Hypnagogic State

HYPNAGOGIC STATE (from Greek hypnos—sleep and ago—lead), the moments of transition from wakefulness to sleep. The first characteristic of this state is a progressive decrease in mental activity, manifested in the relaxation of attention and in dissociative phenomena: thoughts lose the thread that guides them in the waking state, becoming fragmented and incoherent, and the form into which they are poured ceases to correspond to the vaguely conscious content. The further it goes, the more logical thinking is replaced by a simple succession of more or less emotionally colored visual images, predominantly visual ones. These images arise independently of the will of the falling-asleep person and usually precisely when all volitional tension disappears. Descriptions given by individuals who observed themselves at these moments most often present the following picture. First, the dark field of vision is gradually filled with individual light spots or colored figures that easily change their outlines and coloring; then their place is taken by more clearly outlined forms connected with one or another content: people, animals, halls, squares, various objects appear—rarely familiar, much more often never actually seen. These pictures are extremely unstable, constantly moving, replacing each other, or undergoing various transformations. If speech images pass before consciousness at the same time, or if the latter predominate (which sometimes happens), they are most often clothed in the form of an incoherent conversation that occurs beyond the active participation of the subject and is only perceived by the latter, consisting of fragmentary phrases or individual words. An important significance belongs to the circumstance that the level of consciousness of the falling-asleep person, steadily declining, nevertheless undergoes constant fluctuations: consciousness, having flared up for a moment, returns to surrounding reality, then loses connection with it again, plunging even deeper into the bizarre images of phantasy. Connected with this lability of consciousness is the fact of so-called hypnagogic hallucinations, when the images passing before the falling-asleep person unexpectedly acquire such brightness and are colored in such corporeal, realistic tones that an immediate feeling of their undoubted reality arises. Apparently, this happens during particularly rapid fluctuations of consciousness: at the time when the mental world is full of the products of approaching sleep, a return to reality occurs, as a result of which dream fancies, mixing with the realistic attitude, acquire hallucinatory corporeality and obviousness. Sometimes phenomena of this kind are so vivid that an intense feeling of fear arises, naturally leading to a return to the waking state. Essentially little different from the described phenomena are the states of "daydreams" or, according to Varendonck's terminology, "fantasizing thinking," arising during periods of dreamy absent-mindedness. According to this author, the direction of the associative process in such cases is determined by the action of affectively colored memories and desires, and its jumping nature is greater the less the intensity of the latter. It usually proceeds in the form of assumptions and objections, questions and answers, interrupted from time to time by images possessing hallucinatory clarity. The tendency to transformation into images manifests itself the stronger, the closer thinking approaches the unconscious. Finally, throughout the entire time that such involuntary thinking lasts, the level of consciousness is constantly changing.