The Paranormal Surrounds Us: Psychic Phenomena in Literature, Culture and Psychoanalysis

Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Joyce, E.M. Forster, Ingmar Bergman and G.K. Chesterton all made the paranormal essential to their depiction of humanity. Freud recognized telepathy as an everyday phenomenon to be explored in clinical work. Observations on parapsychological aspects of psychoanalysis also include the findings of the Mesmerists, Jung and Ferenczi, as well as more contemporary psychoanalysts such as Eisenbud. Academicians attribute such psychic discoveries to “poetic license” rather than to accurate understanding of our parapsychological capacities. The author—a practicing psychoanalyst, parapsychologist, and a lawyer familiar with Navajo culture—argues for a fresh appraisal of psi phenomena in our lives, and for integrating an understanding of them into psychoanalytic theory and clinical work, literary studies and anthropology.