I began studying with Jungian analysts in San Francisco in the early 1980's and found that dreams provided not only a wonderful arena for exploring fantasy and creativity but also provided a soulful feedback system and continual inner dialogue. After a few years I began studying with other people who worked with dreams in many other ways, and shifted my focus away from pure Jungian dreamwork.

I was especially interested in the lack of education that therapists were receiving in graduate counseling programs, and began a dream tutoring practice to allow counselors from various modalities to respond to their clients' dreams in a more sophisticated manner. I felt a little boxed in by the work. The one-on-one contact was meaningful, but I felt I was not reaching a large enough audience. Also, the notion of dreams only being in the service of healing seemed limited. I wanted something that involved the wider culture. Both of these needs came together when I first experienced the Internet.

I began developing a wide variety of programs to network dreamworkers, distribute news, experiment with online dream sharing and provide information and education on dreams.  This kind of global networking seemed the natural extension of the grassroots Dream Movement that had been developing since the 1960's, and I modeled much of the online community around this. The first part of the model I found in local dream sharing groups such as those made popular by Strephon William-Kaplan, Jeremy Taylor, Gayle Delaney, Stan Krippner, Montague Ullman and many others. Another grassroots trend was a networked outpouring of information, education and creative group projects that included such organizations as BADG (Bay Area Dreamworkers Group), the Dream Library and Archive, and the Dream Network Journal. 

At the core of all this was a peer or partnership paradigm. 

My primary online community was (and is) called the Electric Dreams community. At the core of the community was an online dream sharing group. As new Internet projects came up, various members volunteered to coordinate and direct them. In this way the community remained a public service, being able to offer a monthly international magazin (e-zine), continual online dream groups, the Global Dreaming News, Web site development and mail list management and other projects. 

About the same time, I noticed that there was a great need for education about dreams and dreaming and started the DreamGate classes online, which offered not only a background in the field of dreams, but hands-on groups through the Net. 

In 1996 I was part of the Association for the Study of Dreams (ASD) Conference Committee and developed the Computer and Internet Resource and Exhibition Center for the Berkeley Conference, as well as contributing to the development of the ASD presence online and web site, which I now manage for ASD. I have been very impressed by the way ASD attempts to provide a way for all fields to come together and study dreams, encompassing all sides of the dream field, from anthropology, dream therapies, dreams and spiritual work, dream inspired art and literature, non-clinical dreamwork, dream telepathy, dream bio-physiology and many other disciplines. 

"Dream Sharing in Cyberspace " (1999) in Stanley Krippner and Mark Waldman's Dreamscaping.  Los Angeles, CA: Lowell House/Roxbury Park
http://www.dreamgate.com/dreamscaping.htm

Electric Dreams (1994 to present). A dream sharing e-zine
http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams

ASD Cyberphile (1995-present) A quarterly column for the ASD Dream Time magazine
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/cyberphile