2 - ESP, Psychiatry, And The Analyst's Couch

In 1884, the French psychiatrist, Pierre Janet, successfully conducted a most remarkable experiment in telepathy.

In 16 out of 25 tries, Janet telepathically hypnotized a young Frenchwoman, who sat in a room 500 meters away. Not only did the young woman enter the hypnotic state, but she obeyed Janet's post-hypnotic suggestions, which had been telepathically implanted in her subconscious.

The impressive experiment was observed by a group of scientists and presided over by the eminent French physician, Jean Martin Charcot. Janet later reported that they had taken "every plausible precaution ... We can conclude only one thing: that such phenomena should be reproduced and studied."

Certainly Sigmund Freud (who may possibly have been an observer of the experiment since he was studying in Paris under Charcot at the time) would have given hearty recommendation in his later years to all psychoanalysts who wanted to devote time to the study of ESP. But such has not been the case. Although psychiatrists often give token approval of the work of "psi" research, there are perhaps less than ten in the entire United States who are actively engaged in any investigation of ESP. As a matter of rather dismal fact, there are only about six full-time and about 40 part-time academically trained "psi" researchers in America - and this number includes those few psychiatrists.

Dr. Jule Eisenbud, commenting upon the lack of psychiatric contributions to parapsychology in view of the potential which "psi" research could offer in the development of a comprehensive view of man's personality, recently wrote: "... there is every reason to be suspicious of a field of study which takes seriously a group of alleged phenomena and a set of propositions which correspond closely to delusions that always have characterized the mentally ill ... which invariably disappear as the mentally disturbed regain the capacities, the balance, and relationships with people that are generally accepted as normal conditions of mental health."

As we have already mentioned, Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, would not have allowed possible censure from the scientific establishment to have thwarted his explorations into the unknown world of "psi" research. In the famous letter to the American researcher Hereward Carrington, Freud declared: "If I had my life to live over again, I should devote myself to psychical research rather than to psychoanalysis."

In his The Psycho pathology of Everyday Life (1904), Freud had discussed several alleged super-normal occurences and expressed a profound skepticism about prophetic dreams and telepathic phenomena. However, in 1922, he published his article "Dreams and Telepathy" and publicly proclaimed that he admitted the possibility of telepathic phenomena. He had written a much less cautious full-length essay, Psychoanalysis and Telepathy, which he would have read to the International Psychoanalytic Congress of 1922 if Ernest Jones had not persuaded him to consider the damaging repercussions his out-spoken attitude might have on the whole fledgling psychoanalytic movement. Psychoanalysis and Telepathy, consequently, did not see print until after Freud's death in 1941.

What had happened to so dramatically change Freud's mind? Certainly two of his most brilliant friends and followers, C.G. Jung and Sander Ferenczi, had much to do with Freud's reappraisal of "psi" phenomena. Jung, who later broke away from Freud to lead the "Jungian" school of psychoanalysis, used to regale his friend and mentor with tales of his own experiences in what the Germans still often refer to as "occult" research. One night, according to Freud's biographer, Ernest Jones, Jung demonstrated his own ability as a poltergeist to the astonished "father" of psychoanalysis. The hour was late, and whether through power of mind or through the influence of his powerful personality, Jung demonstrated his ability to make objects rattle on the furniture in Freud's study.

Ferenczi introduced Freud to several patients who claimed to be clairvoyant. Freud was so struck by presumptive extrasensory communications between the analyst and his patients that he stated that the demonstrations had "put an end to any possible doubt about the reality of thought-transference."

In 1924, Freud wrote a letter to Jones in which he remarked how strongly he had been impressed with a report on telepathic experiments which Gilbert Murray had prepared for the Society for Psychical Research. "I confess," he wrote, "... that I am ready to give up my opposition to the existence of thought-transference ... I should even be prepared to lend the support of psychoanalysis to the matter of telepathy."

Once again, the skeptic Jones, fearful of the damage that such a public declaration might deliver to psychoanalysis, convinced Freud not to publish any such offer of support to parapsychological research.

Today psychiatrists and psychoanalysts vary greatly in their attitudes toward "psi" research. Those who profess nothing but an adamant skepticism say that the illustrations of ESP brought forward by their colleagues express nothing but the analyst's own desire to believe in their validity. Those who consider "psi" research to be a serious and valuable contribution to man's understanding of his own personality insist that paranormal activities, particularly those of telepathy and clairvoyance, are too numerous to be dismissed by an arched eyebrow and a cursory examination.

