alligator image stored in my mind. Yet if you asked me to describe an alligator when awake, I doubt if I'd be able to do as well as I did in the dream.

That's the real reason I want a lucid dream. My dad died 18 years ago, and I miss him. I'd like to talk to him in a dream, because I know that if I could see him in a dream I'd have access to parts of my memory that I don't have access to while I'm awake. I'd like to "hear" his voice and have him tell me some of his stories of his childhood that he told me while he was alive but I can't remember the details. I'm sure the details are locked away in my memory - just like the image of the alligator was - but I don't have conscious access to them.

[mgran]

Costello, have you considered hypnosis to unlock those parts of your memory? I know people who swear by hypnosis for all sorts of things.

[Shoe]

It was in the summer of 2003 that I experienced that false awakening that I wrote about earlier. Not too long after that I had another really strange sleep related experience. After I had the false awakening I got on the internet and started to do searches on OBE's and I found this group that actively tries to seek out such experiences. I found out that I had experienced sleep paralysis from time to time before in my life but never knew what it was or called before. I found out that it can sometimes act as a springboard for lucid dreams and OBE's. I also learned of a theory that many people who experience alien abduction may be experiencing sleep paralysis.
Anyway, about a month after the false awakening as I was sleeping I felt myself falling into sleep paralysis. Most of the time I first notice it as a kind of buzzing or humming feeling that is taking over me and I instinctively fight to break free of. This time when I broke free of it I woke up in a strange bed in a strange house. That was really a pretty strange scary feeling as I wasn't really all that aware of what a lucid dream was for sure. Anyway, I started to walk through the house hoping to myself that I wouldn't run into any entities that I had learned you can sometimes meet up with. I walked down a hallway and then into this open room and I remember looking to the left and down stairs a ways and saw what looked like a kitchen with a door slightly open. I remember seeing stars outside the door. Then I looked across from where I was standing and saw another room that had a light in it and there I saw two figure setting at a table facing each other and in the background I just saw the legs of some guy who was walking up a flight of stairs. Seeing those people really kind of freaked me out at the time and I grab a chair that was close by and threw it towards them. The one setting at the left end of the table stood up and looked over towards me and then walked over close to me and said, "Hey, don't be coming in here and start shooting people now." I nervously said, "OK we can be friends." I saw a slight smile start to come on his face and then I woke up.
I think part of the reason that I started to have these strange sleep experiences at this time was because I had just completed a 6 month treatment for hepatitis C. The treatment was known to cause a decrease of serotonin levels and it was recommended that people take antidepressants while under going treatment. I didn't want to take any though and didn't.
I came across this documentary about sleep paralysis at that documentary site that you led me to. Thanks again for that Costello.
Warning though. It might be a little disturbing for some to watch.

http://watchdocumentary.com/watch/sl...8db271025.html

Originally Posted by costello

Very interesting, Shoe. I always think that to really understand the dream you have to know quite a bit about the person and their circumstances. Symbols can be so personal. Some of my dreams are so obvious that I know immediately what they mean. Some are nonsense. Others - like the house dreams - seem significant to me, but I confess I don't spend a lot of time trying to work them out. Seems like it would do the dream violence in some way. I guess I think if my subconscious is trying to talk to me in symbols I shouldn't try to force it into some kind of logical narrative.

I can only remember one tiny bit of my dream last night. I was walking around the lake I live at (which I had been thinking about doing before I fell asleep). Just as I got to the dam I saw a large reptile - a crocodile or alligator - running up the spillway toward me, but then it stopped. Then I looked down and saw a wild cat (a cougar?) walking next to me, just like a dog heeling. Then it disappeared. There was another wild animal in the same sequence, but I can't remember what. The funny thing is I was trying to remember what that third animal was in a later part of the dream. Reminds me of porcupine's totems.

P.S. I just checked wikipedia. It was definitely a cougar in my dream. And the reptile was an American alligator. Neither animal lives in my area, of course.

What's funny is how clearly I saw that alligator. Even though I have no interest in alligators and haven't studied them closely, I somehow had a very accurate alligator image stored in my mind. Yet if you asked me to describe an alligator when awake, I doubt if I'd be able to do as well as I did in the dream.

