false awakening

   A term used to denote a dream event characterized by the subjective feeling that one has just awoken. After a false awakening the individual typically sleeps on, dreaming of the day's morning routines or other mundane events. A * dream during which a false awakening takes place is referred to as a * double dream, or a 'dream within a dream'. According to the British author Celia Elizabeth Green (b. 1935), "The 'false awakening'... is not a true waking state, but [one] in which the subject seems to be looking back on the dream experiences he has just had, and in which he at first believes himself to be awake."

   Conceptually as well as phenomenologically, false awakening is the counterpart of the * lucid dream (i.e. a dream during which the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming). As suggested in 1926 by the French physician Eugène-Bernard Leroy, false awakenings may lie on a continuum with * hypnagogic hallucinations.

   References

   Green, C.E. (1968). Lucid dreams. London: Institute of Psychophysical Research.

   Leroy, E.B. (1926). Les visions du demi-sommeil (hallucinations hypnagogiques). Paris: Félix Alcan.