25 June 2014

Article on lucid dreaming in BBC Focus Magazine

text of an email from the picture editor at BBC Focus Magazine:

Dear Ms. Green,

I am mailing from BBC Focus Magazine, a popular science and technology publication. In our August issue we are running a feature about dreams, and how you may be able to take control of them. We mention your early research into lucid dreaming in our piece, and I wondered if you might be able to provide us with an image of yourself that we can put alongside the copy.

I would be happy to credit the image and send you a copy of the magazine in return.

Best wishes,
James Cutmore

text of my colleague Dr Charles McCreery’s reply:

Dear Mr Cutmore,

Thank you for your message to Celia Green, to which Dr Green has asked me to reply. I am the co-author with her of her follow-up book Lucid Dreaming, the Paradox of Consciousness During Sleep, published by Routledge.

The position is not merely that Dr Green carried out ‘early research’ into lucid dreaming, but that she was the first to develop the subject as a field of scientific study, a programme for which she laid out in her book Lucid Dreams, first published in 1968 by Hamish Hamilton.

This priority was fully recognised by her successors in the field some years later, notably Professor Stephen LaBerge and Dr Keith Hearne.

I add below three links to pieces which Dr Green has published on the topic of lucid dreaming in recent years on her blog, which describe our attempts to get funding for continuing her research in this area.

I will send you a scan of a photograph attached to a separate email.

Yours sincerely,
Charles McCreery

text of James Cutmore’s reply:

Dear Charles,

Many thanks for sending the image through to me. We do, in fact, state that Dr Green was the first person to experiment extensively with lucid dreaming, and develop an understanding of it. My first email was written in haste, so many apologies for that.

Please enjoy the rest of your day, and thank you again for your help.

Best wishes,
James Cutmore