The Paranormal Surrounds Us

Book excerpt: Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Joyce, E.M. Forster and Ingmar Bergman all made the paranormal essential to their depiction of humanity. Freud recognized telepathy as an everyday phenomenon. Observations on parapsychological aspects of psychoanalysis also include the findings of the Mesmerists, Jung, Ferenczi and Eisenbud. Many academicians attribute such psychic discoveries to "poetic license" rather than to accurate understanding of our parapsychological capacities. The author--a practicing psychoanalyst and parapsychologist, and a lawyer familiar with Navajo culture--argues for a fresh appraisal of psi phenomena and their integration into psychoanalytic theory and clinical work, literary studies and anthropology.