14 - Latest Experiments In Esp

At the American Society for Psychical Research all-day ESP forum held on November 20, 1965, in New York City, Dr. Gardner Murphy, President of the A.S.P.R., told assembled parapsychologists and representatives from other disciplines that "... Progress in parapsychology in the direction of science calls for major, sustained effort ... devoted to the building of theories and systematic models. The primary need is not for lots and lots of further little experiments, but for bold and sound model building."

Dr. Murphy concluded his address, "Advancement of Parapsychology as a Science," by stating that the future of parapsychology as a science is going to depend on multidisciplinary co-operation between the "psi" researcher and "the medical man, the anthropologist, the sociologist, the physicist, the biologist, the psychologist, and a great many other kinds of people working together within a broad perspective and giving each other mutual support."

Among those engaged in "bold and sound model building" are Montague Ullman, M.D., Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., and Sol Feldstein, B.E.E., who conduct the "Dream Laboratory" at Maimonides Hospital, Brooklyn, New York. This unique laboratory was established in 1962 for the purpose of investigating the possibility of telepathic transfer of information from an agent to a sleeping subject. The men conducting the series of experiments, all members of the Department of Psychiatry at Maimonides, were aware of the literature of psychology, which conjectures about apparent telepathic dreams that occur between patient and analyst during psychotherapy, and the literature of parapsychology, which observes that sleep provides favorable conditions for the occurrence of paranormal phenomena.

In a paper prepared for presentation at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, New York City, 1966, the experimenters state: "In many such spontaneous cases the telepathic message appeared to be dramatically incorporated into the text of the dream, hence the desirability of developing a methodology for investigating dreams from this point of view."

The use of an electroencephalograph and the use of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) techniques in monitoring dreams enabled the Dream Laboratory to move from "an anecdotal and clinical level of observation to an experimental level." Their working hypothesis stated that the dreams of a sleeping subject would reflect the telepathic influence of an agent, who would be concentrating on target material.

Twelve paid volunteers (seven male, five female) were selected as subjects for the series of experiments. Criteria for the selection of the subjects included the ability to fall asleep easily, to dream frequently, to remember their dreams. Subjects were also selected on the basis of whether or not they had positive attitudes toward the possibility of telepathy.

Target material consisted of twelve prints of famous paintings, chosen on the basis of simplicity and distinctness of detail. Each print was used only once by the agent during the study. In addition to each subject later ranking target material for correspondence to his dream experience, three outside judges independently evaluated the dreams, which had been immediately recorded and transcribed upon the subject's awakening.

Each subject was tested individually on a different evening. He was instructed to report to the Dream Laboratory no later than 11:00 P.M. He was taken to the sleep room, had the electrodes connected, made comfortable, and left to fall asleep. Adjoining the sleep room was the monitoring room in which the experimenter, the EEG, and the recording equipment were located. The agent and the target material were situated in a room at the other end of the building. No conscious or unconscious verbal communication was possible between agent and subject.

In his room, the agent selected a target painting using a procedure based on a random number table. After he had selected the envelope for that night, the remaining envelopes were re-filed before he opened the envelope containing the target. For a period of about 30 minutes, and at various times during the evening, the agent spent time associating with the painting and jotting down his impressions.

The experimenter, who was never told which target was being used by the agent, awakened the subject by means of the intercom after five to ten minutes of REMs indicated that the subject had been dreaming.

"Please tell me your dream or anything that was going through your mind when you were awakened," he would ask the subject. "Is there anything else? Think for a moment. Does anything else occur to you in conjunction with the dream? Does it remind you of anything? Please go back to sleep."

A post-sleep interview was held over the intercom as soon as the subject awakened in the morning. At the completion of the interview, the experimenter entered the sleep room, disconnected the electrodes, and gave the subject an envelope which contained copies of all twelve of the target paintings. The subject was then asked to rank the target which he thought most closely corresponded with his dreams. Copies of the target material were then sent to the three judges along with typed transcripts of the subject's dream reports and his associational material.

I am indebted to Dr. Stanley Krippner for permission to examine some of the anecdotal material connected with subject responses.

The target Animals by Tamayo depicts two dogs with exaggerated teeth snarling over scattered bones. There is a large black rock in the background. One subject, a female teacher, saw herself at a banquet "... eating something like rib steak. And this friend of mine was there ... and people were talking about how she wasn't very good to invite for dinner because she was very conscious of other people getting more to eat than she got, especially, meat..."

Zapatistas by Orozco portrays a group of Mexican revolutionaries walking against a backdrop of bold mountains and clouds. A male psychologist dreamed of "... a storm. Rainstorm. It reminds me of traveling ... approaching a rainstorm ... For some reason, I get a feeling of memory, now of New Mexico when I lived there. There are a lot of mountains around New Mexico. Indians, pueblos. Now my thoughts go to almost as though I were thinking of another civilization."

In The Sacred Fish by De Chirico, two dead fish lay on a wooden slab which has been placed in front of a candle. A female artist, acting as a subject, dreamed of "death, of going swimming, of a wooden table, and of lighting a candle." She also dreamed of a friend who kept asking her how to spell "fish" in French.

The first series of twelve targets served as a screening procedure for the second group of tests conducted by the Dream Laboratory. In this series of tests, the most gifted subject was selected from the original twelve and paired with the better agent of the two who had been "transmitting" during the first group. Again, the hypothesis was that "telepathic effects in the dreams of a sleeping subject can be experimentally demonstrated."