Many psychiatrists have developed a respect for "psi" research when, during the course of analysis, a close relationship that can only be described as psychic, has developed between a doctor and his patient. Some doctors have reported patients who have related dreams that have dramatized actual incidents which the analysts themselves have experienced that day or even the week before. In several cases, the key to a patient's mental disturbance has been located in a dream experience of the analyst. Reports have even been made of several patients of the same analyst sharing dreams or re-enacting group or individual experiences, as if some strange circle of telepathic dreams had been established.

Dr. Jule Eisenbud has said that the "psi" process should be used in analysis. "The psi process is a thoroughgoing part of the total behavior of the individual and as much of a determinant in the actions and thoughts of the patient as other types of stimuli."

Commenting on "psi" during therapy, Dr. S. David Kahn, a New York psychiatrist, has written that ESP can often bring to the surface material which patients and analysts have repressed.

Dr. Montague Ullman says that "many persons who are incapable of effective communication in normal ways can communicate at a telepathic level and surprise the therapist with a telepathic dream of rich awareness even of the physician's problems.

"The telepathic dreams reported by patients in analysis are at times striking and often ingeniously linked to the dynamics of the treatment situation. But the occurrence of the dream is episodic and uncontrollable. It appears under conditions in which no advance preparation is made to exclude sensory cues."

It would seem obvious that since so much of Freudian theory and practice has to do with the interpretation of the symbols created during the dream experience the bonds between psychology and parapsychology are strong indeed. The same laws of psychodynamics that apply to the dream also apply to "psi" phenomena. Both the dream and "psi" are incompatible with currently accepted notions of time, space, and causality.

In 1928 Mr. Calder, who resided with his wife and family in Middlesex, was named headmaster of the Holm-firth Secondary School in Yorkshire, England.

Mrs. Calder had never been to Yorkshire, but shortly before they left Middlesex to begin househunting there, she had a vivid dream of an old greystone house located in a picturesque valley through which ran a stream of clear but strangely black-looking water.

No one was more startled than she when they found the very house of her dream in a valley near Holmfirth. The stream, which ran by the house, was often discolored by indigo from a nearby dye-works. The Calders decided to rent one-half of the large house, and they moved in during August, 1928.

The Calders often remarked about the strange dream that Mrs. Calder had experienced and were amazed at its clarity on all but one point. In her dream, Mrs. Calder had seen only that one half of the house which was already occupied. Outside of the door was half a barrel which was being used as a dog house. Although the other half of the house was occupied when the Calders moved in, there was no converted barrel dog house outside of its door.

About a year later, however, there was a change of tenants in the other half of the old greystone house in. the valley. When the new tenants arrived, they brought with them a dog and set half a barrel outside the door for its kennel.

This precognitive dream, discussed in both H.F. Salt-marsh's Foreknowledge and Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton's Some Cases of Prediction, seems indeed to do peculiar things to the popular concept of time. The fact that such precognitive dreams as those that tell of future events, accomplishments, dangers, and deaths are so common has persuaded many "psi" researchers that somehow, in a way that is not yet understood, each of us is aware of the future at an unconscious level of our minds. Such knowledge usually lies imprisoned at a subconscious level, out of the grasp of our conscious minds. Occasionally, however, in especially dramatic dreams, bits and snatches of scenes from the future bubble up to become conscious memories. Then, later, as the experience is lived through in waking reality, it is astonishing to have the dream play itself again before conscious eyes.

Psychiatrist Dr. Jan Ehrenwald has theorized that at the lower level of the subconscious - which Freudian analysts refer to as the "id" - time and spatial relationships may be all mixed up. Here and there, past, present, and future may all be interlocked and interchangeable.

The problems that await teams of psychiatrists and parapsychologists working together in joint efforts are many and varied, but each question answered brings us that much closer to a unified picture of man's personality and his role in the universal scheme of things.

For example, what about the trance state? In what ways is it similar to, or distinguished from, normal sleep, religious ecstasy, or hypnotically or drug induced states of unconsciousness?

