False awakening
Encyclopedia
A false awakening is a vivid and convincing dream
about awakening from sleep
, while the dreamer in reality continues to sleep. After a false awakening, subjects often dream they are performing daily morning rituals such as cooking, cleaning and eating. The experience is sometimes called a double dream, or a dream within a dream.
", that is, one in which the dreamer may start to wonder if they are really awake and may or may not come to the correct conclusion. In a study by Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett
, 2,000 dreams from 200 subjects were examined and it was found that false awakenings and lucidity were significantly more likely to occur within the same dream or within different dreams of the same night. False awakenings often preceded lucidity as a cue, but they could also follow the realization of lucidity, often losing it in the process.
claimed to have experienced "about a hundred" false awakenings in succession while coming around from a general anesthetic.
suggested a distinction should be made between two types of false awakening:
A common false awakening is a "late for work" scenario. A person may "wake up" in a typical room, with most things looking normal, and realize he or she overslept and missed the start time at work or school. Clocks, if found in the dream, will show time indicating that fact. The resulting panic is often strong enough to jar the person awake for real (much like from a nightmare). A sense of relief almost always comes from realizing that no oversleeping actually took place.
Charles McCreery
drew attention to the similarity between this description and the description by the German psychopathologist Karl Jaspers
(1923) of the so-called "primary delusionary experience" (a general feeling that precedes more specific delusory belief). Jaspers wrote:
McCreery suggests this phenomenological similarity is not coincidental, and results from the idea that both phenomena, the Type 2 false awakening and the primary delusionary experience, are phenomena of sleep. He suggests that the primary delusionary experience, like other phenomena of psychosis such as hallucinations and secondary or specific delusions, represents an intrusion into waking consciousness of processes associated with stage 1 sleep. It is suggested that the reason for these intrusions is that the psychotic subject is in a state of hyper-arousal, a state that can lead to what Ian Oswald
called "micro-sleeps" in waking life.
Subjects may also experience sleep paralysis
.
A Calvin and Hobbes
strip once involved Calvin waking up from a dream, then stepping outside his door only to find it is a abyss, where he wakes up again, and repeats it, only to actually wake up and be incredibly frightened about leaving the house.
A twist at the end of the horror film Dead of Night
(1945) is an early example of a re-occurring false awaking.
Another example, the viewer is led to believe that the subject has awoken from a nightmare or dream, only for some element of the nightmare to reappear suddenly and cause a "second" or "true" awakening. This technique was used in the film An American Werewolf in London
.
The film Waking Life
deals with dream
ing, lucid dreaming and false awakening.
The film Vanilla Sky
begins with the main character having a Type 2 false awakening, achieved cinematically with spectacular "empty city" effects.
The Twilight Zone
episode "Shadow Play" involved a man having a dream in which he is sentenced to die, with the various roles (judge, jury foreman, attorney, fellow inmates, etc.) being played by people from his past. At the moment he is executed, the dream re-starts, with the characters shuffled. The episode was part of the original series, and re-made as part of the 1985–89 revival.
In the first volume of Neil Gaiman
's graphic novel Sandman, the newly freed Morpheus, lord of Dreams, punishes his captor, Alexander Burgess, with endless false awakening nightmares.
In Joan Baez
's The Dream Song, the lyrics discuss a dream-within-a-dream resulting from her apparent awakening. The lyrics end "When I really woke I was frozen in between; I didn't know who I was, it was a dream inside a dream; It's all a dream."
In the film Inception
the dream-within-a-dream and the false awakening are central to the plot.
The opening of the film Star Trek: First Contact
shows Captain Picard seeming to awake from a nightmare flashback to his time on a Borg
ship, washing his face, then gasping in horror as a Borg implant erupts from it--at which point he is awakened in reality by a beeping computer.
The Rugrats
episode "In The Dreamtime" features Chuckie
experiencing a false awakening.
The Jimmy Neutron episode "Sleepless in Retroville" features many false awakenings at the end, where different characters constantly wake up from each other's dreams.
The plot of the South Park
episode "City on the Edge of Forever
" is revealed to be a dream within a dream for Stan Marsh
; he undergoes a false awakening as Cartman within his own dream.
In the Phineas and Ferb
episode "Phineas and Ferb get busted" Perry experienced a false awakening of the boys being busted.
