Practitioners, scientists, researchers, and philosophers have long engaged with the topic of lucid dreams (LD). But this area has recently become of interest in clinical medicine: William Camann, an anesthesiologist from Boston (USA), published a short article in a scientific journal about how he uses LD with patients.
Before injecting an anesthetic for surgery, Camann always tries to set patients up in the right way, to relax them by saying something pleasant. Most often, he adds: “Pick a nice dream…” Sometimes patients share details of their fantasies: a beautiful beach, a quiet forest, or a fun place to relax. But one day a patient retorted: “You can’t pick your dreams.” “I was, frankly, speechless,” Camann wrote. “In almost 40 years of doing anesthesiology, I had never heard this response.”
He could not stop thinking about it. Can we really choose our dreams? Having delved into the question, Camann came to the topic of lucid dreams. He studied the classical works of Aristotle and Carlos Castaneda, as well as popular films such as Inception and Vanilla Sky, and even managed to personally experience the phenomenon.
At first glance, this newfound interest has not made much of a difference to the doctor’s work. He still advises patients to “pick a nice dream” before surgery. But he thinks about it differently. Will the patient pick a dream? Will they remember it? We should add that, Dr. Camann probably has many things to say now in response to the remark that picking a dream is impossible.
What do you think: what other professions could use to learn about lucid dreams?
The article is included in the October 2021 issue of the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia.