That's the real reason I want a lucid dream. My dad died 18 years ago, and I miss him. I'd like to talk to him in a dream, because I know that if I could see him in a dream I'd have access to parts of my memory that I don't have access to while I'm awake. I'd like to "hear" his voice and have him tell me some of his stories of his childhood that he told me while he was alive but I can't remember the details. I'm sure the details are locked away in my memory - just like the image of the alligator was - but I don't have conscious access to them.

[Not Answerable]

I think what I had was a lucid dream. Well I basically just had all control of the dream.. all.. for the first while I kept waking up briefly because I couldn't control it... but once I could control it I could do anything.. I could stop walking.. collapse, and then wake up to fall back asleep again where I was.. weird..

I've also had some other experiences.. like upon wakening having a vision.. or something.. where all my limbs felt like they were being carried going upwards.. but I was trying to open my eyes to get out and then I screamed in the vision I guess.. don't know if I scream in real life..

[costello]

Originally Posted by Shoe

http://watchdocumentary.com/watch/sl...8db271025.html

Fascinating video. I agree it might be too intense for some people. I'm still watching it. So, far I've only watched the first part.

It's interesting that sleep paralysis/hypnagogic hallucinations have been recorded so far back in history.

I read a book from the library where I work a few years ago. Can't remember the title. I'd like to re-read it now that I have different insights into psychosis because of my son. Anyway this was a book about a murder trial in some eastern state (Rhode Island?) before the United States was formed (1600's?). An old woman had died, and it was believed to be a natural death, until she came to a neighbor in a hypnagogic hallucination and told him that her son had murdered her. This was enough to open an investigation, try the son, and execute him.

The author of the book saw this as a product of the fact that the community knew there was something seriously wrong in the family. The woman had complained bitterly and frequently to her neighbors about the treatment she received from her son. Possibly the community "knew" on some level that the death wasn't an accident, but they had no evidence until the "ghost" came back to tell.

[costello]

Originally Posted by costello

I read a book from the library where I work a few years ago. ...

I found the book: Killed Strangely.

[Shoe]

Thanks for the book reference Costello. Here is a link to a 10 part video on you tube with David Hufford. He is the guy with the gray beard commenting in the last video I posted. He is a professor at Penn state and a real expert on sleep paralysis and wrote a classic book on the subject. I have read 4 different books now and have found them all fascinating.

Originally Posted by costello

Fascinating video. I agree it might be too intense for some people. I'm still watching it. So, far I've only watched the first part.

It's interesting that sleep paralysis/hypnagogic hallucinations have been recorded so far back in history.

I read a book from the library where I work a few years ago. Can't remember the title. I'd like to re-read it now that I have different insights into psychosis because of my son. Anyway this was a book about a murder trial in some eastern state (Rhode Island?) before the United States was formed (1600's?). An old woman had died, and it was believed to be a natural death, until she came to a neighbor in a hypnagogic hallucination and told him that her son had murdered her. This was enough to open an investigation, try the son, and execute him.

The author of the book saw this as a product of the fact that the community knew there was something seriously wrong in the family. The woman had complained bitterly and frequently to her neighbors about the treatment she received from her son. Possibly the community "knew" on some level that the death wasn't an accident, but they had no evidence until the "ghost" came back to tell.

[costello]

Originally Posted by Not Answerable

I think what I had was a lucid dream. Well I basically just had all control of the dream

That does sound like a lucid dream.

I've also had some other experiences.. like upon wakening having a vision.. or something.. where all my limbs felt like they were being carried going upwards.. but I was trying to open my eyes to get out and then I screamed in the vision I guess.. don't know if I scream in real life..

That sounds like some kind of hypnagogic hallucination. I gather they're fairly common.

[costello]

Originally Posted by Shoe

Thanks for the book reference Costello. Here is a link to a 10 part video on you tube with David Hufford. He is the guy with the gray beard commenting in the last video I posted. He is a professor at Penn state and a real expert on sleep paralysis and wrote a classic book on the subject. I have read 4 different books now and have found them all fascinating.

Thanks. I'll have a look at it.