NREM sleep represents three-quarters of the time spent in sleep. Although a great deal of study has been carried out on the psychology of dreams, no one has yet studied the psychology of NREM sleep, but I will try to make amends here. Biologists and physiologists like to classify our state of awareness into two main types, the conscious state and the unconscious state. This grouping should not be confused with Freud’s concept of the conscious and unconscious mind.
The unconscious state is a state in which we are not aware of anything and from which we are not easily aroused. It includes such experiences as a black-out after a head injury, the complete blank while under general anaesthetic, and so on.
The conscious state, on the other hand, is a state in which we are continuously aware of what goes on around us or of what we are thinking. We can account for all events continuously. So we can describe how we got out of bed in the morning, got dressed, had breakfast, went to work, said hello to the pretty secretary, worked hard, had a wonderful lunch with the secretary, went back to the office to work even harder, came home, had dinner, watched television, went to bed (still thinking about the wonderful lunch) … and then there is a blank, until we get out of bed again the next morning. (For the lady readers, please change ‘pretty secretary’ to ‘handsome assistant’, but note that the pretty secretary here just happens to be my wife!)
An interesting feature of the above is that we are able to give a continuous account until after our thoughts of ‘the wonderful lunch’. A blank follows. We are not unconscious, as we can be aroused easily. However, we are not conscious either, as there is a blank in the continuous account of the day’s event. This blank is NREM sleep, during which there is no thinking, no memory, and no account of what goes on, very much like the blankness we have when undergoing general anaesthetic. NREM sleep is classified under the conscious state because it is arousable, but it is much more like the unconscious state, as we have no thinking or memory and cannot give a continuous account of what goes on.
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