PSYCHIC SELF-DEFENSE

British Journal of Psychotherapy, 1999

The concept of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has been belatedly recognized by its inclusion in DSM-III (APA 1980). It has spawned a substantial body of specialist literature in which, despite Freud having written`Psychoanalysis and War Neurosis' in 1919, psychoanalytic theory is given scant attention. Freud suggested war neurosis was a form of traumatic neurosis characterized by`an alienation of the self, social withdrawal, irritability, recurrent dreams and flashbacks repeating the details of the experience, and severe anxiety'. Moore and Fine (1990) state that`efforts to relate the disorder to personality structure and function and to explain the symptomatology in terms of defences, gains and somatization have not been entirely satisfactory'. Traumatic neurosis is described as having two forms: the first being where trauma acts as the precipitating factor revealing a pre-existing neurotic structure, the second where the trauma is a decisive factor in the actual content of the symptoms i.e. ruminations over the traumatic events, recurring nightmares, and insomnia. The symptoms appear as a repeated attempt to bind and abreact the trauma; such fixation to the trauma are accompanied by a more or less general inhibition of the subject's activity. Psychoanalysts when speaking of traumatic neurosis are generally referring to the second form (Laplanche & Pontalis 1973). A trauma implies an injury, but what has been injured? The clinical picture suggests this is psychic security. In this paper I wish to suggest this is a psychic entity, and to explore and describe the concept, its development, psychic elements, organization and disruption. During my researches into Holocaust trauma it became clear that the central traumatizing experiences were 1. annihilation threat, 2. powerlessness and 3. object loss (Garwood 1996b). Pondering on why these were so powerfully traumatizing led me to focus on the earliest experiences of annihilation threat and powerlessness, the instinct for selfpreservation and thus to the hypotheses that follow. Primal Annihilation Anxiety and Powerlessness When exploring primal experience and psychic function there is a tradition which uses material from the psychoanalyses of adults and children in which the analysand has suffered early trauma, to which many of the psychic processes observed are correctly related. However, there is a limitation in this retrospective approach due to the

2007

A well known and highly controversial article that describes how psychic warfare might be employed on the battlefield and the need for potential countermeasures. This work is also referenced in numerous governmental conspiracy websites.

Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences, 2014

In so far as researchers viewed psychical, occult, and religious phenomena as both objectively verifiable and resistant to extant scientific explanations, their study posed thorny issues for experimental psychologists. Controversies over the study of psychical and occult phenomena at the Fourth Congress of International Psychology (Paris, 1900) and religious phenomena at the Sixth (Geneva, 1909) raise the question of why the latter was accepted as a legitimate object of study, whereas the former was not. Comparison of the Congresses suggests that those interested in the study of religion were willing to forego the quest for objective evidence and focus on experience, whereas those most invested in psychical research were not. The shift in focus did not overcome many of the methodological difficulties. Sub-specialization formalized distinctions between psychical, religious, and pathological phenomena; obscured similarities; and undercut the nascent comparative study of unusual experi...

The Occult World, 2014

Handbook chapter on the Society for Psychical Research, appearing in Christopher Partridge (ed.), The Occult World (Routledge, 2014).

The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2019

Richard Reichbart's book, The Paranormal Surrounds Us, will appeal to the general reader, parapsychologists, literary critics, psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, and anthropologists. Paranormal experiences are universal in that most people have had a paranormal experience, an anomalous experience or an altered state of awareness. Those who haven't probably know someone who has. For the psychoanalyst and psychotherapist interested in the paranormal, this book will be a page-turner. Reichbart presents a wide-ranging collection of fascinating examples of paranormal communication in well-known works of literature and film, lively vignettes of psychoanalytic process, with emphasis on his own work and the work of Jule Eisenbud, and the overall influence of culture, with a chapter on Native American culture that grew out of his experience as a young lawyer working with the Navajo before he became a psychoanalyst. He is bold as he not only discusses telepathic communication but also presents his observations of more controversial examples of paranormal communication (psi) such as thoughtography, apparitions, premonitions, remote viewing, psychokinesis and the inclusion of magic. He also discusses the relationship and connection between psi and magic, as seen in both Ingmar Bergmann's movie The Magician and Navajo ceremonies. Moreover, he presents a detailed exposition of the paranormal in the thoughtography experiments conducted by Eisenbud, his first analyst, with Ted Serios who produced photographs on Polaroid film through psychokinesis. Psychoanalysts usually avoid the more controversial aspects of psi, but Reichbart does not. He has spent years working with the fear that people normally have when they encounter these experiences. One of the purposes of his book is to present Eisenbud's work for reconsideration, as he was deeply dismayed by how it has been denigrated. When Reichbart began his own analytic training, he knew how unsafe it could be for a young analytic candidate to show an interest in psi. For many years, he stopped publishing the results of his psychic research and continued his work privately. This book is the result. The Paranormal Surrounds Us presents compelling examples of the paranormal communication that operates unconsciously in all relationships and that can be accessed more easily by some people than others. First, I will present examples of psi from the book's Section I, Psi Phenomena in Literature, specifically from Shakespeare's Hamlet and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and, next, from Section II on Psi Phenomena and Psychoanalysis. I will focus on Reichbart's informative history of the paranormal in hypnosis and psychic research, its effect on Freud and the development of psychoanalysis, how psi appears in the psychoanalytic process, and some ideas about how psi phenomena are communicated. Third, I will discuss Section III on Psi Phenomena and Culture, focusing on Reichbart's description of the multiple roles of the psychic in traditional Navajo society and the relationship of magic and psi in both Navajo culture and medieval culture as seen in the film The Magician, based on G.K. Chesterton's play Magic.

Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1992

ABSTRACT: Conjurors have written books on the paranormal since the 1500s. A number of these books are listed and briefly discussed herein, including those of both skeptics and proponents. Lists of magicians on both sides of the psi controversy are provided. Although many people perceive conjurors to be skeptics and debunkers, some of the most prominent magicians in history have endorsed the reality of psychic phenomena. The reader is warned that conjurors’ public statements asserting the reality of psi are sometimes difficult to evaluate. Some mentalists publicly claim psychic abilities but privately admit that they do not believe in them; others privately acknowledge their own psychic experiences. Three current books are fully reviewed: EntraSensory Deception by Henry Gordon (1987), Forbidden Knowledge by Bob Couttie (1988), and Secrets of the Supernatural by Joe Nickel1 (with Fischer, 1988). The books by Gordon and Couttie contain serious errors and are of little value, but the work by Nickell is a worthwhile contribution, though only partially concerned with psi.

This paper presents brief information about the existence and orientation of selected journals that have published articles on psychic phenomena. Some journals emphasize particular theoretical ideas, or methodological approaches. Examples include the Journal du magnétisme and Zoist, in which animal magnetism was

JOURNAL-SOCIETY FOR …, 1996

Religion, the Occult, and the Paranormal (4 volume reprint series with Routledge), 2015

The first volume of Religion, the Occult, and the Paranormal is concerned with how people have interpreted experiences of a religious, occult, or paranormal nature, and the approaches that scholars employ in order to study such phenomena, which are often elusive and difficult to locate in the various frameworks that people accept as ‘reality’. Wouter Hanegraaff has noted that, "[i]n studying religion, scholars are dependent on believers expressing their awareness of a meta-empirical reality in empirically perceptible ways (words, images, behaviour etc.) but, qua scholars, they do not themselves have direct access to the meta-empirical … [M]ethodological agnosticism is the only proper attitude" (1995: 101). Yet many scholars involved in the study of esotericism and paranormal experiences are themselves ‘insiders’ to one or other tradition or practice, a phenomenon that has bedevilled the academic study of religion, in which a significant number of scholars have been theologically motivated. So, as Hugh Urban has asked, how do ‘outsiders’ study secret or restricted traditions, and does the intimate and closed nature of the teacher-pupil relationship result in the conundrum that ‘if one “knows,” one cannot speak; and if one speaks, one must not really “know” ‘ (Urban 1998: 210)? An unsolved question is, ‘Must the study of all non-normative experience involve the scholar as participant?’ Another important underlying issue concerns the connections between the three terms, ‘religion’, the ‘occult’, and the ‘paranormal’; how closely are they related? It is possible to situate them on a continuum, with religion at one end, signifying official, sanctioned non-normative experiences, the occult (which simply means ‘hidden’ or ‘secret’ and is the Latin-derived equivalent of the Greek-derived term ‘esoteric’) in the middle, and the radically de-institutionalised, individual and ‘unofficial’ experiences of the paranormal at the other end? Antoine Faivre, an early and influential scholar of Western Esotericism, posited a six-point definition of esotericism: 1) ‘[s]ymbolic and real correspondences … are said to exist among all parts of the universe, both seen and unseen’ (1994: 10); 2) Nature is experienced as alive and pulsating with energy; 3) the use of imagination to identify and utilise mediations between the material and spiritual worlds; 4) the transmutation of the individual initiate of esoteric wisdom, from a lower to a higher state; 5) the use of concordance, where attempts are made to ‘establish common denominators between two different traditions or even more, among all traditions’ (1994: 14); and 6) the transmission of esoteric knowledge directly from teacher to pupil. This model has been questioned, but it marks the occult and esoteric out as distinct from both organised religion (such as Roman Catholicism) and deregulated spiritualities (such as the ‘New Age’).