Psychology and Anomalous Observations: The Question of ESP in Dreams

Irvin Child's Psychology and Anomalous Observations, published in American Psychologist in 1985, is a peer-reviewed article reassessing J. B. Rhine's early studies of extrasensory perception in dreams, arguing that mainstream psychological critics of the time had mischaracterized the studies' methodology. Its strength is that Child was a mainstream, well-regarded psychologist publishing a methodological reassessment in a major disciplinary journal. Its limit is that the article defends the adequacy of the original studies' methods rather than demonstrating that the anomalous effect itself is real, and the broader scientific consensus remains that no ESP effect has been reliably demonstrated, so a claim citing this article should present it as a methodological argument within a contested literature, not as confirmation of the phenomenon.