Dream
Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, philosophical intrigue and religious...
about awakening from sleep
Sleep
Sleep is a naturally recurring state characterized by reduced or absent consciousness, relatively suspended sensory activity, and inactivity of nearly all voluntary muscles. It is distinguished from quiet wakefulness by a decreased ability to react to stimuli, and is more easily reversible than...
, while the dreamer in reality continues to sleep. After a false awakening, subjects often dream they are performing daily morning rituals such as cooking, cleaning and eating. The experience is sometimes called a double dream, or a dream within a dream.
Lucidity
A false awakening may occur following an ordinary dream or following a lucid dream (one in which the dreamer has been aware of dreaming). Particularly if the false awakening follows a lucid dream, the false awakening may turn into a "pre-lucid dreamPre-lucid dream
A pre-lucid dream is one in which the dreamer considers the question, "Am I asleep and dreaming?" The dreamer may or may not come to the correct conclusion...
", that is, one in which the dreamer may start to wonder if they are really awake and may or may not come to the correct conclusion. In a study by Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett
Deirdre Barrett
Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D. is an author and psychologist who teaches at Harvard Medical School. She is known for her research on dreams, hypnosis, and imagery and has written on evolutionary psychology. Barrett is a Past President of The International Association for the Study of Dreams and of the...
, 2,000 dreams from 200 subjects were examined and it was found that false awakenings and lucidity were significantly more likely to occur within the same dream or within different dreams of the same night. False awakenings often preceded lucidity as a cue, but they could also follow the realization of lucidity, often losing it in the process.
Continuum
Another type of false awakening is a continuum. In a continuum, the subject falls asleep in real life, but in the dream following, the brain simulates the subject as though they were still awake. At times the individual can perform actions unknowingly. The movie Nightmare on Elm Street popularized this phenomenon.Realism and unrealism
Certain aspects of life may be dramatized, or out of place in false awakenings. Things may seem wrong: details, like the painting on a wall, not being able to talk or difficulty reading (purportedly reading in lucid dreams is often difficult or impossible,) or, oddly, normal types of foods gone missing. In some experiences, the subject's senses are heightened, or changed.Repetition
Because the mind still dreams after a false awakening, there may be more than one false awakening in a single dream. Subjects may dream they wake up, eat breakfast, brush their teeth, and so on; suddenly awake again in bed (still in a dream), begin morning rituals again, awaken again, and so forth. The philosopher Bertrand RussellBertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
claimed to have experienced "about a hundred" false awakenings in succession while coming around from a general anesthetic.
Types of false awakening
Celia GreenCelia Green
Celia Elizabeth Green is a British writer on philosophical skepticism, twentieth-century thought, and psychology.- Biography :...
suggested a distinction should be made between two types of false awakening:
Type 1
Type 1 is the more common, in which the dreamer seems to wake up, but not necessarily in realistic surroundings, that is, not in their own bedroom. A pre-lucid dream may ensue. More commonly, dreamers will believe they have awakened, and then either wake up for real in their own bed or "fall back asleep" in the dream.A common false awakening is a "late for work" scenario. A person may "wake up" in a typical room, with most things looking normal, and realize he or she overslept and missed the start time at work or school. Clocks, if found in the dream, will show time indicating that fact. The resulting panic is often strong enough to jar the person awake for real (much like from a nightmare). A sense of relief almost always comes from realizing that no oversleeping actually took place.
Type 2
The type 2 false awakening seems to be considerably less common. Green characterized it as follows:Charles McCreery
Charles McCreery
Charles Anthony Selby McCreery is a British psychologist and author, best known for his collaboration with Celia Green on work on hallucinatory states in normal people.- Biography :...
drew attention to the similarity between this description and the description by the German psychopathologist Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
Karl Theodor Jaspers was a German psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jaspers turned to philosophical inquiry and attempted to discover an innovative philosophical system...
(1923) of the so-called "primary delusionary experience" (a general feeling that precedes more specific delusory belief). Jaspers wrote:
McCreery suggests this phenomenological similarity is not coincidental, and results from the idea that both phenomena, the Type 2 false awakening and the primary delusionary experience, are phenomena of sleep. He suggests that the primary delusionary experience, like other phenomena of psychosis such as hallucinations and secondary or specific delusions, represents an intrusion into waking consciousness of processes associated with stage 1 sleep. It is suggested that the reason for these intrusions is that the psychotic subject is in a state of hyper-arousal, a state that can lead to what Ian Oswald
Ian Oswald
Ian Oswald is a retired sleep researcher and psychiatrist.-Academic career:He was educated first in London and later in Belper, Derbyshire. In 1947, he became a medical student at Caius College, Cambridge, gaining a First Class Honours degree in the Part 2 Tripos in Psychology...
called "micro-sleeps" in waking life.
