States of Consciousness

1. States of Consciousness • Life is made up of many kinds of conscious awareness • Who/what is perceiving this particular stimulus here, now? • When you say, “I am” what are you referring to? Who is the “you?” What is the “you” you are talking about? • What is consciousness?

2. What is consciousness? Psych 101 Chapter 5

3. Wide Awake: Normal waking consciousness • Five varieties of normal waking consciousness • directed consciousness • divided consciousness • flowing consciousness • daydreaming • unconscious • Directed consciousness • a focused and orderly “one tracked” awareness • centered on a specific stimulus

4. Normal waking consciousness • Divided consciousness: Being two places (mentally) at the same time • the process of “splitting off” two or more conscious activities that occur simultaneously • similar to “multi-tasking” that can be done by computers • for example: rub your head and pat your stomach or divide 81 by 3 while saying the “Pledge of Allegiance”

5. Normal waking consciousness • Flowing consciousness • a drifting, unfocused awareness • your awareness (attention) moves at random from attention to one stimulus to another • Daydreams • focused and directed thinking, like directed consciousness, but these involve fantasies (and not stimuli immediately at hand)

6. Normal waking consciousness • The concept of the “Unconscious Mind” • the notion of an unconscious mind helps to explain mental processes that occur without conscious awareness • for example: when you forget something and then, hours later, suddenly remember it though you had not been consciously trying to remember it • the “Unconscious Mind” is a big part of the Psychoanalytic school of thought in psychology • Reading your Mind! And Mind Test • Subliminal Messages

7. Daydreams Psych 101 Chapter 5

8. Sleeping and dreaming: Consciousness while asleep • Stages of sleep • involves passing from waking state into a semi-wakeful state, then into 4 stages of progressively deeper sleep • Hypnagogic State • a twilight state that is neither daydreaming or sleeping that occurs as you begin to fall asleep but are not yet sleeping • unusual things can happen in the hypnagogic state Psych 101 Chapter 5

9. Sleeping and dreaming • States of light and deep sleep • 4 stages of sleep based on EEG measures of brainwave activity during sleep that reveal different brain-wave patterns in sleep • Stage 1 sleep: shifting from beta-to-alpha wave brain activity patterns; the brain is slowing down • Stage 2 sleep: alpha-to-theta brain wave patterns; the brain is slowing further Psych 101 Chapter 5

10. Sleeping and dreaming • States of light and deep sleep • Stage 3 sleep: theta-to-delta brain wave patterns; the brain is slowing further • Stage 4 sleep: delta wave brain patterns; the brain is at its slowest • Dream Sleep • Emergent sleep: the brain begins to move faster; returns to beta wave pattern of wakefulness though you are still asleep Psych 101 Chapter 5

11. Sleeping and dreaming • Dream Sleep • Beta-wave brain activity is present and REM (rapid eye movement) activity is present • most people generally dream more than once in a single night; virtually everyone dreams every night • The reoccuring sleep cycle moves from beta-alpha-theta-delta-beta in the course of about 1.5 hours Psych 101 Chapter 5

12. Sleeping and dreaming • The normal sleep required by individuals is 7.5 hours per night; a typical sleep cycle is about 1.5 hours long so the typical person has 4 to 5 sleep cycles occurring per sleep period • The normal person may have as much as 1 to 2 hours of dreaming every night Psych 101 Chapter 5

13. Sleeping and dreaming • Why do we sleep and dream? • What good is it to sleep and dream anyway? Isn’t it a waste of about 33% of your life? • NO! Sleep and dreaming is important to maintain normal psychological functioning • Sleep deprivation studies show that going more than 40 hours without sleep begins to tell by the appearance of forgetting, irritation, poor judgment, and other symptoms Psych 101 Chapter 5

14. Sleeping and dreaming • Extreme sleep deprivation • studies of extreme sleep deprivation have shown that at about 120 hours of sleep deprivation individuals will begin to behave in ways indistinguishable from paranoid schizophrenics • these symptoms include: hostility, suspicion, paranoia, unpredictable behavior, halucinations and delusions Psych 101 Chapter 5

15. Sleeping and dreaming • What important thing happens in sleep? • Studies on sleep and REM deprivation show that it is the REM (dreaming state) of sleep that is the KEY reason why we sleep; sleeping without dreaming is not useful in the big picture • We do, like Shakespeare said, “sleep, perchance to dream…” Psych 101 Chapter 5

16. Sleeping and dreaming • The Content and Meaning of Dreams • Freud’s view of dreams • Dreams have “manifest” content • Dreams have “latent” content • Dreams provide information from the unconscious mind that a person can use to understand themselves • Dream interpretation • We’ll do some dream interpretation now so you can decide for yourself if Freud was right Psych 101 Chapter 5

17. What do dreams mean? Psych 101 Chapter 5

18. Sleeping and dreaming • Nightmares and other sleep phenomena • Nightmares are exceptionally frightening dreams • they typically involve anxieties • they often involve being chased, being late, or falling • they are typically dark and foreboding • individuals may wake up after nightmares with a sense of uneasiness Psych 101 Chapter 5

19. Nightmares Psych 101 Chapter 5

20. Sleeping and dreaming • Nightmares and other sleep phenomena • Night Terrors • very frightening event typically in children where they scream out in the night and cannot be easily awakened by a concerned parent • typically these are outgrown as the child gets older • they are not typically a “sign” of emotional problems in the child; rather it is likely that they are due to cognitive physical immaturity Psych 101 Chapter 5

