The Hypnagogic Genius
The intermediate state of falling asleep—the hypnogogic zone—has been a source of creative breakthrough from time immemorial: Aristotle, Blake, Mary Shelley, Coleridge, Poe, Kafka, Thomas Edison, Salvador Dali and the surrealists, have each sought the strange images that seem to arrive unbidden, from nowhere, just as one is about to fall into dreamland. The significance of the fainting couch—the chaise-lounge—in the psychoanalytic office is due to the “involuntary ideas” that may emerge in this magic zone prior to sleep; as the prone body relaxes, so does the mind.