Subjects may also experience sleep paralysis
Sleep paralysis
Sleep paralysis is paralysis associated with sleep that may occur in healthy persons or may be associated with narcolepsy, cataplexy, and hypnagogic hallucinations. The pathophysiology of this condition is closely related to the normal hypotonia that occurs during REM sleep. When considered to be a...
.
In popular culture
False awakenings are sometimes used as a device in literature, and especially films, to increase "shock" effects by inducing a feel of calm in the viewer following something disturbing.A Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin and Hobbes is a syndicated daily comic strip that was written and illustrated by American cartoonist Bill Watterson, and syndicated from November 18, 1985, to December 31, 1995. It follows the humorous antics of Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year-old boy, and Hobbes, his...
strip once involved Calvin waking up from a dream, then stepping outside his door only to find it is a abyss, where he wakes up again, and repeats it, only to actually wake up and be incredibly frightened about leaving the house.
A twist at the end of the horror film Dead of Night
Dead of Night
Dead of Night is a British portmanteau horror film made by Ealing Studios, its various episodes directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden and Robert Hamer. The film stars Mervyn Johns, Googie Withers and Michael Redgrave...
(1945) is an early example of a re-occurring false awaking.
Another example, the viewer is led to believe that the subject has awoken from a nightmare or dream, only for some element of the nightmare to reappear suddenly and cause a "second" or "true" awakening. This technique was used in the film An American Werewolf in London
An American Werewolf in London
An American Werewolf in London is a 1981 British-American horror film, written and directed by John Landis. It stars David Naughton, Jenny Agutter, and Griffin Dunne....
.
The film Waking Life
Waking Life
Waking Life is an American animated film , directed by Richard Linklater and released in 2001. The entire film was shot using digital video and then a team of artists using computers drew stylized lines and colors over each frame.The film focuses on the nature of dreams, consciousness, and...
deals with dream
Dream
Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, philosophical intrigue and religious...
ing, lucid dreaming and false awakening.
The film Vanilla Sky
Vanilla Sky
Vanilla Sky is a 2001 American psychological thriller film directed, co-produced and co-written by Cameron Crowe. The film is an English-language remake of the 1997 Spanish movie Abre los ojos , the screenplay for which was written by Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil...
begins with the main character having a Type 2 false awakening, achieved cinematically with spectacular "empty city" effects.
The Twilight Zone
Twilight zone
-Television series and spinoffs:*The Twilight Zone, the anthology television series and its franchise:**The Twilight Zone , the 1959–1964 original television series***Twilight Zone: The Movie, a 1983 film based on the original series...
episode "Shadow Play" involved a man having a dream in which he is sentenced to die, with the various roles (judge, jury foreman, attorney, fellow inmates, etc.) being played by people from his past. At the moment he is executed, the dream re-starts, with the characters shuffled. The episode was part of the original series, and re-made as part of the 1985–89 revival.
In the first volume of Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
's graphic novel Sandman, the newly freed Morpheus, lord of Dreams, punishes his captor, Alexander Burgess, with endless false awakening nightmares.
In Joan Baez
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....
's The Dream Song, the lyrics discuss a dream-within-a-dream resulting from her apparent awakening. The lyrics end "When I really woke I was frozen in between; I didn't know who I was, it was a dream inside a dream; It's all a dream."
In the film Inception
Inception
Inception: The Subconscious Jams 1994-1995 is a compilation of unreleased tracks by the band Download.-Track listing:# "Primitive Tekno Jam" – 3:23# "Bee Sting Sickness" – 8:04# "Weed Acid Techno" – 8:19...
the dream-within-a-dream and the false awakening are central to the plot.
