Where Did The Term "Lucid Dreaming" Come From?

The term lucid dreaming has been around for much longer than the movie Inception (2010).  Of course, the act of lucid dreaming was around for centuries, but it was usually just called dreaming or something less cool than that.  The first person who wrote the words "lucid" and "dreaming" together and got it published was Frederik van Eeden (1860 - 1932.)

In 1913, Frederik was lucky enough to get a paper published "A Study of Dreams."  He began the paper about 1896, when he began keeping a dream diary.  After writing down more than 500 dreams, Frederik thought he was somethign of a dream expert.  Writing about dreams was somewhat fashionable after the publication of Sigmund Freud's The Interpertation of Dreams (1899.)  It took many years for this influential book to be translated from the German into other languagues like Frederik's native Dutch.

There is some controversy that Frederik's use of the word "lucid" was mistranslated into English from the Dutch from a similar word that meant "extremely vivid."  Frederik may have meant "dreams which give insight" which is, in some sense, what most lucid dreams do.  His paper was ignored by the vast majority of readers.

But the term "lucid dreaming" didn't catch on until the early 1900s -- nearly 90 years later, when Stephen LaBerge's books became well-known on both sides of the Pond.  He was the first to have a well-known book on lucid dreaming.  Many people don't know of a book called Lucid Dreaming by a Celia Green, which was first published in 1968.  I must admit that I haven't read Green's book (or Frederik's paper) but have read two of LaBerge's books.