[@Grey]I was thinking physcial harm rather than mental, cause while not as bad anymore, his mental abilities tend to come with certain . . . [i]side-effects[/i], such as making it hard to refuse him, getting weird, not-appropriate thoughts about random people from time to time, and the most dangerous one, having some of your soul being tainted by him, which causes people to act much more impulsively, giving into their Id more than they would normally. Also, because of the thing with his mother's boyfriend, he doesn't really use his abilities on people anymore so it would be highly unlikely that would be what malfunctioned.

Also, even if Ian was going to dream travel, he's already settled on not using his powers at all in order to find out her identity, relying purely on his own ability to deduce things and follow clues. It's more of a game that he plays then a thing he puts serious effort into, so he doesn't really care how long it takes to get it done.