The Relationship of Mental Telepathy to Trauma and Dissociation
Sharon Klayman Farber
Frontiers in the Psychotherapy of Trauma and Dissociation 2018 DOI: 10.46716/ftpd.2018.0015 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that telepathy merits serious attention in psychoanalysis rather than dismissal as a new-age idea, and that trauma and dissociation may make people more likely to report psychic or paranormal experiences. Through a case of apparent telepathic communication between a highly dissociated, traumatized patient and her therapist, the author proposes that evoked images can convert a patient's subsymbolic information into verbal symbolic form. |
Abstract
When we regard telepathy as a weird new-age concept, we can easily lose sight of how psychoanalysis seems to so many patients to be a form of mind-reading. The paranormal has always been controversial in psychoanalysis, and Freud’s deep interest in it has been marginalized. Several studies have found that a person with a history of trauma and dissociation will be more likely to report a high frequency of psychic or paranormal experience than a person who does not have such a history (Carpenter, 2015). The reasons for this will be explored, and a case demonstrating telepathic communication between a very dissociated, traumatized patient and her therapist will be presented. Using an information-processing model, I will illustrate how the patient’s subsymbolic information became converted to the verbal symbolic by means of my use of evoked images.