The Healing Power of Dreams

Montague Ullman was one of the great mentors in my life. His groundbreaking research with Stanley Krippner into psychic phenomenon and telepathy in dreams validated what I had experienced since I was a young child—and confirmed that I was sane.

After reading Dream Telepathy, I knew this was someone I had to study with. I cannot remember where we first met—I think it was a workshop at the Open Center in New York in the early 1980s. I do recall that I was the only lay dream worker there, surrounded by psychoanalysts and psychotherapists and others much more credentialed than I was. Monte put me completely at ease, letting me know he was delighted to have a nonprofessional in the group.

That was the beginning of a long and wonderful friendship. I attended every possible Leadership Training Workshop, feeling comfortable as we sat in a circle of chairs in Monte’s book-lined living room discussing the fine points of leading a dream group. It was naturally a prerequisite that the man I married had to attend one of these seminars—and we have been sharing dreams ever since. (I think it makes for a healthy relationship.) When we married, Monte gave us a piece of art his daughter had created—it’s in our bedroom and I call it “the city dreaming.”

Monte often said, “Whisper dreams in my ear and I’ll follow you anywhere.” Well, he and Ingegerd Hansson, who was involved with the Swedish Dream Group Forum, whispered dreams in my ear and I followed them to Greece in 1995 shortly after I went into remission from a late stage cancer. I am convinced that it was more healing than the chemotherapy, and I have been doing dreamwork with cancer patients ever since. It was on the plane returning from Greece that I presented the idea of a newsletter about his work. At first Monte said it wouldn’t work, but before we landed he said “maybe.” The result was Dream Appreciation, a quarterly newsletter we published from 1996-2002. This was wonderful because it allowed him to share new thoughts and insights in a more informal way than refereed journals. There he introduced the concept that dream group members are “midwives to the dream” and wrote a series on “dreams and art” which was inspired by The Actors Studio.

In 2006 I was honored to present Monte with the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) Lifetime Achievement Award for his research and contributions to the field of dreams. Always a modest man, he was surprised at the IASD award and the overwhelming audience response to his talk. He did not realize how many lives he had touched—including mine—or how many people came to understand their dreams through his gentle process.

We have lost a great luminary, but his light is shining in other dimensions—and perhaps even in our dreams.

Page 85