A few days back Anastasia Damalas uploaded PF Leadership Through The Years to the PF YouTube Channel. It’s a lovely montage of photos of the founders of the PF, Eileen J. Garrett and Frances P. Bolton, Eileen Coly who served as President from Garrett’s death in 1970 until the 2000s when she’d entered her 80s, and Lisette Coly who is now the President. The photo montage is accompanied by quotes from each of the individuals who have steered the PF on its path, read by Lisette. Brief but fascinating, there are photos of the various stages of the PF’s history that have never been made public before.
PF Leadership Through The Years is actually one of a set of extraordinary videos of interviews and events that took place in 2016, the 65th anniversary of the incorporation of the Foundation in 1951. One of these is A Perspectives Lecture with Dr. Stanley Krippner: Dreams from Another Dimension? , given at the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn by long-time friend of the PF, psychologist Stanley Krippner. Employed by the PF in the early 1960s, Dr. Krippner was involved in the first investigations of dream telepathy with Dr. Montague Ullman, also a staff member then. Their work led to the PF Monograph Dream Telepathy that chronicled that work and later work done by the two at the Maimonides Dream Laboratory in Brooklyn from the late 1960s through the 1970s.
A testiment to Dr. Krippner’s importance to the PF as well as to both psychology and parapsychology, is the video Dr. Stanley Krippner 65th Anniversary Interview, a charming and interesting interview with Krippner on his relationship to the Foundation among other things that have filled Dr. Krippner’s long and productive career.
Also in the playlist is a 65th Anniversary Interview conducted with Dr. John Palmer, two-time past President of the Parapsychological Association, a staff member of the Rhine Research Center from 1984 through 2004 during the last four years of his tenure serving as both the Director of Education and the Direction of Research.
From 1994 through 2016, he was also the editor of the Journal of Parapsychology. Filmed by PF Research Associate Gonçalo Veiga, Dr. Palmer ranged over his experience in the field and talked quite a bit about the Masters in Parapsychology at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, California that was in operation from the late 1970s and early 1980s. The program was partially funded by the Parapsychology Foundation, principally supporting Palmer’s position as the key faculty member in the program.
Over the years the PF has funded a number of people and their research efforts. Dr. Lawrence LeShan, now in his 90s, worked extensively with Mrs. Garrett in the 1960s, wrote the seminal book The Medium, The Mystic and the Physicist: Toward a General Theory of the Paranormal (reprinted in 2003), among many others. His long view of the field is charmingly recounted in an interview conducted by Lisette Coly for the 65th Anniversary Lecture Series.
Also conducted by Lisette Coly is the interview with psychologist Dr. Charles T. Tart, another long-time friend of the PF, who got his first grant from Eileen J. Garrett during his student days specifically to buy books (and dutifully, after the purchase, he returned the change to Mrs. G.). Known best for his research into altered states of consciousness, Tart’s work has been important both to that field and to parapsychology. His interview ranges over the whole of his career with an emphasis on the importance of the PF to his work.
Last, but not least, is Lisette Coly’s interview of Dr. Sally Rhine Feather, a board member of the Rhine Research Center, a past President of the laboratory. The Rhine and its more recent predecessor the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man/Institute of Parapsychology followed on the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University founded by Sally’s parents, Dr. J. B. Rhine and Dr. Louisa E. Rhine back in the 1940s.
Lisette and Sally share a unique place in the history of the field, both substantially involved in and managing the family legacy. This extraordinary interview can be found here. Whether or not you’re interested in the history of the Foundation or the field, this is a unqiue conversation that ranges over Sally’s life in the field.
The playlist is unique on the PF’s YouTube Channel and not finished yet. There are a few more videos that will be added before the anniversary fades into the history of the PF at the end of 2017. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to use the music and style for the 70th anniversary in 2021 and maybe even the 75th in 2026. But in the meantime, it’s been a wonderful journey to hear these stories for those of us who are newer members of the PF family and we hope that you will enjoy these videos as well.