Hypnopompic

Hypnopompic (pronounced hip-nuh-pom-pik)

Of or relating to the state of consciousness between sleep and becoming fully awake.

1897: The construct was hypno-, from the Ancient Greek ὕπνος (húpnos) (sleep) + the Ancient Greek πομπή (pomp(ḗ)), (a sending away) +‎ -ic.  The -ic suffix was from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique, from the Latin -icus, from the primitive Indo-European -kos & -ḱos, formed with the i-stem suffix -i- and the adjectival suffix -kos & -ḱos.  The form existed also in the Ancient Greek as -ικός (-ikós), in Sanskrit as -इक (-ika) and the Old Church Slavonic as -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ); a doublet of -y.  In European languages, adding -kos to noun stems carried the meaning "characteristic of, like, typical, pertaining to" while on adjectival stems it acted emphatically; in English it's always been used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning “of or pertaining to”.  A precise technical use exists in physical chemistry where it's used to denote certain chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a higher oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix -ous; (eg sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H₂SO₃).  The word was coined in the sense of “pertaining to the state of consciousness when awaking from sleep” by Frederic WH Myers (1843-1901), the construct being from hypno- (sleep) + the second element from the Greek pompe (sending away) from pempein (to send).  The word was introduced in Glossary of Terms used in Psychical Research, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. xii (1896-1897 supplement), an organization founded by Myers.  Hypnopompic & hypnopompia were thought to be necessary as companion (in the sense of “bookend”) terms to hypnagogic & hypnagogia (Illusions hypnagogiques) which are the “vivid illusions of sight or sound (sometimes referred to as “faces in the dark”) which sometimes accompany the prelude to the onset of sleep.  Hypnopompic is an adjective and hypnopompia is a noun; the noun plural is hypnopompias.

Frederic Myers was a philologist with a great interest in psychical matters, both the orthodox science and aspects like the work of mediums who would “contact the spirits of the dead”, the latter, while not enjoying much support in the scientific establishment, was both taken seriously and practiced by a remarkable vista of “respectable society”.  Mediums enjoyed a burst in popularity in the years immediately after World War I (1914-1918) when there was much desire by grieving wives & mothers to contact dead husbands and sons and some surprising figures clung to beliefs in such things well into the twentieth century.  In the early 1960s, a reunion of surviving pilots from the Battle of Britain (1940) was startled when their wartime leader and former head of Royal Air Force (RAF) Fighter Command, Hugh Dowding (1882–1970), told them: “regularly he communicated with the spirits of their fallen comrades”.  Myers also had what might now be called a “varied” love life although it’s said in his later life his interest was restricted to women, including a number of mediums, all reputed to be “most fetching”.

In the profession, while acknowledging the potential usefulness in things like note-taking in a clinical environment, few psychologists & psychiatrists appear to regard hypnopompia & hypnagogia as separate phenomena, both understood as the imagery, sounds and strange bodily feelings sometimes felt when in that state between sleep and being fully awake.  In recent years, as the very definition of “sleep” has increasingly been segmented, the state in some literature has also been referred to both as “stage 1 sleep” & “quiet wakefulness” although the former would seem to be most applicable to falling asleep (hypnagogia) rather than waking up (hypnopompia).  Still, the distinction between what’s usually a late night versus an early morning thing does seem of some significance, especially that most in the discipline of the science of sleep (now quite an industry) seem to concede wake-sleep & sleep-wake transitions are not fully understood; nor are the associated visual experiences and debate continues about the extent to which they should (or can) be differentiated from other dream-states associated with deeper sleep.

Waking in a hypnopompic state: Lindsay Lohan in Falling for Christmas (Netflix, 2022).

One striking finding is that so few remember hypnopompic & hypnagogic imagery and that applies even among those who otherwise have some ability to recall their dreams.  What’s often reported by subjects or patients is the memory is fleeting and difficult to estimate in duration and that while the memory is often sustained for a short period after “waking”, quickly it vanishes.  An inability to recall one’s dreams in not unusual but this behavior is noted also for those with a sound recollection of the dreams enjoyed during deeper sleep states.  What seems to endure is a conceptual sense of what has been “seen”: faces known & unknown, fragmentary snatches of light and multi-dimensional geometric shapes.  While subjects report they “know” they have “seen” (and also “heard”) more fully-developed scenes, their form, nature or even the predominate colors prove usually elusive.  Despite all this, it’s not uncommon for people to remark the hypnopompic experience is “pleasant”, especially the frequently cited instances of floating, flying or even a separation from the physical body, something which seems more often called “trippy” than “scary”.

For some however, the hypnopompic & hypnagogic experience can be recalled, haunting the memory and the speculation is that if “nightmarish” rather than “dream-like”, recollection is more likely, especially if associated with “paralyzed hypnogogia or hypnopompia” in which a subject perceives themselves “frozen”, unable to move or speak while the experience persists (for centuries a reported theme in “nightmares).  Observational studies are difficult to perform to determine the length of these events but some work in neurological monitoring seems to suggest what a patient perceives as lasting some minutes may be active for only seconds, the implication being a long “real-time” experience can be manufactured in the brain in a much shorter time and the distress can clinically be significant.  For this reason, the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) regards hypnagogia & hypnopompia as something similar to synaesthesia (where a particular sensory stimulus triggers a second kind of sensation; things like letters being associated with colors) or certain sexual fetishes (which were once classified as mental disorders) in that they’re something which requires a diagnosis and treatment only if the condition is troubling for the patient.  In the fifth edition of the DSM (DSM-5 (2013)), hypnagogia anxiety was characterized by intense anxiety symptoms during this state, disturbing sleep and causing distress; it’s categorized with sleep-related anxiety disorders.

The Nightmare (1781), oil on canvas by the Swiss-English painter John Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), Detroit Institute of Arts.  It's a popular image to use to illustrate something "nightmare related".

When the political activist Max Eastman (1883–1969) visited Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) in Vienna in 1926, he observed a print of Fuseli's The Nightmare, hung next to Rembrandt's  (Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn; 1606-1669) The Anatomy Lesson.  Although well known for his work on dream analysis (although it’s the self-help industry more than the neo-Freudians who have filled the book-shelves), Freud never mentions Fuseli's famous painting in his writings but it has been used by others in books and papers on the subject.  The speculation is Freud liked the work (clearly, sometimes, a painting is just a painting) but nightmares weren’t part of the intellectual framework he developed for psychoanalysis which suggested dreams (apparently of all types) were expressions of wish fulfilments while nightmares represented the superego’s desire to be punished; later he would refine this with the theory a traumatic nightmare was a manifestation of “repetition compulsion”.  The juxtaposition of sleeping beauty and goblin provoked many reactions when first displayed and encouraged Fuseli to paint several more versions.  The Nightmare has been the subject of much speculation and interpretation, including the inevitable debate between the Freudians and Jungians and was taken as a base also by political cartoonists, a bunch more nasty in earlier centuries than our more sanitized age.