A nice profile in SF Weekly of a legend of parapsychology, Dr. Stanley Krippner, covering everything from his involvement with the famous Maimonides dream telepathy experiments through to drum hypnosis sessions with The Grateful Dead:
For the better part of the past 40 years, Krippner, 79, has been a psychology professor at San Francisco’s Saybrook University, a small graduate school near Jackson Square established in 1971 by the founders of psychology’s humanistic movement. He has penned close to 1,000 papers on subjects as far-reaching as childhood creativity, combating soldiers’ post-traumatic stress disorder, and worldwide shamanistic rituals. He has won more laurels from more organizations than he can keep track of, including several lifetime achievement awards from the American Psychological Association — the world’s largest organization of psychologists and the definer of mainstream thought in the field.
And yet, among Krippner’s cavalcade of papers are the following eye-openers: “LSD and Parapsychological Experiences,” “The Paranormal Dream and Man’s Pliable Future,” and “An Experiment in Dream Telepathy with the Grateful Dead.” (That last one, perhaps the only scientific study undertaken at the behest of Jerry Garcia, was published in the incomparably titled Journal of the American Society of Psychosomatic Dentistry and Medicine).
Krippner has traveled to every continent, save Antarctica, to participate in mind-altering tribal ceremonies or investigate “psychic claimants,” and ventured behind the Iron Curtain to inspect “psychotronic generators” built to store and harness “psychic energy.”
He has established a firm standing in the realm of parapsychology — the scientific study of psychic phenomena generally known as extrasensory perception — akin to the Dead’s place in the pantheon of rock ‘n’ roll. Among both “advocates” and “counter-advocates” of ESP, his decade of meticulous experimentation with “dream telepathy” is viewed as some of the field’s strongest and most methodologically sound work of the 20th century.
“Stan belongs on the Mount Rushmore of parapsychology,” says fellow ESP researcher Charles Tart. James “The Amazing” Randi, perhaps the world’s most prominent skeptic, also offers Krippner his benediction: “There are so few things in this field you can depend on, and there are so many people who are prejudiced and biased. But I can depend on Stan. And I don’t think he’s biased at all.”
One of the best articles I’ve read on a parapsychology researcher in terms of balance, which may be an outgrowth of the calm and sensible manner in which Krippner himself approaches the topic. And make sure you don’t miss the side-bar article on the “cartload of mind-blowing anecdotes that didn’t make it into the final article.
Read: “The Psychic World of Stanley Krippner” at SF Weekly.