The results of the second series, according to the judges, was that "the actual targets were ranked significantly more favorably than expected by chance whether that ranking was executed on the basis of the dream material alone or on the dreams in combination with the subject's associations to them."

Boats on the Beach by Van Gogh produced a dream which made the subject think of "... something to do with a painter. It makes me think of Van Gogh, perhaps ... on a boardwalk or a beach ... The sea coast. The place is slightly elevated. The boards or planks seem to stand out."

Dali's The Sacrament of the Last Supper brought some provocative dream associations. The subject saw "a glass of wine, very unusual wine." He saw a group of people among whom "... someone was trying to do something that wasn't good—destructive perhaps ... One of them was not good." The subject also made a number of references to a "magician" or a "small town doctor."

Because the experimenters were so intrigued with the subject's many associations with Christ-figures when Dali's painting was employed as the target, they departed from their normal procedure of random selection and had the agent use the Sacrament of the Last Supper on a later night. On this occasion, the subject had six dreams, which included impressions of "... a dozen or so men pulling a fishing boat ashore right after having returned from a catch. The fishermen dream makes me think of the Mediterranean area, perhaps even some sort of Biblical time. Right now my associations are of the fish and the loaf, or even the feeding of the multitudes."

In a later dream on that night, the subject saw a Christmas catalog. In yet another, he thought of a picture where "... a doctor is sitting beside a child that is ill ... It's called "The Physician.' "

When Chagall's Paris from a Window was the target, the subject dreamed of "... walking in the French Quarter ... It would definitely be in the early nineteenth century."

Experimenters Ullman, Krippner, and Feldstein feel strongly that their accumulated data suggest that, "as hypothesized, the transfer of information from an agent to a sleeping subject, by means other than the ordinary sensory channels of communication, can be experimentally demonstrated under the conditions described."

Dr. Karlis Osis, of the American Society for Psychical Research, is currently engaged in research with ESP and the effects of distance.

Dr. A.H. Esser, T.L. Etter, and W.B. Chamberlain, Research Facility, Rockland State Hospital, are conducting an inquiry into whether there are any "physiological concomitants to extrasensory communication," and are "pursuing our research with a view toward designing an experiment which satisfies the rigor of repeatability."

According to Dr. J. G. Pratt, University of Virginia, School of Medicine, their research program is "subject-centered; that is to say, the emphasis is placed upon selecting for investigation individuals who show, to a striking degree, one or another of the psi abilities that we want to study."

Dr. Gertrude R. Schmeidler, Department of Psychology, City College of the City University of New York, is currently studying the varying effects of grouping congenial or uncongenial pairs for ESP tests. "... the second score will be even worse than the first for subjects who are reserved or hostile, and the second score will be better than the first for subjects predicted to be congenial," Dr. Schmeidler said of her hypothesis in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Volume 60, July, 1966.

The Dream Laboratory at Maimonides Hospital of Brooklyn is presently working with ESP in hypnotically induced dreams. According to Dr. Stanley Krippner, "... Perhaps the most important aspect of the study is the inclusion of a control group which receives the same amount of encouragement, persuasion, and suggestion as the experimental group—but without formal trance induction. This type of control has been lacking in most studies and therefore one cannot be sure whether the results would have been similar without hypnotic induction."

Serious researchers have increased their experiments in an all-out effort to meet the challenge offered by orthodox science. Tighter controls, new methods of evaluation, greater awareness of the human element are all being incorporated into current research in ESP.

Dr. Henry Margenau, Higgins Professor of Physics and Natural Philosophy, Yale University, was asked by Dr. Gardner Murphy, President of the A.S.P.R., to give the luncheon address at the ESP forum in New York City. Dr. Margenau chose as his topic, "ESP in the Framework of Modern Science." In this address, the Yale physicist urged parapsychologists to develop theory.

"No amount of empirical evidence, no mere collection of facts, will convince all scientists of the veracity and the significance of your reports. You must provide some sort of model ... you must advance bold constructs —constructs connected within a texture of rationality—in terms of which ESP can be theoretically understood ..."

According to Dr. Margenau, the scientific climate for the acceptance of "psi" research has never been better. "To put it bluntly," he said, "science no longer contains absolute truths.

"We have begun to doubt such fundamental propositions as the principle of the conservation of energy, the principle of causality, and many other commitments which were held to be unshakeable and firm in the past. And this has, I think, an interesting bearing upon your own pursuits, for it means that the old distinction between the natural and the supernatural has become spurious. That distinction rested upon a dogmatism, a scientific dogmatism, which supposed that everything in the way of fundamental facts and basic matters was known and that there was an obvious distinction between what was possible and what was not possible. Today we know that there are many phenomena on the fringe, on the periphery of present-day science, which are not yet understood, which are still obscure, but which will nevertheless be encompassed by the scientific method and by scientific understanding in the future."

Dr. Margenau feels that the parapsychologist is not "likely to find theories which will illuminate his area of interest already prepared by physicists." He advises the "psi" researcher to "strike out on his own and probably reason in bolder terms than present-day physics suggests."

The Yale physicist and natural philosopher concluded his address by declaring: "The concepts of parapsychology may well turn out to be at first completely different from the concepts of contemporary physics. The other behavioral sciences are not fashioned precisely after the patterns of inorganic behavior; yet they are acceptable and they succeed ... Tolerate the strident critical voices of hard-boiled, pragmatic, and satisfied scientists without too much concern, and continue your own painstaking search for an understanding of new kinds of experience, possibly in terms of concepts which now appear strange."