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 several colleges in central Alberta. As well as being a past-president of the Association for the Study of Dreams, she has 70+ professional publications and 17 book chapters primarily on dreams and higher states of consciousness.

Dr. Gackenbach is editor of Sleep and Dreams: A Sourcebook (1986) for Garland Publishers andThe Psychology of Internet Use (forthcoming) for Academic Press. She co-editedConscious Mind, Sleeping Brain: Perspectives on Lucid Dreaming (1988) for Plenum Publishers; Dream Imagery: A Call to Mental Arms (1991) for Baywood Publishers. Her first authored book isControl 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, the Shirley Show, and ManAlive. Dr. Gackenbach has another edited book coming out from Academic Press this fall, Psychology and the Internet: Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, and Transpersonal Implications.

Since moving to Canada her professional interest has shifted to aboriginal peoples. Over the last eight years she has taught primarily Cree peoples at three native Colleges. 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 working on her second authored book, The Traditional Death of CrowWoman.

Return to Spiritwatch Home Page