Critically discuss research findings on altered states of awareness

Altered states of awareness refer to any state involving loss of conscious control of behaviour such as drug induced states, sleep states and dream states. As a great deal of research has been carried out into all three altered states it is not possible to do justice to all three areas in a time restricted essay therefore it is the latter two altered states of awareness that will be considered in this essay. Research into …

…population. Nevertheless it would be unethical to force people to take part in such research just to gain a representative sample of the population especially considering that the ends may not fully justify the means. Moreover if participants were 'forced' to take part in such research it would probably be at the expense of ecological validity. However this is also true of research into drug altered states of awareness - in fact probably more so!