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Robert Van de Castle, PhD
2004 IASD Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
Personal Profile
Among my most tangible contributions to the field of dreams and dreaming , I would consider my publications to be my primary achievements. The Content Analysis of Dreams, co-authored with Calvin Hall (Appleton - Century - Crofts, 1966) became a standard reference book and a "how-to-do-it" manual for investigators wishing to examine dream content in a quantitative fashion that could be statistically evaluated. This system has been utilized in hundreds of subsequent studies, despite an assessment by an early review from a University of Chicago dream researcher that, "It seems most unlikely that the Hall-Van de Castle system would be adopted carte blanche by anyone." [Contemporary Psychology, 1967, p 607]
A survey chapter entitled "The Psychology of Dreaming" appeared in a loose-leaf compiled text book published by General Learning Press in 1971. A greatly expanded version, over 500 pages in length, entitled Our Dreaming Mind (Ballantine Books, 1994) became a widely used textbook for classroom teaching. It covered a vast range of dream topics including the history of dreams and a review of dream theories and research findings . This book was described as a "landmark" by Monte Ullman, a "masterpiece" by Henry Reed, a "superb compilation" by Jayne Gackenbach, and a "sweeping compilation unsurpassed in the literature for its scope" by Stan Krippner. It was so popular a book that it became an Alternate for the Book of the Month Club and the choice of the month for the Quality Paperback Book Club. Having the authorship of this book recognized on my epitaph is something I have seriously considered, and I am currently planning on updating this book with a different publisher.
I have also published articles and book chapters covering a considerable range of dreaming topics such as sexual dreams, dreams of angelic figures, chronological factors associated with dreams of animal figures, and various topics involving paranormal dreams. Since 1991, I have served as the advisory editor for the State University of New York Press SUNY Series in Dream Studies. To date, 13 titles have appeared and two more are currently in preparation.
Another contribution of which I am very proud are my efforts to develop IASD as an organization that represents a "rainbow coalition" of dreamers from around the world. I was honored to give the invited address first annual international ASD conference, a weekend event held in San Francisco in 1984 and accompanied this with an extensive slide show presentation. When I was given the opportunity to become the next ASD president and host the almost week-long second annual ASD conference at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 1985, I introduced several new features that have become sort of "boiler plate" standards for subsequent conferences. One was an opportunity to participate in dream workshops led by experts. Others were to view a gallery of dream inspired art, to participate in a Dream Ball where different costume classifications were judged, to enter a Dream Telepathy contest modeled on the classic Maimonides protocol, and to attend a post conference session on lucid dreaming. Special efforts were made there to encourage media coverage so that the public could become better informed about the exciting new findings being introduced at our conference. I have attended and presented papers at most of the subsequent conferences throughout the years including those in Holland and Denmark . At the Montreal conference in 2008, I presented several papers, oversaw the telepathy contest with Rita Dwyer, served as MC for the Dream Ball, and was interviewed for two one hour TV shows . By a show of hands from those attending a panel on aging and dream recall, I realized I was the oldest member in attendance at age 80.
I have always felt that trying to familiarize the public with the fascinating realm of dreams was important if we ever hoped to gain wider respect for our field. At various times, I have discussed dreams on such national TV shows as Phil Donahue, Barbara Walters, David Letterman, Tom Snyder, and Mike Douglas. I have also presented at two special weekend programs involving dreams hosted by Rita Dwyer at the Smithsonian Institution, spoke on the Voice of America radio show, and had articles appearing in prominent newspapers such as The Washington Post, USA Today, and a wide variety of popular magazines, such as Psychology Today, Ladies Home Journal, etc. I also co-published the "grass roots" Dream Network Bulletin for 18 months with Henry Reed.
I have offered talks and workshops on dreams in Belgium, Canada, Latvia, Mexico and Russia, and attended and presented papers at most of the IASD conferences throughout the years including those in Holland and Denmark. At the Montreal conference in 2008, I presented several papers, oversaw the telepathy contest with Rita Dwyer, served as MC for the Dream Ball, and was interviewed for two one-hour TV shows. By a show of hands from those attending a panel on aging and dream recall, I realized I was the oldest member in attendance at age 80.
