Telepathic Dreams and Psychotherapy

Although his followers have not widely publicized the fact, Sigmund Freud was a member of the British Society for Psychical Research, and once stated in a letter that if he had his life to live over he would dedicate it to psychical research. He was aware of "the incontestable fact that sleep creates favorable conditions for telepathy" and even went so far as to make the following coming-out-of-the-closet disclosure:

"I have often had the impression, in the course of experiments in my private circle, that strongly emotionally colored recollections can be successfully transferred without much difficulty. If one has the courage to submit to an analytical examination the associations of the person to whom the thoughts are supposed to be transferred, correspondences often come to light which would otherwise have remained undiscovered" (6).

In study after study it has been shown that psychic dreams generally deal with highly charged topics for the dreamer, and that the "target" person being dreamed about is typically someone to whom the dreamer has important emotional ties. Since disturbing material is encountered so commonly in therapy and since the therapist is endowed with emotional significance for the patient, it is not surprising that many psychic dreams are reported in a therapeutic situation and that in most of them, the therapist is prominently featured.

In his book, Psi and Psychoanalysis, Jule Eisenbud traces the occurrence of psychic dreams in his own therapy practice (7). Quite a few detailed accounts of psychic dreams are also presented by several psychoanalysts in the book, Psychoanalysis and the Occult (8). We'll present one brief example from that book.

Dr. Geraldine Pederson-Krag and her children met a friend for dinner at a restaurant. When the bill came, Dr. Pederson- Krag's share would have been a little over $6.00 while that of the friend was only $2.00. He insisted that he wanted to pay for Dr. Pederson-Krag, but she felt uneasy because this might carry certain implications that she did not wish to encourage. Despite the friend's protest, she succeeded in paying her own share. That night, one of her male patients had this dream: