Dream telepathy

Dream telepathy is the name for telepathic communication with another person whilst one is dreaming. In the 1940s it was the subject of the Eisenbud-Pederson-Krag-Fodor-Ellis controversy, the full detailed history of which can be found in Devereux 1953. The controversy is named after the preeminent psychoanalysts of the time who were involved in it: Jule Eisenbud, Geraldine Pederson-Krag, Nandor Fodor, and Albert Ellis.

History

The notion of dream telepathy was first mooted in psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud in 1921. His 1922 paper Dreams and Telepathy is reproduced in Devereux 1953., and was intended to be a lecture to the Vienna Psycho-Analytical Society, although he never delivered it. Freud considered that a connection between telepathy and dreams could be neither proven nor disproven. He was distinctly suspicious of the whole idea, noting that he himself had never had a telepathic dream. (His two dreams that were potentially telepathic, where he dreamed of the deaths of a son and of a sister-in-law, he labelled as "purely subjective anticipations".) He also observed that he had not encountered any evidence of dream telepathy in his patients.

Ellis regarded the conclusions of Eisenbud, Pederson-Krag, and Fodor to have been based upon flimsy evidence, and that they could be better explained by bias and coincidence than by dream telepathy. He also accused them of an emotional involvement in the notion, resulting in their observations and judgement being clouded. They, in their turn, asserted that Ellis was dismissing the idea because it did not fit with his preconceived notions of what dream telepathy was, rather than treating the evidence before him with an open mind.

According to Jungian psychotherapy, Jung considered telepathic dreams (communications between individuals within an unconscious state) fit within the concepts of dream transference.

Shared dreaming

Shared dreaming (also known as mutual dreaming) refers to the concept of linking one's dream experience with another dreamer. The concept was popularized in the 2010 movie, Inception, where lucid dreamers could all roam around the subconscious of a single dreamer. When the experience is shared between more than two people, it is known as mass dreaming. Just like with lucid dreaming, shared dreaming is said to occur spontaneously or alternatively, it can be induced deliberately. Many people have claimed to have experienced this phenomenon, although it is still questionable whether such a thing is possible.

Examples

Author, Jeffry Palmer, recalls a very vivid example in which he shared an identical dream with his grandmother and a best friend about being in a park type environment that felt very artificial and foreboding. He believes that shared dreams of this type might be much more common than some believe.

See also

• Extrasensory perception
• Parapsychology
• Collective unconscious
• Oneironautics
• Lucid dreaming

References

Sources used

• Biernoff, Joseph (1948). "Telepathy and Psychoanalysis: A Critique of Recent Findings: Albert Ellis. With discussions by Jule Eisenbud, Geraldine Pederson-Krag, and Nandor Fodor". Psychoanalytic Quarterly 17: 562. 
• Ehrenwald, Jan (1955). New dimensions of deep analysis. Perspectives in psychical research. Ayer Publishing. ISBN 9780405070273. 
• Eshel, Ofra (December 2006). "Where are you, my beloved?: On absence, loss, and the enigma of telepathic dreams". The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 87 (6): 1603–1627. doi:10.1516/7GM3-MLDR-1W8K-LVLJ. 
• Frieden, Ken (1990). Freud's dream of interpretation. SUNY series in modern Jewish literature and culture. SUNY Press. ISBN 9780791401248. 
• Randall, Alexander (1978). DREAM SHARING AND SHARED METAPHORS IN A SHORT TERM COMMUNITY (D.Ed thesis). http://creativespirit.net/henryreed/dreamtelepathy/randall1.htm. 
• Sedgwick, David (2001). Introduction to Jungian psychotherapy : the therapeutic relationship (1. publ. ed.). Philadelphia, Pa.: Brunner/Routledge. ISBN 0-415-18339-1. 
• Palmer, Jeffry (3 December 2006). "A Strange Case of Dream Transference". ArticleSlash. http://www.articleslash.com/Self-Improvement/149046__A-Strange-Case-of-Dream-Transference.html. Retrieved 2 October 2011. 

Further reading

• Devereux, George, ed. (1953). "The Eisenbud-Pederson-Krag-Fodor-Ellis controversy". Psychoanalysis and the occult.. Oxford, England: International Universities Press. 
• Ellis, Albert (1947). "Telepathy and Psychoanalysis: A Critique of Recent Findings". Psychiatric Quarterly 21: 607–659. 
• Ullman, Montague (2003). "Dream telepathy: experimental and clinical findings". In Totton, Nick. Psychoanalysis and the paranormal: lands of darkness. Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series. Karnac Books. ISBN 9781855759855. 
• Child, Irvin (November 1985). "Psychology and Anomalous Observations: The Question of ESP in Dreams". American Psychologist 40 (11): 1219–1230. 
• Ullman, Montague; Kripper, Stanley; Vaughan, A. (1989). Dream Telepathy: Experiments in noctural ESP.