OEITH #206 Telepathy and Projective Identification

Let's join our minds to explore together the nature of telepathy, taking in along the way: the usefulness of magick in understanding the paranormal; definitions of telepathy and their problems; crisis apparitions; Nick Totton's definition of telepathy as "the experience of transparency between subjects"; the strengths of this definition; how telepathy tends to creep into both magick and therapy; telepathy in psychotherapy; a personal example of apparent telepathy in therapy; its significance in terms of my relationship to my therapist; reasons why therapy might encourage telepathy; the fear of telepathy within therapeutic organisations; Mikita Brottman's take on this and on projective identification (PI); the definition of PI versus projection; a common and widely experienced example of PI; PI as communication through a spectrum of possible means, not necessarily all paranormal; Melanie Klein's original definition of PI and Wilfred Bion's development of it; PI as a fundamental activity of the mind, a primitive kind of thinking; the "middle way" of regarding PI, and why this could be evasive; telepathy and anxiety; a personal example of a crisis apparition; telepathy in the service of intimacy as well as in the service of trauma; telepathy in the case of discarnate beings; a personal example; telepathy versus paranoia; how conventional communication is to telepathy as speech is to touch; Totton's suggestion that the paranormal is bodily; the multiplicity of bodies in occult philosophy.

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Mikita Brottman (2011). Phantoms of the Clinic: From Thought-Transference to Projective Identification. London: Karnac Books.

Melanie Klein (1946). Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 27: 99-110.

Thomas Ogden (1979). On Projective Identification, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 60: 357-373.

Nick Totton (2007). Funny You Should Say That: Paranormality, at the Margins and the Centre of Psychotherapy, European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling, 9(4): 389–401.