Telepathy

TELEPATHY

"The process of telepathy is said to occur when a psychic act by one person results in the same psychic act in another person" (1933a [1932]). Sigmund Freud developed several hypotheses about the direct transmission of thought, or telepathy, seeing it as an archaic mode of communication between individuals and possibly a physical process that had become mental at the two ends of the communications sequence.

Carl Jung and, later, Sándor Ferenczi, were, along with Freud, interested in the question of telepathy. Freud's attitude toward it was simultaneously one of openness, because of its proximity to the unconscious, and reserve, fearing that psychoanalysis might find itself compared to occultism. His interest was essentially personal and longstanding, since he believed that he was able to communicate remotely with his fiancée Martha by thought alone when he was in Paris (Jones, 1957, vol. 3). Later, he attempted to conduct experiments of this kind, which is reflected in his correspondence with Ferenczi in 1910 and with his daughter Anna in 1925. But Freud maintained that the notion of telepathy was outside psychoanalysis, which was only interested in using a scientific, not a mystical, approach in the investigation of psychic activity. In fact, in discussing the telepathy performed by mediums, he recommended that we investigate their psychology, as well as that of their customers. Nonetheless, he felt that the phenomenon in question, namely the transmission of thought, was at least probable even if it was not demonstrable.

Freud advised Jung, and especially Ferenczi, to be cautious about revealing their attitudes about telepathy, which might have risked jeopardizing the status of psychoanalysis. He expressed this sentiment publicly on several occasions, the first time in 1921, in a short text entitled "Psychoanalysis and Telepathy," which was read during a scientific meeting with his followers (1941d [1921]), the second time in an essay, "Dreams and Telepathy" (1922a), and then in 1925 in a note on "The Occult Meaning of Dreams" (1925i), published in the New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933a).

In fact Freud couched his own interest in the occult, in the form of a critique of a skeptical and limited rationalism, in rather sharp terms: "Not for the first time would [psychoanalysis] be offering its help to the obscure but indestructible surmises of the common people against the obscurantism of educated opinion" (1941d [1921], p. 178). However, this interest did not lead him to accept telepathy as such, but to examine with greater attention the examples of premonitions or of premonitory dreams, which led him to question the after-the-fact reconstruction of narratives of partially falsified acts.

The value of Freud's investigation, therefore, extends well beyond telepathy, touching upon the epistemological justification of the interpretative process used for dreams and analytic constructions. At the same time, as a question, telepathy is most certainly related to that of the unconscious through the hypothesis of telepathic communication in primitives and animals. Animism, the occult, and the uncanny, therefore, form a field that is neither inside nor outside psychoanalysis, but which psychoanalysis attempts to approach using its own methods.

Sophie de Mijolla-Mellor

See also: Latent; New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis ; Occultism; Omnipotence of thought; "Recommendations to Physicians Practicing Psychoanalysis"; "'Uncanny', The."

Bibliography

Freud, Sigmund. (1922a). Dreams and telepathy. SE, 18: 195-220.

——. (1933a [1932]). New introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. SE, 22: 1-182.

——. (1941d [1921]). Psycho-analysis and telepathy. SE, 18: 173-193.

Granoff, Wladimir, and Rey, Jean-Michel. (1983). L 'Occulte, objet de la pensée freudienne. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Jones, Ernest. (1953-1957). Sigmund Freud. Life and work, London: Hogarth Press.