Psychic Phenomena and Us

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that 41 percent of Americans believe in psychics. Being a psychic, “is one of the planet’s oldest professions,” according to The New York Times. In some ancient cultures shamans were considered a link to the spirit world: Haitian Voodoo, Puerto Rican Brujeria and Wiccan traditions all focus on communing with spirits. ...In Christianity angels are central characters in biblical stories and can serve as spiritual guides.

Today more than ever, mediums are blurring the boundaries between psychic phenomena and the field of wellness by playing down “party tricks” and focusing on teaching people how to “trust their guts and lean into their intuition.”

To me, the zone has always been a bit nebulous. A good-enough psychotherapist is intuitive and helps a person transform by making connections between past and present events in their lives.

(An aside: psychologists do not predict the future, don’t guarantee future results, don’t promise to remove evil curses, ply a person for information, or require vast sums of money for quick results. As it turns out neither do genuine psychic healers.)

In a Psychology Today article, Steve Taylor Ph.D. acknowledges that he has experienced the paranormal phenomena of telepathy and pre-cognition. Dr.Taylor cites the idea of consciousness as related to the “radio model” in which consciousness exists outside us as a property of the universe that is potentially everywhere and in everything. The brain’s function is to “pick up” the signals and “canalize” them into our own individual being. Consistent with telepathy, this model  suggests a fundamental connection between living beings—a shared network of consciousness through which information could be exchanged from unit to unit. The radio model also fits with the argument that consciousness is produced by the brain: damage to the brain affects or impairs consciousness, just as damage to a radio would impair its broadcast of programs.

Many years ago, my supervisor was Dr. Jan Ehrenwald, a Viennese psychoanalyst, and the author of The Deeper Dimensions of Psychoanalysis. My year of supervision with him dovetailed with my first year of psychoanalysis with Dr. P and I dreamed  that he was playing tennis. When I related the dream to him, Dr. P. told me that indeed he had just received a tennis racket for his birthday.  Dr. Ehrenwald confirmed that my dream was indeed telepathic. I didn’t have any more telepathic dreams in my psychoanalysis, which ultimately failed because the doctor couldn’t empathize with my predicament. In other words, the early connection I had felt with Dr. P. didn’t flourish.

Psychic medium Laura Lynn Jackson, whose book The Light Between Us reached the best seller list, relates her journey of the development of her psychic ability from childhood. She was a skeptic, who lived with the fear that something was wrong with her. She consulted a series of psychics and finally consulted a psychologist, board certified in neuro-feedback who used the tool of the quantitative electroencephalogram (QEEG). The QEEG measures brainwaves, recording the electrical activity in different parts of the brain. Ms. Jackson’s brainwave pattern turned out to be consistent with someone who had a traumatic brain injury. In other words, her brain was indeed different. During psychic activity, the QEEG showed that there was abnormal activity, a series of bigger, intermittent waves in the right rear portion of her brain where the parietal and temporal lobes meet. These waves resemble those of a person in deep sleep or a coma. Furthermore, this part of the brain is associated with qualities like empathy and spirituality, found in meditation when a person gives up the “I” or ego and achieves a higher sense of self.

 

Ms Jackson suggests that this capacity is inherent in all of us to access if we choose to develop our brains in this way. She concludes, “I believe that when we question and explore how we fit into the universe, we can overcome the fears and doubts that keep us from discovering our highest path.”

Not everyone has to follow this route. Many people naturally intuit their path, while others search and benefit from psychotherapy. In a sense, Freud’s goal of psychoanalysis wasn’t antithetical to meditation. Psychoanalysis intends to free an individual from the prison of personal neurosis (over-focus or over-involvement in the ego) to become aware of the suffering inherent in the human condition.

Certainly, there is much we cannot see or understand. As we evolve and our technology becomes more and more sophisticated, the universe becomes larger and more connected.

Conclusion: Let’s keep an open mind and consider the words of William James, the great late-nineteenth-century philosopher and the father of psychology: We can’t “close our accounts with reality.”

Dear Reader, I value your comments. jsimon145@gmail.com

Our Human Condition and Cognitive Dissonance

“Cognitive dissonance is often considered a failure of the human psyche. In fact, it is a vital asset. Had people been unable to hold contradictory beliefs and values, it would probably have been impossible to establish and maintain any human culture.” — Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens

Cognitive dissonance is exemplified in how we invest a lot of psychic energy in the belief that we are rational beings with free will. Yet, in reality, much of our thinking is irrational, and our thoughts and actions are vulnerable to the equilibrium of our biochemistry.

In 1954, social psychologist Leon Festinger devised the theory of cognitive dissonance (CD) to describe our human strive for harmony in our thoughts, words and actions. Motivated to reach consonance or agreement, we invent ways to reconcile a conflict. These modes of reconciliation may include changing or justifying our behavior. We may also completely deny the conflict, or mentally detach ourselves from it. Yet, despite these defense mechanisms that seem to resolve the conflict, the discomfort may remain.

The discomfort created by CD can serve as the grist to drive a creative mill. Canadian singer-song writer Leonard Cohen used his nearly constant state of dissonance to create. He composed poems and songs expressing this human dilemma that resonates with so many of us. In her well-wrought memoir, Becoming, Michelle Obama writes about a life in which she is bombarded, one after the other, with CD’s. She is challenged by the conflicting lifestyles of her and her husband. She also struggles with the enormous changes that come from transforming to a public figure from a private one. Yet, she faced her discomfort and became a model and productive first lady in the White House.

Like Cohen and Obama, we too can live a rewarding, evolving life by embracing our complex human condition to become aware of our CD’s and to integrate the opposing feelings, thoughts, values and beliefs into our lives.

Psychotherapy can also empower an individual to resolve their inner discomfort and turmoil to bring about positive change. Resolving this inner discomfort is key to avoiding splitting, which happens when we fail to integrate opposites. When our mind splits, we view matters in an extreme; things or people become all good or all bad with no gray zone. Prejudice can then dominate our thoughts, closing the door to open dialogue and to integrating and compromising another point of view. Denying, rather than facing, this discomfort leads us on a path of self-deception. Deceiving ourselves can prevent us from progressing to self-actualization, and as Henry David Thoreau says in his masterpiece Walden, we may, as many do, lead  lives of quiet desperation.

Dear Reader, I welcome your comments. jsimon145@gmail.com