Krippner, Stanley Curtis (1932-)

Psychologist and writer on parapsychology. Krippner was born on October 4, 1932, at Edgerton, Wisconsin. He studied at the University of Wisconsin (B.S., 1954) and Northwestern University (M.A., 1957; Ph.D., 1961). After completing his education he became the director of the Child Study Center at Kent State University in Ohio. Such interests were reinforced by contacts with parapsychologists J. B. Rhine and Gardner Murphy during his undergraduate and graduate years. While at Kent Krippner visited Rhine at Duke University and began to conduct parapsychological experiments with the children with whom he was working.

An internationally known humanistic psychologist, Krippner has explored dreams, altered states of consciousness, and paranormal phenomena for many years. His interest in such things began as a teenager on a Wisconsin farm: "When I was about 14 years of age, I had a very dramatic sense of my uncle's death at the very time that my parents received a phone call announcing his death. The effect of that was quite electrifying. Also I was an avid science fiction reader and an amateur magician, and all of these interests coalesced."

In 1964 Krippner left his position at Kent State University to become director of the Dream Laboratory at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. With Montague Ullman and, later, Charles Honorton, Krippner spent ten years in a systematic exploration of dreams, including ESP in dreams and other altered states of consciousness. Interest in consciousness studies in the early 1970s led him to explore psychedelic drugs, yoga, meditation, and other means of altering consciousness.

He also established contact and nurtured relationships with European colleagues, and in 1973 he became the first parapsychologist to become vice president for the Western Hemisphere of the International Psychotronic Research Association. He chaired sessions of the Psychotronic Congress in Czechoslovakia in 1973 and in Monte Carlo in 1975 and became editor of the international journal Psychoenergetic Systems.

In 1973 Krippner became a faculty member of the Institute for Humanistic Psychology and more recently the director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at Saybrook Institute in San Francisco. Krippner has been recognized as one of the most outstanding leaders in the parapsychological field. In 1973 he became president of the Parapsychological Association and the following year began a tenure as president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology. He also serves as editor-in-chief of Advances in Parapsychological Research: A Biennial Review. He has written extensively on parapsychology and related consciousness and psychological subjects.

Sources:

Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

Krippner, Stanley. Dreamworking: How to Use Your Dreams for Creative Problem Solving. Buffalo, N.Y.: Bearly Ltd., 1988.

——. Human Possibilities: Mind Exploration in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1980.

——. Psychoenergetic Systems: The Interaction of Consciousness, Energy, and Matter. New York: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1979.

——. Song of the Siren: A Parapsychological Odyssey. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.

Krippner, Stanley, and Daniel Rubin. Galaxies of Life: The Human Aura in Acupuncture and Kirlian Photography. Gordon & Breach, 1973. Reprinted as The Kirlian Aura: Photographing the Galaxies of Life. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1974. Reprinted as Energies of Consciousness: Exploration in Acupuncture, Auras, and Kirlian Photography. New York: Interface, 1976.

Krippner, Stanley, and Sidney Cohen. LSD Into the Eighties. N.p., 1981.

Krippner, Stanley, and A. Villoldo. The Realms of Healing. Millbrae, Calif.: Celestial Arts, 1976.

Pleasants, Helene, ed. Biographical Dictionary of Parapsychology. New York: Helix Press, 1964.

Ullman, Montague, and Stanley Krippner, with Alan Vaughn. Dream Telepathy. New York: Macmillan, 1973.