[Is awakening only a dream?].

Abstract

"It's a dream ..." is the frequent definition of Intensive Care and Coma Experience proposed by patients. Does this word, so insistent and often heard in our research and those of many colleagues, correspond to the objective terms (onirism, confusion, delirium) qualifying clinical awakening or coma (as patients do assert it)? Or doesn't it rather point to a specific status of an other psychical experience? That is the author's hypothesis here developed, through specific aspects of awakening state and therapeutical implications.