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About Dr. Van de CastleDr. Van de Castle has been studying dreams for over 40 years. With Calvin Hall Ph.D., who was considered to be the most prominent dream researcher in the world at that time, Dr. Van de Castle co-authored The Content Analysis of Dreams in 1966. The content analysis method they pioneered in their classic book has become the standard approach to objective dream research used by hundreds of later researchers.The Hall-Van de Castle scales are used to provide normative material listing the various types of settings, objects, characters, social interactions, activities, emotions, etc. found in 500 male and 500 female dreams. By checking the table showing the frequencies of various objects, for example, it can be seen that items of jewelry were referred to 29 times by women and 5 times by men, while hand-held weapons were referred to 10 times by women and 38 times by men. Hundreds of other kinds of dream images are similarly indexed. Through his close familiarity with these extensive norms, Dr. Van de Castle is able to determine quickly whether the content of any given dream would be considered as typical or atypical, which greatly facilitates his ability in helping the dreamer to process the uniqueness of any given dream. The laboratory setting is a very familiar one for Dr. Van de Castle. He conducted two years of laboratory research with Dr. Hall at the Institute of Dream Research in Miami, Florida, and also served as the Director of the Sleep and Dream Research Laboratory at the University of Virginia Medical Center for several years. He served as an experimental dreaming subject in his own lab at the University of Virginia, at the Institute of Dream Research, the University of Wyoming, and the Maimonides Hospital Dream Laboratory in Brooklyn. The successful demonstration of his telepathic dreaming ability there was described at some length in the book Dream Telepathy by M.Ullman & S.Krippner. |
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Dr. Van de Castle has had wide-ranging field experiences in collecting hundreds of dreams from subjects in Panama, Nicaragua, and Guatemala; and has worked with the dreams of participants at workshops he has offered in Canada, Mexico, Belgium, and Russia. He has gathered dreams in various educational settings such as elementary schools, high schools, colleges, nursing and graduate schools; and he has also obtained dreams from hundreds of psychiatric patients in both hospitals and clinics, pregnant women, and members of a Senior Center.
In addition to his presentations at various scientific conventions, Dr.Van de Castle has appeared on several national TV shows, with Phil Donahue, David Letterman, Barbara Walters, Tom Snyder, Mike Douglas, and on numerous regional TV shows, to discuss dreams. In July 2000, he was a presenter on dreams for the Voice of America International radio show (80 million listeners). His work has been referenced in dozens of popular publications such as Psychology Today, Omni, Ladies' Home Journal, Playboy, Glamour, McCalls, Self, Parents, Family Circle, Men's Health, etc. and in newspapers such as the Washington Post and USA Today. He has been a keynote speaker twice for weekend educational presentations on dreams at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. For nearly two years, Dr. Van de Castle was the co-editor (with Dr. Henry Reed) of the Dream Network Bulletin, a popular newsletter dealing with dreams at the "grass roots" level. In recent years, the State University of New York has published over a dozen academic books on various dream topics in their SUNY Series in Dream Studies, under his guidance as an Advisory Editor. Dr. Van de Castle's wide-ranging contributions to understanding the world of dreams were recognized by the members of The Association for the Study of Dreams(ASD) when they elected him President of the organization in 1985. At an international meeting of this organization in 2004 at Copenhagen, Denmark, Dr. Van de Castle was awarded the first Lifetime Achievement Award in Dreamwork and was also recognized for his Lifetime Contribution to ASD. For more information about this international, multidisciplinary organization which promotes an awareness and appreciation of dreams in both professional and public arenas, go to their Web site (www.ASDreams.org). It is a rich source of information about the people and events associated with the current dream scene worldwide. |