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. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

and

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

at the University of Frankfurt and the

Technical University of Braunschweig TU Braunschweig (, unofficially ''University of Braunschweig – Institute of Technology'') is the oldest ' (comparable to an institute of technology in the American system) in Germany. It was founded in 1745 as Collegium Carolinum and is a membe ...

. Tholey started the study of

oneirology In the field of psychology, the subfield of oneirology (; ) is the scientific study of dreams. Research seeks correlations between dreaming and knowledge about the functions of the brain, as well as an understanding of how the brain works durin ...

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 In the psychology subfield of oneirology, a lucid dream is a type of dream wherein the dreamer realizes that they are dreaming during their dream. The capacity to have lucid dreams is a trainable cognitive skill. During a lucid dream, the dreamer ...

as an

epistemological Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowled ...

tool for investigating dreams, in a similar fashion to

Stephen LaBerge Stephen LaBerge (born 1947) is an American psychophysiologist specializing in the 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 psychophysiolog ...

. He devised the reflection technique 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 psychology, Gestalt psychologist in Vienna, Austria, and one of the main representatives of Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy. After a career in sociologica ...

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

External links

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