Lucid dreaming – dreams of clarity

Although the concept of ‘lucid dreaming’ was first coined by Frederik Willems van Eeden, a Dutch psychiatrist, and introduced at the meeting of The Society for Psychical Research held on 22 April 1913, the phenomenon of lucid dreaming was already known in earlier historical periods and its descriptions can be found in writings of Aristotle. However, modern lucid dreaming research was established only after LaBerge introduced his method for physiological investigation of lucid dreaming through eye signals in 1980. Current attempts in the field are directed at defining the neuro-physiological correlates of lucid dreaming, an aim that still has yet to be achieved. One of the possible applications of lucid dreaming is in the field of psychotherapy where it is usually used in treating nightmares. However, other possible therapeutic potentials of lucid dreaming are still in the process of being discovered and therefore constitute a fertile area for future researchers. Copyright © 2009 British Society of Experimental & Clinical Hypnosis. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.