Wendy
Pannier, President (2005-06) of the International
Association for the Study of Dreams and a long time
member of its Board’s Executive Committee, published
Dream Appreciation featuring Monte’s work from
1996-2002. She has conducted dream workshops and groups
in the U.S. and abroad and in recent years has developed
programs to help cancer patients work with their dreams
and nightmares. She also works with health care
professionals. Wendy may be contacted at
DreamWendy@verizon.net.
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 can not 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 dream work 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.
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