In a different context, Henry Reed and I also pioneered our Dream Helper Ceremony in which a group of dreamers attempt to assist a designated "target person" with an undisclosed emotional problem through their combined telepathic dreaming efforts. Over many years, the "target persons" have quite consistently expressed extremely favorable reactions to this procedure and stated that the dreamers had correctly identified significant personal information that had not been overtly disclosed to any of the ''dream helpers."
I consider that I have made a contribution to the area of paranormal dreaming by continually emphasizing in many venues that a substantive data base has accumulated to confirm the existence of paranormal dreaming. I have been fortunate to have personally had the opportunity to participate as a dreaming subject in four sleep laboratory studies investigating the possible evidence for psi dreaming. The first experience was at the Institute of Dream Research in Miami Florida directed by Calvin Hall. I was also extensively studied at Mamonides Hospital in Brooklyn, New York by Stanley Krippner and Montague Ullman. I also served as a subject in my own sleep laboratory at the University of Virginia Medical Center. The results I achieved under these carefully controlled laboratory conditions, and during some nights at the University of Wyoming where David Foulkes was the investigator, were so personally impressive to me, that I felt I was scientifically obligated to attempt to publicize them as widely as I could, establishing a new paradigm for evaluating the parameters of the dreaming experience.
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Stanley Krippner, PhD
2006 IASD Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
Personal Profile
Stanley Krippner took an interest in dreams at an early age, and still has a collection of dream reports from his high school days.
While a student at the University of Wisconsin, he recalls one comment about dreams from his introductory psychology class. The instructor stated, "Dreaming in color is a symptom of schizophrenia." Stan and his friends were alarmed because they all recalled dreaming in color! The year was 1953, a few years after the University of Chicago research on REMs and dream reports had been published, so there was no excuse for such an ill-informed statement.
Stan received his PhD from Northwestern University where he was exposed to Freudian and Jungian concepts of dreams and dreaming (but in the School of Education, not in the Department of Psychology). He taught at Kent State University for three years and then received an invitation from Montague Ullman to direct the Dream Laboratory at Maimonides Medical Center in .
Stan jumped at the opportunity, even after knowing that a dozen more highly qualified psychologists had turned down the offer because it lacked job security. Indeed, the grant Ullman had received to study anomalous dreams was only for three years. Ullman, Stan, and their colleagues were able to stretch out the funding for a decade, publishing over 100 articles based on their research as well as a monograph (Dream Studies and Telepathy) and a book (Dream Telepathy).
In addition, Stan has edited Dreamtime and Dreamwork, has co-edited Dreamscaping, and has co-authored Dreamworking and Extraordinary Dreams. While at Maimonides, Stan directed some of the first research studies on dreams reported during pregnancy and dream reports of male-to-female transsexuals. When the funds finally ran out, Stan moved to California where he became Alan Watts Professor of Psychology at Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center. He supervised several dissertations on the topic of dreams and designed a course, "The Psychoneurology of Dreams and Dreaming," as well as helping to create a certificate program on dream studies. Over the years, Stan has given dream workshops in a dozen countries; his collection of dream reports from some of these workshops have allowed him to study gender differences in dreams, specifically in Argentina, Brazil, and England, as well as the United States. With Allan Combs, Stan has published several articles on chaos theory and self-organization in dreaming, and has written several articles for IASD's Journal Dreaming, one of them on Native American models of dreaming. He has served as President of the International Association for the Study of Dreams and in 2006 received that organization's Lifetime Achievement Award.
Stanley Krippner is a professor of psychology at Saybrook Graduate School in San Fransisco.
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Ernest Hartmann, MD
2007 IASD Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
Personal Profile
Ernest Hartmann, MD, is Professor of Psychiatry at the Tufts University School of Medicine, Director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Newton Wellesley Hospital, and author of nine books and about 325 articles in professional journals. His most recent book (written for nonprofessionals as well as professionals) is Dreams and Nightmares: The New Theory (1998, Plenum, Paperback revised, 2002, Persus NY). In brief, the theory is that dream imagery pictures the emotion of the dreamer, and the intensity of the central imagery is a measure of the power of the underlying emotion. The theory is based on a great deal of research, especially on dreams after trauma. A systematic study of dreams before and after 9/11/01 has recently been completed which supports the theory.
