Paul Tholey (14 March 1937 – 7 December 1998) was a German Gestalt psychologist, and a professor of

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

and

sports science Sports science is a discipline that studies how the healthy human body works during exercise, and how sport and physical activity promote health and performance from cellular to whole body perspectives. The study of sports science traditionally inc ...

at the University of Frankfurt and the

Technical University of Braunschweig The Technische Universität Braunschweig (unofficially University of Braunschweig – Institute of Technology), commonly referred to as TU Braunschweig, is the oldest ' (comparable to an institute of technology in the American system) in Germany. ...

. Tholey started the study of

oneirology Oneirology (; from Greek ''ὄνειρον'', ''oneiron'', "dream"; and -''λογία'', -''logia'', "the study of") is the scientific study of dreams. Current research seeks correlations between dreaming and current knowledge about the func ...

in an attempt to prove that dreams occur in color. Given the unreliability of dream memories and following the critical realism approach, he used

lucid dreaming A lucid dream is a type of dream in which the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming while dreaming. During a lucid dream, the dreamer may gain some amount of control over the dream characters, narrative, or environment; however, this is n ...

as an

epistemological Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Episte ...

tool for investigating dreams, in a similar fashion to

Stephen LaBerge Stephen LaBerge (born 1947) is an American psychophysiologist specializing in the Oneirology, scientific study of lucid dreaming. In 1967 he received his bachelor's degree in mathematics. He began researching lucid dreaming for his Ph.D. in psych ...

. He devised the

reflection technique Reflection or reflexion may refer to: Science and technology * Reflection (physics), a common wave phenomenon ** Specular reflection, reflection from a smooth surface *** Mirror image, a reflection in a mirror or in water ** Signal reflection, in ...

for inducing lucid dreams, consisting in continuously suspecting waking life to be a dream, in the hope that such a habit would manifest itself during dreams. Tholey's research included the examination of the cognitive abilities of dreamers, as well as the cognitive abilities of dream figures. In the latter study, nine trained lucid dreamers were directed to set other dream figures arithmetic and verbal tasks during lucid dreaming (Cognitive abilities of dream figures in lucid dreams, 1983). Dream figures who agreed to perform the tasks proved more successful in verbal than in arithmetic tasks.

Bibliography

*''Techniques for inducing and manipulating lucid dreams''. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 57, 1983, pp 79–90. *''Relation between dream content and eye movements tested by lucid dreams''. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 56, 1983, pp 875–878. *''Cognitive abilities of dream figures in lucid dreams''. Lucidity Letter, 71, 1983. *
Overview of the Development of Lucid Dream Research in Germany
'. Lecture at the VI. International Conference of the Association for the Study of Dreams in London 1989. First published in: Lucidity Letter, 8(2) (1989), pp 1–30. *

'. B. Holzinger (ed.). Lucidity, 10(1&2), 1991, pp 62–71.

some of which have been translated into French, English, Hungarian. * ''Gestalttheorie von Sport, Klartraum und Bewusstsein. Ausgewählte Arbeiten, herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Gerhard Stemberger'' ("Gestalt theory of sports. lucid dreaming, and consciousness. Selected works, edited and introduced by

Gerhard Stemberger Gerhard Stemberger (born June 29, 1947 in Innsbruck, Austria) is a sociologist and Gestalt psychologist in Vienna, Austria, and one of the main representatives of Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy. After a career in sociological and psychologic ...

"). Wien: Krammer 2018. . Full text o
Contents and Introduction (in German)

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tholey, Paul German psychologists Gestalt psychologists Sleep researchers Dream Lucid dreams 1937 births 1998 deaths 20th-century psychologists