The following material comes from Stanley Krippner, Ph.D. (c) 2009, provided at a workshop presentation at the International Association for the Study of Dreams conference at Sonoma State University in June 2009.  All Rights Reserved.

“The disciplined examination of anomalous dreams can be attributed to two 19th century scholars, Alfred Maury and the Marquis d’Hervey de Saint-Denys. They devised self-awakening practices and utilized assistants as well. Maury made detailed records of his sleep awakenings and their content, conducting experiments to determine if external stimuli could be incorporated into his dreams, a hunch later verified by several 20th century investigators. Saint-Denys filled 22 volumes with his dream reports, self-observations, and hypotheses. Both scholars broke with church traditions by taking dreams seriously, studying their naturalistic origins, and noting dreams’ creative and problem-solving capacities (Krippner, Bogzaran, & de Carvalho, 2002, pp. 11, 17).

In 1899, Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams went on sale; its publisher advanced the date on the book’s title page to 1900, to herald the new century and to emphasize the book’s importance. However, after six years, only 351 copies were sold, despite the fact that Freud had reinstated the importance of dreams for Western culture. In addition, Freud demonstrated how dreams could be used in the treatment of mental and emotional disorders.

Freud, who wrote several articles on purported telepathic dreams, was a member of the Society for Psychical Research, founded in London in 1882. This society was the first major organization to assess anomalous experiences scientifically, by collecting case studies, conducting surveys, and applying probability theory to the outcome of “guessing” experiments. Among the topics investigated by the society were hypnosis, multiple personalities, near-death experiences, reincarnation, lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences, and so-called “psychic phenomena” or “psi” that appeared to transcend the constraints of space, time, and energy. Most of these topics, including lucid dreaming, have passed into the scientific mainstream, even though their explanatory mechanisms are still a matter of conjecture (Krippner, 2005). Psi phenomena remained outside of mainstream science, and became the focus of investigations at a “parapsychology laboratory” at Duke University in North Carolina, bearing that appellation to indicate that these studies were “alongside” (i.e., “para”) conventional science rather than opposing it. Some members of the British society proposed neutral terms to differentiate psi phenomena, for example “psi beta” (better known as clairvoyance, telepathy, and precognition, or “extrasensory perception”), “psi kappa” (better known as psychokinesis or “distant influence”), and “psi theta” (better known as life-after-death studies including purported “past lives”). Most anomalous dreams fell into the “psi beta” category although some included purported episodes from the dreamer’s earlier lives during a previous “incarnation.”

Freud’s former colleague, Carl Jung, used anomalous dreams in his psychotherapeutic sessions, especially those denoting “synchronicity,” an internal event (such as a dream) that matched a later external event (such as an unexpected occurrence of good or bad fortune). Montague Ullman drew inspiration from both Freud and Jung, and from their erstwhile colleague Alfred Adler, who had little interest in anomalous dreams, focusing on the continuity between dreams and waking life.”