ABSTRACT
In 1960, exploratory pilot experiments were conducted to determine the feasibility of posthypnotically induced sleep-talking as a means of sampling sleep ideation. In the laboratory, the subject slept for the entire night in a separate, dark, sound-attenuated room, containing a bed, a microphone leading to the adjacent instrument room containing a tape recorder, and an automatic device to note the occurrence of sleep-talking on the polygraph record. It seems to be possible to influence certain temporal characteristics of somniloquy by means of hypnosis, such as producing a shift in the time of night during which the bulk of sleep-talking occurs, and enhancing the closeness of its association with REMPs. The sleep-speeches in relation to the dreams and/or sleep mentation were scored as showing first order concordance1 when a sleep-speech and a recalled dream or night-waking mentation report possessed in common a clearly identifying noun or phrase, e.g., “Claudette Colbert,” appearing in both sleep-speech and night-waking report of a dream.
