Montague Ullman’s research while affiliated with Inter American Foundation for Clinical Research, New York and other places

Montague Ullman The second volume of this series includes essays on methods and issues in ESP research (Morris), research findings in ESP (Palmer), and theories of psi (Rao). It thus complements the areas covered in Volume 1, the two volumes taken together providing the reader with a sound grounding in the progress and achievements of parapsychological research from its inception to the present day. What is immediately striking is the rapid increase in the amount and variety of experimental reports appearing in the last decade and the increasing number of centers in which research is being carried out. Work in parapsychology is moving toward a broader disciplinary base, the use of more imaginative technology, greater academic support, and more activity on an international scale. These are promising signs of a rapprochement between parapsychological research and the mainstream of science. Robert O. Becker, in his preface to Volume 1, holds out the hope that parapsychology will lead the way to a new view of the biological or­ ganism, one going beyond mechanism to "a new vision of the human being and his place in the universe" (Becker, 1977). Heavy as this respon­ sibility may be, a careful reading of the present volume should persuade the reader that a new view is very much in order.

An attempt was made to replicate findings of positive telepathic influence on dream content where the sender views audio-visual programs in a “sensory bombardment” chamber and the recipient's dreams are collected on experimental arousals in an EEG sleep laboratory. In the original study (Krippner, Honorton, Ullman, Masters, & Houston, 1971), agent-S distance was 14 miles; here it was approximately 2000 miles: the agent viewed programs in New York City while S slept in Wyoming. 8 female Ss were selected on the basis of prior telepathic experience, favorable attitudes toward telepathy, good dream recall, and rapport with the agent, who was a well-known “psychic.” Each slept for one experimental night, during which the agent viewed an audio-visual program randomly selected from a pool of such programs and constructed around a single theme. At the conclusion of the study, 3 judges were given the dreams, grouped by S, viewed the 8 audio-visual programs the agent had seen, and ranked the 8 programs for their correspondence to each S‘s dreams. High rankings (1–4) of the true target were considered “hits,” low rankings (5–8) “misses.” Median judge rankings of true targets failed to reveal a significant long-distance, “sensory bombardment” telepathic influence on Ss' dreams.

Conducted a 16-night study with a "sensitive" who had reported precognitive dreams and who had produced statistically significant results in an earlier experiment. A "target pool" of 10 slide-and-sound sequences was created. On odd-numbered nights S was told to dream about the target which would be randomly selected the next night. On even-numbered nights, 1 of the 10 sequences was randomly selected; S was exposed to this target material and told to dream about it. 3 judges (Js) working blind and independently were exposed to the target material and read all 16 dream protocols. Js then rated all the protocols against all 8 targets. The target for the 8 precognition nights received higher ratings than any of the other pairings for that target in 5 out of 8 instances (p < .0012, 1-tailed). The target for the 8 postexperience nights did not receive higher ratings than any of the other pairings for that target in any instance. Analysis of variance produced significant results only for precognition nights (F = 4.4, p < .005). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Conducted an 8-night dream study with Malcolm Bessant, an English "sensitive" with a history of apparent spontaneous precognition, as S. Standard electrophysiological techniques were used to detect REM sleep. Once the S's dreams had been collected and the postsleep interviews terminated, the target, a keyword, was randomly selected and embedded with physical props in a multisensory environment around the word which S then experienced. 3 outside judges rated the correspondences between each dream protocol and the target. There were 5 direct hits (p = .00018). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

A study was designed to investigate telepathic effects in dreams. A single S, who had previously been successful in a similar study at another laboratory, spent 8 nights at the Maimonides Dream Laboratory. On each night, a target (art print) was randomly selected by a staff member (agent) after S was in bed. The agent spent the night in a distant room, attempting to influence S’s dreams telepathically, once the monitoring experimenters signaled that a dream period had begun. At the end of each dream period (detected by electroencephalogram-electro-oculogram monitoring), S was awakened by the experimenters and the dream report was elicited and tape-recorded. Only the agent was aware of the target content and he remained in his room throughout the night. Blind evaluations of target-dream correspondences by both S and an outside judge produced statistically significant results supporting the telepathy hypothesis.

Three studies were designed to investigate telepathic effects in REM sleep. On each night a target (art print) was randomly selected by an agent who spent the night in a distant room attempting to telepathically influence the subject's dreams, which were monitored by EEG techniques and tape recorded. Typed transcripts were sent to outside judges fbr blind comparisons with the targets. For each study, the ratings given the actual target-transcript combinations were significantly higher than those given the incorrect target-transcript combinations.

S, selected on the basis of his successful performance in a previous telepathy-dream study, spent 8 nights in a laboratory; his sleep was monitored by EEG-EOG techniques. As E observed the onset of a REM period, he signalled (by buzzer) an acoustically isolated psychologist to awaken and concentrate on a randomly selected target (art print), the content of which was unknown to S or E. At the termination of each REM period, E awakened S, eliciting a dream report. These reports, and S's associations to them, were tape-recorded and subsequently transcribed. The hypothesis stated that there would be a discernible correspondence between the target used on any given night and S's dreams on that night. Upon completion of the eight nights, three judges (working independently and blind) rated each of the 8 targets against each of the 8 dream transcripts, using a 100-point scale to indicate degree of correspondence between each target-transcript pair. A Latin-square analysis of variance procedure compared the mean ratings of the 8 critical pairs with the mean ratings of the 56 non-critical pairs. An F of 6.43 (7/28 df) was obtained (p < 0 001), confirming the telepathy hypothesis and replicating a previous telepathy-dream study.

Chapter 6: According to some estimates (L. E. Rhine, 1962b), 65 percent of spontaneous psychic experiences occur in dreams. A number of psychoanalysts have reported what appear to be paranormal dreams in the therapeutic setting (Devereux,1953). Therefore, it is only natural to consider the dream state as psi-conducive. According to Van de Castle (1977) the earliest experimental effort to paranormally influence a dream was reported by Waserman in 1819. With the advent of dream-monitoring techniques made possible by the discovery of such physiological correlates of the dream state as rapid eye movements (REMs), the opportunity has come about to study ESP dreams in laboratory settings. Montague Ullman and associates were quick to avail themselves of it. The full account of a decade-long study of ESP and dreams at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., is to be found in the book by Ullman, Krippner, and Vaughan (1973). The paper that is reprinted here is one of the several publications from the Maimonides group. A number of other studies followed (Ullman, Krippner & Feldstein, 1966; Krippner, 1969; Ullman & Krippner, 1970; Honorton, Krippner & Ullman, 1971; Krippner et al., 1971; Krippner, Honorton & Ullman, 1973; Krippner, Honorton & Ullman, 1972). Among the attempts to replicate the Maimonides dream studies is one carried out by Belvedere and Foulkes (1971) at the University of Wyoming, which did not give significant ESP results. A comprehensive review of ESP and dreams is to be found in a chapter by Robert Van de Castle (1977) in Wolman's Handbook of Parapsychology. Van de Castle's review, as he states it, "offers very encouraging evidence that telepathic incorporation of stimuli into dreams can be demonstrated under good experimental conditions" (p. 494).