Ernest Hartmann is also a Past President of IASD, and was the first Editor-in-Chief of IASD's journal, Dreaming. In Ernest Hartmann’s words, “IASD is a fascinating multidisciplinary, multifaceted, multi-everything organization."
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Milton Kramer, MD
2008 IASD Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
Personal Profile
I have had the opportunity to spend 48 years of my academic career involved in dream research. I came out of the Army in 1960 and joined the NIMH-funded dream research group at the University of Cincinnati, where I had had my psychiatric residency. The group was lead by Roy Whitman and was utilizing EEG techniques to identify REM sleep and recover dreams. In 1962, I published my first dream paper, “Which Dream Does the Patient Tell?" It was in this context that I had my grounding in dream research with Whitman, Bill Baldridge and Paul Ornstein.
I was working at the Cincinnati VA Hospital as my department job and in 1963 got VA support to open a sleep/dream lab at the hospital. We did work confirming the reliability of the Hall-Van de Castle scales applied to laboratory collected dreams and collecting the data that was the base for the mood regulatory theory of sleep and dreams. I held a NIMH supported conference in 1967, which I published in 1969 as “Dream Psychology and the New Biology of Dreaming.” I invited all the people whose work I had been reading: Aron Beck, Walter Bonime, Roz Cartwright, Bill Domhoff, Harry Fiss, Calvin Hall, Dave Hawkins, Richard Jones, Robert Langs, Carl Meier, William Offenkrantz, Harold Sampson, Edith Sheppard, Fred Snyder, Charles Tart, Harry Trosman, Monte Ullman, Bob Van de Castle and Hy Witkin. Many of them became close professional colleagues and friends.
It became clear that without a standardized, reliable scoring system for dream content analogous to the Rechtshafen/Kales manual for sleep, progress in the scientific study of dreaming would not be possible. We discussed this with colleagues at the 10th annual meeting of the Sleep Society [APSS] in Santa Fe and were discouraged from such an effort as premature by Al Rechtschafen. This led to Carolyn Winget and I writing a book on quantitative approaches to dreaming including with descriptions some 130 scales and a tabular summary of the quantitative dream literature. We published it as Dimensions of the Dream in 1979 with the help of David Foulkes.
It was in 1986 that Gayle Delaney approached me to see if I would be interested in becoming President of the newly formed Association for the Study of Dreams. My efforts through the Sleep Society to encourage more presentations on dreams had not led to greater productivity although dream reports were over-represented on the program as not much was being submitted. I accepted Gayle’s offer and served as President from 1987-88. It put me in touch with people like Gayle, Loma Flowers and the dream workers such as Rita Dwyer. It has been an experience that opened my eyes to the incredible impact that the intimacy of dream sharing could and does have. To see the magic of a Gene Gendlin, Gayle, and others make contact with a stranger through exploring the dream makes the entire experience worthwhile. On the more traditional side, spending time with so many wonderful Canadian dream researchers like the late Al Moffitt with whom in 1993 I edited The Functions of Dreams, Don Kuiken, Tore Nielsen and others was exciting. Canada is where the study of dreams has found a home.
I was pleased that those of us interested in the disciplinary base for dream researchers had a national organization in ASD. Then happily SUNY Press started a dream book series and asked Bob Van de Castle to be its editor. What was needed was a journal to complete the necessary triad and that came to fruition with the start of Dreaming with Ernie Hartman as its first editor. An academic career was possible with dreams as one’s topic area.
In 2007 I published a summation of my work The Dream Experience which led me back through the work I did and vividly recalled for me the people who stimulated and encouraged me. Currently I am working with the former Director of the Psychoanalytic Institute at the New York Medical College, Buddy Glucksman. We have published work on dreams reflecting who benefited from therapy and the frequency of emotions in dreams. We currently are looking at the dreams of his patients to see if their initial problems are age-related.
The future for me in dream research remains uncertain as does so much when you are 79. But the promise is in the work and in my colleagues.
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