What about mediumship? Does the medium serve as a receiving station for the unconscious patterns of others? Or is he in an altered state of personality, perhaps even possessed by a discarnate mind? And are the medium's spirit controls secondary personalities, or entities created by the mass mind of the seance circle? And then there is multiple personality with sometimes three four, or five faces of some hapless "Eve." Could it be, as some researchers have boldly suggested, that the human psyche, in a parthenogenetic fashion similar to the division of cells, may give birth to another "self"? Could this literal "split" of the personality become dissociated from the original self and, scornful of the accepted dimensions of time and space, become a poltergeist?

Psychiatrists have assured us that the various "personalities" involved in extreme cases of multiple personality may operate independently of one another and may carry out activities exclusive of the conscious awareness of any of the other personalities. One personality may, in fact, perform a function which another "face" would be loathe to do under any circumstances. In such cases there are, for all practical purposes, two or more "people" living in one body.

The problems in "psi" research proliferate and desperately call for a united frontal attack by a strong alliance of psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and parapsychologists.

An example of the co-operation of a doctor and a sensitive in diagnosing obscure neuroses is Dr. R.C. Connell of County Cork, Ireland, and the psychometrist, Geraldine Cummins.

During the reign of terror effected against the Jews by the Nazis during World War II, a young Jew in his twenties came to Dr. Connell complaining of severe pains in his hands. After a brief examination, the doctor was able to determine a slight abrasion of skin and a minor injury to the extensor tendon of the little finger on one hand, but there was no fracture and absolutely no serious damage done.

Still the young man complained that both hands pained him so severely that he could not sleep at night. Dr. Connell assured him that complete recovery would be accomplished in a matter of days, but the man would not accept this diagnosis. Even a display of the X-ray plate could not convince him that his hands were not severely damaged. Dr. Connell at last concluded that the alleged pain caused by such a trivial injury was simply a mask to cover a more severe psychological trauma.

The young man freely related the way in which he had received the injury to his hand. Having lost his position as a branch manager of a large importing firm because of the war, he had taken employment as a fireman in the Belfast Fire Brigade. One day while saluting an officer, he had brought his hand down sharply on a fire pump that stood behind him. He was told by the hospital that the hand had received no serious injury, but he had not believed them and had come home to County Cork to undergo treatment at the hands of Dr. Connell.

The doctor could find no clues to the man's trauma in several extended discussions and at last proposed that they employ the services of Miss Geraldine Cummins, a psychiatrist, or object-reader. The young man consented and the doctor mailed Miss Cummins one of his fountain pens.

The sensitive, in a written report to Dr. Connell, said that the young Jew's difficulty lay in a brutal act which had been dealt to one of his ancestors over 100 years before, when a young Jewish husband had his hands cut off in punishment for defending his wife against the advances of a Russian landlord. The powerful landlord had organized a program that fired the Ghetto, drove out the Jews, and killed all members of the family except the young son. This son carried with him the terrible memory of a mutilated father, a ravished mother, and a slaughtered family.

The descendants of this emotionally scarred boy eventually made their way to County Cork, but the memory of the sadistic hacking-off of the hands lay buried in the subconscious of each of them.

When he was very young, the man who came to Dr. Connell with his injured hands had seen a close friend receive a severe cut on the hand. The horror of that wound began to free the terrible memory from his unconscious. Later a young man, who lived near them in the small Jewish community, scratched his hand and died of tetanus. This tragedy served to further reactivate the memory of the severed hands. When the Nazis began their systematic annihilation of the European Jews, the young man experienced the terrible fear and sorrow known to Jews everywhere during those grim and ghastly years of World War II. His taking of the job with the fire brigade intensified his subconscious recollection of the burning of the Ghetto, and when he injured his own hand, the psychological climax had been precipitated.

When Dr. Connell received this report from Miss Cummins, he called the young Jew to his office and read it to him.

"It's like I have heard it all somewhere, somehow, before," the young man told the doctor.

After a brief discussion, the young Jew indicated his conviction that Miss Cummins had indeed revealed the deep-seated psychological basis for his trauma. Incredible as it seemed, the true cause of the pain in his hands lay in the subconscious memory of a cruelty over 100 years old.

Dr. Connell adds that the young man recovered the complete control of his hands with astonishing rapidity and called on him later to announce his marriage plans. The combined efforts of a doctor and a psychic sensitive had utilized unorthodox channels of mind to effect a complete recovery in a psychologically disturbed young man.