These two states reside at the border between sleep and wakeful consciousness. As border conditions, hypnagogia and hypnopompia might be particularly important regarding evolving human cognition and affect. While these two states receive little attention, they might like other threshold experiences (Turner, 1969; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) provide us with “cutting-edge” thoughts and feelings. We stretch our body, stretch our mind, and perhaps reveal answers to important life issues.
A hypnagogic state often involves free associations and the swirling around of multiple visual and auditory images. Apparently, we don’t need costly psychoanalysis to generate multiple images for subsequent interpretation. These swirling images can be very entertaining (like a great light show!). Furthermore, they might allow us to review the day’s activities from a new perspective. They may yield new insights, much as Deirdre Barrett (2001) suggests regarding the unique functions that may be played by dreams. This state might even help to inaugurate the memory consolidation processes that occur during the night.
At the same time, hypnopompia can provide a platform for review of nighttime production (including dreams and memory consolidations) and for potential transfer of these productions to daytime awareness. Once again, swirling and distorted images can yield insights. If nothing else, the hypnopompic (and hypnagogic) states can provide us with an opportunity to more fully appreciate the creativity of our unconscious when it is unbridled from conscious life, yet available to us during these two threshold states.
Lucid Dreams
We come finally to the most intriguing of the dream types. These are the so-called “lucid dreams.” These are the unique dreams that cross over the border between unconscious and conscious awareness of being in a dream state. We don’t just stand on the edge of sleep and wakefulness, as we do during our dream-like hypnopompic and hypnagogic states. There is a remarkable borderland in the Lucid Dream where the dreamer is dwelling between dream and awake states of consciousness. A small percentage of individuals report having lucid dreams. In many instances, they indicate that they are aware of being in this state. Furthermore, in some cases, the dreamer can actually control the narrative of their dream or can communicate with other people in that state.
In general, lucid dreams are Linear, long, and slow-moving. They usually are simple and participant-based. The distinctive feature is that you know you are participating as the dreamer. In some cases, the lucid dream is complex and multi-tiered. The dreamer might not only know that they are dreaming but also know that they are observing the dream as it unfolds. In essence, the lucid dreamer is both a participant and observer. Lucid dreams are usually not creative. But they are memorable, so whatever creativity and generativity is present can be retrieved and used during waking hours.
It may be possible to train oneself to produce a lucid dream, though the task would no doubt take discipline and practice. Multiple strategies have been employed to increase lucid dreaming (e.g., Bryan and Singh, 2024). Without spoiling the excitement about lucid dreams, I suspect that sometimes the lucid dreamer actually is operating in a hypnagogic or hypnopompic state. We might try to encourage folks to appreciate what is occurring in these transitional states between sleep and wakefulness. They might prove to be just as generative as the lucid dream. And the content of these hypnagogic and hypnopompic states can often be controlled just as effectively as can the content of a lucid dream. It should also be noted, however, that dream states of all types may yield the most interesting and insightful content precisely because we can’t control their content!
