Inducing Lucid Dreams and its Potential Long-Term Risks on Mental Health

     Since we spend a significant part of our lives dreaming, it is imperative that dreams are thoroughly studied. In the last few years, the topic of lucid dreaming and the induction of lucid dreaming has become more widespread. People enjoy controlling their dreams for various reasons: the ability to escape reality, to perform things that are not possible in real life, to overcome a fear, to solve problems, to fulfill their dreams, etc. When people report on their dreams, their reports can be subject to distortion and forgetfulness caused by the delay between the dream and the report (Konkoly). Instead of relying solely on unreliable dream reports, Konkoly and her colleagues found a way to communicate with lucid dreamers while they are actively dreaming. Konkoloy and her colleagues induced lucid dreaming by pairing a reality check with sensory stimulation which trained participants to associate a cue with a lucid state of mind. This two-way communication between the dreamer and the researcher is ground-breaking and it has the possibility to be the foundation of many future research studies on dreams. However, before further research is done, it is crucial that we also analyze the risks of inducing lucid dreams.

    Soffer-Dudek’s research, “Lucid Dreaming: Intensity, But Not Frequency, Is Inversely Related to Psychopathology,” is the first research study to explore the potential long-term risks following the use of lucid dreaming induction techniques. Aviram and Soffer-Dudek and his colleagues found that lucid dream intensity was inversely correlated to several psychopathological symptoms including depression and anxiety. Along with that finding, induced lucid dreaming significantly predicted an increase in dissociation and schizotypy symptoms across a span of two months. This underpins the idea that lucid dreaming induction techniques, like reality testing used in Konkoly’s research, may induce symptoms in which people are unable to differentiate between reality and fantasy, also known as derealization. This research shows that there are long-term risks of inducing lucid dreaming. So where do we go from here? I believe that there is more research that needs to be done on the risks of inducing lucid dreaming since this is the only research that has studied the potential long-term risks I think being able to communicate with lucid dreamers is a very helpful research technique but is it worth risking the mental health of the participants?