The opening of the film Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek: First Contact is the eighth feature film in the Star Trek science fiction franchise, released in November 1996, by Paramount Pictures. First Contact is the first film in the franchise to feature no cast members from the original Star Trek television series of the 1960s...
shows Captain Picard seeming to awake from a nightmare flashback to his time on a Borg
Borg
Borg may refer to:* Borg * Borg means Castle in some Nordic languages.-Places:*Borg, Saarland, Germany*Borg á Mýrum, Iceland*Borg, Vestvågøy, Norway*Diocese of Borg, Norway*Borg Massif, Antarctica*Borg El Arab, Egypt...
ship, washing his face, then gasping in horror as a Borg implant erupts from it--at which point he is awakened in reality by a beeping computer.
The Rugrats
Rugrats
Rugrats is an American animated television series created by Arlene Klasky, Gábor Csupó, and Paul Germain for Nickelodeon. The series premiered on August 11, 1991, and aired its last episode on June 8, 2004....
episode "In The Dreamtime" features Chuckie
Chuckie Finster
Charles "Chuckie" Crandall Finster is a fictional character from the Nickelodeon animated television series' Rugrats and All Grown Up!. He is Tommy Pickles' best friend and tritagonist . The character is voiced by Christine Cavanaugh...
experiencing a false awakening.
The Jimmy Neutron episode "Sleepless in Retroville" features many false awakenings at the end, where different characters constantly wake up from each other's dreams.
The plot of the South Park
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...
episode "City on the Edge of Forever
City on the Edge of Forever
"City on the Edge of Forever" is the seventh episode of the second season of the animated television series South Park, and the 20th episode of the series overall...
" is revealed to be a dream within a dream for Stan Marsh
Stan Marsh
Stanley Randall "Stan" Marsh is a fictional character in the animated television series South Park. He is voiced by and loosely based on series co-creator Trey Parker. Stan is one of the show's four central characters, along with his friends Kyle Broflovski, Kenny McCormick, and Eric Cartman...
; he undergoes a false awakening as Cartman within his own dream.
In the Phineas and Ferb
Phineas and Ferb
Phineas and Ferb is an American animated television comedy series. Originally broadcast as a preview on August 17, 2007, on Disney Channel, the series follows Phineas Flynn and his English stepbrother Ferb Fletcher on summer vacation. Every day the boys embark on some grand new project, which...
episode "Phineas and Ferb get busted" Perry experienced a false awakening of the boys being busted.
See also
- DreamDreamDreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, philosophical intrigue and religious...
- Dream argumentDream argumentThe dream argument is the postulation that the act of dreaming provides preliminary evidence that the senses we trust to distinguish reality from illusion should not be fully trusted, and therefore any state that is dependent on our senses should at the very least be carefully examined and...
- Déjà vuDéjà vuDéjà vu is the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances of the prior encounter are uncertain and were perhaps imagined...
- Hallucinations in the saneHallucinations in the saneA hallucination may occur in a person in a state of good mental and physical health, even in the apparent absence of a transient trigger factor such as fatigue, intoxication or sensory deprivation....
- HypnagogiaHypnagogiaHypnagogia is the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep , originally coined in adjectival form as "hypnagogic" by Alfred Maury....
- InceptionInceptionInception: The Subconscious Jams 1994-1995 is a compilation of unreleased tracks by the band Download.-Track listing:# "Primitive Tekno Jam" – 3:23# "Bee Sting Sickness" – 8:04# "Weed Acid Techno" – 8:19...
- Lucid dreamingLucid dreamingA lucid dream is a dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming. The term was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik van Eeden . In a lucid dream, the dreamer can actively participate in and manipulate imaginary experiences in the dream environment. Lucid dreams can seem real and...
- NightmareNightmareA nightmare is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong negative emotional response from the mind, typically fear or horror, but also despair, anxiety and great sadness. The dream may contain situations of danger, discomfort, psychological or physical terror...
- Simulated realitySimulated realitySimulated reality is the proposition that reality could be simulated—perhaps by computer simulation—to a degree indistinguishable from "true" reality. It could contain conscious minds which may or may not be fully aware that they are living inside a simulation....
- Sleep paralysisSleep paralysisSleep paralysis is paralysis associated with sleep that may occur in healthy persons or may be associated with narcolepsy, cataplexy, and hypnagogic hallucinations. The pathophysiology of this condition is closely related to the normal hypotonia that occurs during REM sleep. When considered to be a...
- Waking LifeWaking LifeWaking Life is an American animated film , directed by Richard Linklater and released in 2001. The entire film was shot using digital video and then a team of artists using computers drew stylized lines and colors over each frame.The film focuses on the nature of dreams, consciousness, and...