21. Sleeping and dreaming • Nightmares and other sleep phenomena • Sleepwalking and sleeptalking • typically occur in Stage 4 sleep (not in REM sleep) • about 15% of the population has experienced these phenomena • the sleeper should be protected from hurting themself; individuals have been known to leave their home driving their car while asleep • there is no truth to the wive’s tale that the sleepwalker should not be awakened Psych 101 Chapter 5

22. Sleeping and dreaming • Sleep disorders • Insomnia: affects about 20 million Americans • Narcolepsy: a form of epilepsy that causes sudden, immediate sleeping • Sleep apnea: cessation of breathing while sleeping; associated with the very loud snoring person • Incubus/Succubus attacks Psych 101 Chapter 5

23. Sleeping and dreaming • Sleep is one of the cycles that the body does daily. These cycles are called “circadian rhythms” and the body typically operates on a cycle of about 24 hours. Other circadian body cycles include: • body temperature • urine production • metabolism Psych 101 Chapter 5

24. Altered states of consciousness • Altered states involve several common characteristics: • Distortions of perception • Intense emotions (positive or negative) • A sense of “unity” • Altered states are often illogical, indescribable, and transcendent; they may involve a sense of “self-evident” reality Psych 101 Chapter 5

25. Altered States of Consciousness Psych 101 Chapter 5

26. Altered states • Meditation can produce an altered state of consciousness • extreme focused concentration away from thoughts and feelings • generates a sense of relaxation • focusing on not thinking; try to stop thinking and see if you can do it • use of mantras, koens, praying, or other techniques may be useful in meditating Psych 101 Chapter 5

27. Altered states • Hypnosis can produce an altered state of consciousness • characterized by relaxation, hypnotic halucinations, hypnotic analgesia, age regression, and hypnotic control • is hypnotism real, fake, or role playing? • about 15% of the population is easily hypnotized Psych 101 Chapter 5

28. Altered states • History of hypnotism • Anton Mesmer and Mesmerism • his use of “magnetic waters”, magical incantations, and showmanship as “treatment” of psychological/medical problems • was a hit in France in the 1790s • Freud became interested in it for a time but later rejected it as nonsense • Picked up by American behaviorists in the US in the 1930s; still used in the US today Psych 101 Chapter 5

29. Altered states • Applications of hypnotism • used (with varying results) to help people: • stop smoking • stop drinking • stop eating • has been used to induce anesthesia in certain individuals, e.g., drug-free childbirth; there have been surgeries carried out with the patient only under hypnotic suggestion for pain control Psych 101 Chapter 5

30. Altered states • Another altered state is “depersonalization” • the perceptual experience of one’s body or surroundings becoming distorted or unreal in some way • a sense of being out of one’s body or that one’s body has no limit; this experience can happen to individuals on an LSD trip • can be very frightening; a bad trip Psych 101 Chapter 5

31. Altered states • Yet another altered state is the “Near Death Experience” • experienced by individuals clinically dead during surgery or accident who can return to tell about it • similarity of reports of NDE • is it real or is it something else? • heaven/hell or just neurochemistry at work? Psych 101 Chapter 5

32. Altering consciousness with drugs • Drug use: some basic considerations • Individuals have variable responses to drugs • many factors influence how a person reacts to drugs, e.g., dosage, purity of a drug, a person’s expectations surrounding use of a given drug, a person’s characteristics/personality, as well as a person’s mood • one must consider the drug to be taken and the person taking a drug when considering the effect of any given drug Psych 101 Chapter 5

33. Drug use is stupidity in action Psych 101 Chapter 5

34. Altering consciousness • Drug use: some basic considerations • Problems associated with drug use • some drugs can cause physical dependency, e.g., cocaine, heroin • some drugs can cause psychological dependency, e.g., marijuana • physiological addiction to a drug is a huge price to pay for experiencing a drug’s effects • drugs are generally a stupid way of inducing altered states because you can do it without using drugs Psych 101 Chapter 5

35. Altering States of Consciousness Psych 101 Chapter 5

36. Altering consciousness • Psychotropic drugs: Drugs that will induce altered states • Stimulants: amphetamines, cocaine, caffeine, and nicotine • Depressants: sedatives, tranquilizers, bennies • Narcotics: morphine, heroin, codeine, as well as Demerol, Percodan, and Methadone • Inhalants: airplane glue, cleaning fluid, some paints, and gasoline Psych 101 Chapter 5

37. Altering consciousness • Psychotropic drugs • Halucinogens: mescaline, hashish, marijuana, peyote, psilocybin • Typically drug abusers will abuse many drugs (polydrug use). The outcome is often addiction, mental illness, and death. • Use alternate ways to induce altered states, e.g., meditation, fasting, prayer, etc. Psych 101 Chapter 5

38. Use methods other than drugs to induce altered states Psych 101 Chapter 5

39. Application of psychology • The legal consciousness-altering drugs • alcohol is the widest-used drug that alters persons’ consciousness • caffeine and nicotine are used by millions of people • history is filled with the trade of drugs designed to induce altered states, e.g., the British East India Company trafficed in opium • Altered states and religions, e.g., ganja, peyote Psych 101 Chapter 5

40. Questions? • Any questions about Chapter 5? Psych 101 Chapter 5