Biographical Statement for Jayne Gackenbach, Ph.D.
Dr. Gackenbach received her Ph.D. in 1978 in Experimental Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University. She was a full time academic for 11 years, primarily at the University of Northern Iowa, before resigning to join her family in Canada. She is currently affiliated with both Athabasca University and the University of Alberta. As well as being a past-president of the Association for the Study of Dreams she was the managing director of the Lucidity Association and for 10 years edited their semiannual journal on dreams and higher states of consciousness. She has 60+ professional publications and 12 book chapters on dreams and higher states of consciousness. Dr. Gackenbach is editor of Sleep and Dreams: A Sourcebook (1986) for Garland Publishers and co-editor (with Stephen LaBerge) of Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain: Perspectives on Lucid Dreaming (1988) for Plenum Publishers; (with Anees Sheikh) of Dream Imagery: A Call to Mental Arms (1991) for Baywood Publishers and (with Charles Alexander and Harry Hunt) of Higher States of Consciousness: Theoretical and Experimental Perspectives (in preparation) for Plenum Publishers.
Her first authored book is with Jane Bosveld, Control Your Dreams (1989) for Harper-Collins. This book was featured on the cover of Psychology Today, excerpted in OMNI, and was selected for the Behavioral Science Book Club. She has appeared on the Donahue Show and in Canada the Dede Petti Show and the Shirley Show as well as on numerous local and regional television and radio shows. Feature articles on her work have appeared locally in Athabasca Universities Aurora Magazine, the Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, and Edmonton Examiner.
Dr. Gackenbach has conducted numerous short courses and workshops primarily on dreams and consciousness in sleep in the U.S. and in Canada. She was recently invited to go to India to present her work on lucid dreaming to the Dalai Lama as one of six scientists discussing "Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying".
Since moving to Canada her professional emphasis has shifted to aboriginal peoples. Over the last six years she has taught primarily Cree peoples at two all native Colleges and in mixed native/nonnative classes at several community college settings. She also conducts workshops on dreams with a Cree woman both for Natives and nonnatives. Her psychological research with indigenous peoples is on the relationship of dreams to waking autobiographical incidents, cross-cultural differences in attitudes towards dreams, and the relationship of spiritual experiences to crisis events in childhood. She is currently working on a book about the death of a Cree woman.
Finally, Dr. Gackenbach is web master of the home page for the Association for the Study of Dreams, offers a non-credit on-line course on dreams, recently completed writing a course on information technologies and human experience for Athabasca University and is currently writing a course on the personal and transpersonal implications of the internet for the same university.