CONSCIOUSNESS

5. Experiential Approaches 201
very much like the strategies of video gaming. The enhanced bizarreness of lucid-gamer associated
dreams may also serve as a trigger for the emergence of their increased lucidity. The
exotic-mythic element of the lucid bizarre dreams of gamers (Gackenbach et al, in press) is
similar to previous research on the archetypal content in dreams (Hunt, 1989). Finally, by
comparing the lucid versus non-lucid dreams of gamers, it was concluded that lucidity in
gamer’s dreams emphasized the already generally positive dream experience of being lucid
in sleep, including the enhanced aggression which facilitated the sense of empowerment also
typical in video game playing. Not only is there more lucidity in gamer’s dreams, but that
lucidity seems to be further enhanced by the gaming experience. To be absorbed in consciousness,
be it in lucid dreams, intense fantasy or meditation is also to be absorbed in the social
field more deeply than is available in ordinary consciousness. Since consciousness itself is
collective already, and the high absorber is entering the level provided in traditional times
by externalized ritual and myth, gaming offers those in contemporary western individualistic
society much the same function. Specifically video game play provides an experience with
an externalized absorptive consciousness which provide patterns that are accordingly socially
structured, simultaneously shared, and so offering some of the support of tribal societies. C11
304 Lucid Dreaming: Possible Implications for Psychiatric Treatment Ivan Limosani,
A. D’Agostino; E. Perry (A.O. San Paolo, Università Degli Studi
Di Milano, Milan, Italy)
Although almost all the funding pioneers of the modern scientific approach to mental
disorders have in some way or another commented on the similarities between dreaming
and psychosis (Freud, 1900; Kraepelin, 1906; Jung, 1907, Bleuler, 1911, Minkowski, 1927),
the scientific objectivation of this observation has not yet been reached. Recent advances in
the understanding of neurochemical modulation and regional brain activation provide some
support to the hypothesis that acute psychotic mental states share several neurobiological
similarities with dreaming (Schwartz S, Maquet P, 2002). Lucidity in dreams may be conceptualized
as a dissociation of levels of consciousness, so that the sleeping dreamer is aware of
being within a dream and may decide to actively influence dream plot and interactions rather
than passively experience the dream as usually occurs (LaBerge, 1989; Voss et al., 2009). In
our view, the neurobiological underpinnings of lucidity may be a key to the understanding of
psychotic patients’ loss of touch with reality. Research into the psychopharmacological and
cognitive induction of lucidity may prove of use in the treatment of acute psychoses, by helping
patients to gain awareness into the abnormal origin of their condition. P11
5.8 Anomalous experiences
305 What is it Like to Experience Synesthesia and What Might it Mean? Patricia
Lynne Duffy (UN Language And Communications, United Nations
Language and Communications Program, New York, NY)
Patricia Lynne Duffy, author of Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens: How synesthetes color
their worlds (Henry Holt & Company 2001 – the first book by a synesthete about synesthesia,
will describe her own experiences of synesthesia as well as those of the numerous synesthetes
she has interviewed. Duffy will explore the question, “What is it like to live with the ‘fusedsense’
perceptions of synesthesia?” and “Is there a connection between our ‘personal coding’
of information in a given domain – and the way in which we understand and develop ideas in
that domain?” For example, did author Vladimir Nabokov’s experience of the alphabet as a
‘landscape’ of colored and textured objects – affect his development and use of language in his
literary works? Did physicist Richard Feynman’s synesthetic sense of “colored equations flying
all around him” contribute to the way he perceived connections and evolved his theories of
Quantum mechanics? (Feynman made a still widely used pictorial representation scheme for
the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of subatomic particles). Similarly, saints
and seers have described a blending of sense perceptions in accounts of their mystical experiences.
Is there a connection between synesthetic perception and types of consciousness? By
citing a variety of descriptions of synesthetic experiences, Duffy will explore the mystery of