Freud on telepathy

By Paul Conant
Following Kant, I have taken lately to using the terms "noumena" and "noumenal world" to describe the reality behind the phenomenal world of appearances.

If one concedes a noumenal world, does not that open a Pandora's box of delusional thinking from untutored enthusiasts? Unfortunately, that is the case. In fact this is why Ernest Jones, Freud's collaborator, convinced Freud to suppress a discussion of phenomena known under the heading of telepathy. However, Freud eventually did reveal his thoughts in New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis.

Freud points out that if one were to say the earth's core contains carbonic acid, that idea would be viewed with suspicion, but as not altogether inconceivable. However, if one claimed the core is composed of jam, we have a right to dismiss the claim out of hand, jam coming from human actions on fruit. So, though one is entitled to reject some claims prior to examination, Freud is concerned that claims about occult phenomena may sometimes be rejected too quickly. He recalled the negative reaction that greeted his ideas about unconscious influences and sexual impulses.

In this light, Freud cites the scientific derision that greeted those who claimed that certain rocks found on the ground had fallen from the sky or that shells found on mountains implied that that terrain had once been seabed.

Using the term "occult" in the sense of unseen influences without suggesting a spirit domain, Freud sees much of occultist literature as representing a reflection of the anti-rationalism found among humans. Even scientists, after the conference is over, enjoy poking fun at their own activities; serious men enjoying a joke (and, as Freud observed, jokes reflect a need of the unconscious for irrationality, relief from "control"). So Freud is saying that occultist literature often expresses the strong anti-rationalist impulses common to all humans. We like to suspend the cold laws of nature, the machine-side of existence.

He grants that it may be "hard to avoid suspicion that the interest in occultism is a religious" ploy to overturn hard science, whereby the occultists are secretly trying to aid religion, but he argues, "at some point, we must overcome our disinclinations."

A problem is that "we are told that in fact our unbelieving -- that is to say, critical -- attitude may prevent the expected phenomena from happening." Freud is talking here about seances and mediums, most of whom he sees as charlatans. However, as pointed out in my paper, Toward a Signal Model of Perception, the reality construction process described there could very well be limited by negative belief.

Toward a signal model of perception
http://paulpages.blogspot.com/2013/03/toward-signal-model-of-perception.html

At any rate, Freud sees a "real core of yet unrecognized facts in occultism around which cheating and phantasies have spun a veil which is hard to pierce."

In the particular case of telepathy, most reported instances can be dismissed, he says. But a few remain that are hard to wave away. Freud insists he remains neutral on the subject, but it is clear that he is quite persuaded of something odd going on.

He asserts that in a telepathic dream the telepathic element plays the same role as any other residue (dream "trigger") of the day.

Freud gives an example of a man who dreamed his wife had twins; not long after, his daughter, who was some distance away, gave birth to twins (this was in the era before technology might have tipped him off). Freud weighs in with a psychoanalytic explanation, but nevertheless concedes what appears to be a telepathic element, which even so may have a natural explanation.

Freud's discussion of another situation -- his patient P's thought transference with respect to "Dr. Forsyth" -- would be dismissed by many probabilists on the random coincidence idea as discussed in Toward. However, it is often the case that those who have such experiences as described by Freud regard them as meaningful. There is a "shock of recognition" or a "strumming of an inner cord" that in my estimate may sometimes equate to a realization that we are seeing some effect of a noumenal world. Jung gave the name synchronicity to effects of the noumenal world; others describe such effects as the work of the realm of spirits. I could defend the idea of spirit as that part of the personality that inhabits the noumenal world, analogous to a software program inhabiting a mainframe computer. If the software program were conscious, it would not directly relate to the mainframe.

"One is led to the suspicion," maintains Freud, that telepathy is "the original, archaic method of communication between individuals and in the course of phylogenetic evolution it has been replaced with the better method of giving information via signals which are picked up by the sense organs."

Freud relates a report of Dorothy Burlingham, a psychoanalyst and "trustworthy witness." (She and colleague Anna Freud did pioneering work in child psychology.)

A mother and child were in analysis together. One day she spoke during analysis of a gold coin that had played a particular part in one of her childhood experiences. On returning home, her boy, who was about 10, came to her room and gave her a gold coin which he asked her to keep for him. Astonished, she asked him where he had got it. It turned out that it had been given him as a birthday present a few months previously, but there was no obvious reason why he had chosen that time to bring her the coin.

Freud sees this report as potential evidence of telepathy. One might also suspect it as an instance of "synchronicity" or the reality construction process described in Toward..

At any rate, a few weeks later the woman, on her analyst's instructions, sat down to write an account of the gold coin incident. Just then her child approached her and asked for his coin back, as he wanted to show it during his analysis session.

Freud argues that there is no need for science to fear telepathy (though his collaborator, Ernest Jones, certainly seems to have feared the ridicule the subject might bring); he is even open-minded about other paranormal phenomena. His suspicion that such phenomena are occurring via some unknown pathway never convinced him to renounce his atheism.