Dream Telepathy Project

Join us for a grand experiment. Starting early 2025

Is it possible to communicate telepathically using dreams?

Can we transmit an image, thought or feeling to others, and have it feature in their dream? This Jungian Life invites listeners and readers of Dream Wise to take part in our large-scale dream telepathy experiment.

Whether you’re a skeptic, a believer, or still on the fence, we’d like you to sign up and tune in to receive the dream image that Lisa, Deb or Joe will be transmitting each month.

All participants will be entered into the drawing to win a signed copy of Dream Wise.

How will the Dream Telepathy experiment work?

Once a month, Lisa, Deb or Joe will transmit an image they have studied in careful detail.

If you’ve signed up, you’ll get an email on the day of transmission with instructions about the best way to tune in. We will transmit multiple times, taking into account different time zones. You’ll also receive directions on how to report your dream the next day.

Sign up here to become a part of the Dream Telepathy Project and join the This Jungian Life Newsletter.

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Who believes in dream telepathy?

You probably know someone who claims to have had a dream that predicted future events, or which alerted them to a looming danger they were then able to avert. There are many accounts across different cultures of people sharing the same dream, or experiencing the same dream event. Such anecdotal accounts of dream telepathy are both fascinating and common.

Sigmund Freud toyed with the idea of telepathy: he conducted experiments, spoke with psychics, and wrote a paper called “Dreams and Telepathy”. Ultimately Freud claimed to be unconvinced, and was wary of too much association of psychoanalysis with the occult. He wrote in no uncertain terms that he had never experienced a telepathic dream, nor heard one related by a patient.

Freud was not consistently so skeptical, however. In 1925, he wrote in “Some Additional Notes on Dream Interpretation as a Whole” that “If there are such things as telepathic messages, the possibility cannot be dismissed of their reaching someone during sleep and coming to his knowledge in a dream. Indeed, on the analogy of other perceptual and intellectual material, the further possibility arises that telepathic messages received in the course of the day may only be dealt with during a dream of the following night”.

In contrast, psychiatrist and dream researcher Montague Ullman writes that Carl Jung “seemed to have grown up with an unquestioning acceptance of telepathy and in his later years developed an elaborate theoretical system in order to explain paranormal occurrences of this kind”.

In New York in the 1960s and 70s, Ullman and his fellow researcher, psychologist Stanley Krippner, conducted experiments at a sleep laboratory they’d set up to test the concept of dream telepathy.

Ullman and Krippner reported numerous “hits” (in which participants reported dream content very close to the images transmitted by a person in the next room) but their research was subsequently heavily criticized. Later researchers struggled to replicate their findings convincingly.

It is tempting to ignore or dismiss dreams that simply do not “fit” mainstream scientific concepts of time, space, and energy

Stanley Krippner

Anomalous experiences and dreams, 2007

In many non-Western cultures, active communication through dreams is unquestioned, and seen as fundamental to understanding the world. Shamans from some indigenous traditions believe that dreams connect us to the spirit realm: the fabric between the two worlds is thin, and dreams are a way for the initiated to travel back and forth, bearing important messages.

Many Native American tribes view dreams as a vital means of accessing important existential and practical knowledge, and of establishing personal identity. For some Aboriginal Australian tribes, dreams can be seen as a way to connect with ancestors, spirits and the mystical terrain of their creation period, the Dreamtime.

Ancient cultural practices, as well as a constant stream of intriguing anecdotal accounts, show us that dream telepathy has deep roots in the human psyche. Although the scientific evidence is still not there, the idea of communicating with another person through dreams continues to resonate.

Here at This Jungian Life, we’re excited to test the possibilities of dream telepathy – we hope you’ll join us.

Sign up here to become a part of the Dream Telepathy Project and join the This Jungian Life Newsletter.

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Further reading

Joel Alvarez (2023), “Native American Epistemology Through Dreams”, in Andrea Sullivan-Clarke (ed.), Ways of Being in the World: An Introduction to Indigenous Philosophies of Turtle Island. Peterborough, CA: Broadview Press.
https://philarchive.org/rec/ALVNAE

Sigmund Freud (1922), “Dreams and Telepathy”, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 3.
https://pep-web.org/search/document/IJP.003.0283A?page=P0283

Lee Irwin (1996), The Dream Seekers: Native American Visionary Traditions of the Great Plains, University of Oklahoma Press.
https://a.co/d/8nffW6i

Stanley Krippner (2007) “Anomalous experiences and dreams”, in D. Barrett & P. McNamara (Eds.), The new science of dreaming: Vol. 2. Content, recall, and personality correlates. Praeger Publishers/Greenwood Publishing Group.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2007-09896-010

Douglass Price-Williams and Rosslyn Gaines (1994), “The Dreamtime and Dreams of Northern Australian Aboriginal Artists”, Ethos, v.22 no.3.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/640405

Montague Ullman (1966) “An Experimental Approach to Dreams and Telepathy: Methodology and Preliminary Findings”, Archives of General Psychiatry.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/489052

Montague Ullman, Stanley Krippner and Alan Vaughan (2003) Dream Telepathy: Experiments in Nocturnal Extrasensory Perception (Studies in Consciousness), Hampton Roads Publishing.
https://a.co/d/1AdVKoX

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