The Deep Dive
The dream telepathy experiments remain among the most intriguing and methodologically creative studies in the parapsychology canon. Psychiatrist Montague Ullman and psychologist Stanley Krippner ran the research program at the Maimonides Medical Center's Division of Parapsychology and Psychophysics from roughly 1964 to 1978. The experimental design exploited an emerging understanding of sleep science, particularly the discovery of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep as the phase most associated with vivid dreaming. A typical session worked as follows. A volunteer 'receiver' would go to sleep in a soundproofed room at the hospital while being monitored by EEG equipment that tracked their sleep stages. In a distant room—sometimes in a separate building—a 'sender' would be given a randomly selected art print sealed in an opaque envelope. Once the receiver entered REM sleep, the sender would open the envelope and concentrate intensely on the image, attempting to 'transmit' its content into the dreamer's mind. When the EEG indicated the REM period was ending, a researcher would wake the receiver via intercom and ask them to describe their dream in detail. These dream reports were then transcribed. The next morning, an independent panel of judges who had no knowledge of the target image would be given the dream transcripts along with a set of possible target images and asked to rank how well each image matched the dream content. Across multiple series of experiments, Ullman and Krippner reported that judges matched dream content to the correct target image significantly more often than chance would predict. Some individual sessions were remarkably striking—one receiver dreamed of a boxing match on a night when the target was a painting of a prizefight. Another dreamed of ancient Egypt when the sender was concentrating on a pharaoh scene. The researchers published their results in mainstream psychiatry journals and compiled them in the 1973 book 'Dream Telepathy,' which became a touchstone for the field. What distinguished the Maimonides program from earlier anecdotal collections of telepathic dream reports was its systematic use of emerging neuroscience. By anchoring dream collection to objectively measured REM periods, Ullman and Krippner ensured that dream reports were fresh and detailed rather than reconstructed the following morning from fragmentary memories. The art prints used as targets were chosen from a diverse pool spanning multiple cultures and historical periods, reducing the likelihood that a correct match could be attributed to cultural common ground between sender and receiver. Krippner, who went on to a distinguished career in consciousness research at Saybrook University, continued to defend the experiments as methodologically sound for decades after the laboratory closed, while acknowledging that the field had not produced the definitive replication that would convert mainstream science. The Maimonides program also produced some of the earliest research on 'altered states of consciousness' as a variable in psi experiments—the idea that the hypnagogic state between waking and sleeping might be particularly conducive to telepathic reception. This hypothesis influenced decades of subsequent parapsychology research, including the Ganzfeld experiments, which similarly attempt to induce a mild altered state in receivers. The legacy of the Maimonides laboratory extends beyond parapsychology into mainstream sleep science, where several researchers who trained there went on to contribute to our understanding of REM sleep architecture and the neurochemistry of dreaming.
How It Is Used in Marketing
Dream interpretation is a core offering for many online psychic services, and the Maimonides experiments provide a scientific-sounding foundation for marketing these services. Psychics who specialize in dream analysis sometimes claim their work is 'based on research at Maimonides Medical Center' or that 'scientists proved dreams carry messages from other minds.' The implication is that paying for a dream reading is not superstition but participation in a scientifically validated process. Some sites go further, claiming that a psychic can enter your dreams remotely to deliver guidance—an extrapolation so wild that even Ullman and Krippner would likely object.
The Skeptic's Verdict
The Maimonides experiments have a mixed reputation among critics. On one hand, the protocols were reasonably well-designed for their era, with blinded judging panels and random target selection. On the other hand, subsequent analyses revealed troubling issues. The most persistent criticism comes from the selective reporting of results—certain experimental series with non-significant outcomes received far less attention than the successful ones. When all Maimonides dream studies are pooled together without cherry-picking, the overall effect shrinks considerably. Multiple independent replication attempts in the 1980s and 1990s failed to achieve similar results. Psychologist Susan Blackmore, who initially approached the research with sympathy, conducted her own dream telepathy studies and found nothing beyond chance, leading her to conclude that the original results were likely a product of methodological imperfections rather than genuine telepathy. The experiments remain historically important as a creative application of sleep science to parapsychology, but they are not considered credible evidence by mainstream researchers.