Q&A with Richard Reichbart

Something a little different this time: an interview with Richard Reichbart, author of the newly released study The Paranormal Surrounds Us (which includes an afterword I was privileged to write).

The book has been put out by McFarland, a well-known and highly respected publishing house specializing in academic titles. Here's the book description from the publisher's sales page: 

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.

In what follows, I ask Richard a few questions about his book, his friendship with Julie Eisenbud, and the psychology of militant skepticism.

Michael Prescott: In your book, you go into some detail about Jule Eisenbud, best known for his study of Ted Serios, who claimed the ability to produce photographs with his mind. Eisenbud has been treated harshly by some skeptics, who’ve impugned his methods and subjected him to ridicule. Can you give us your assessment of Eisenbud’s professionalism?

Richard Reichbart: I came to know Jule Eisenbud in a unique way: I was his analysand. That meant that I saw him five times a week for three years (actually at the beginning for a number of months -- because I was not in the best psychological shape -- it was six times a week). He had an office in Denver, where I first saw him, and then he had an office in his home (where very quickly he began to see me regularly), a pleasant stucco structure with a wall around it, and a Spanish fountain inside, and a side entrance through the wall that led to a small office in the back of the house with a separate entrance, where there was a couch and a chair and a number of small book cases, enclosed by windows on almost all sides. Sometimes, his dog would be present too. After my psychoanalysis, I did meet with him once inside his house (which I had never been in before) with my wife at the time, when he tried to get Serios, who had stopped producing actual pictures, to try to come up with more than blackies — which I mention in my book — but essentially I knew Eisenbud from being his patient on the analytic couch. ["Blackies" was Serios's term for photographs that were exposed but came out completely black. — MP]

Now this is an intimate and revealing way to get to know someone. For one, he was a consummate professional: always punctual beginning and ending a session, always courteous, almost always wearing a sport jacket and a cravat. One gets to know what an analyst is like, even though he does not share the details of his life (which he did not because professionally, analytically that is what was required). For one, he listened; for another, he spoke sympathetically when he spoke, and constructed responses with attention to details. He was in fact tremendously honest, brutally so in the sense that he had no difficulty recognizing the aggression in my or in other's actions and discussing it. For me, who at the time was recovering from the loss of a loved Navajo woman and from an extended emotional break that began at the death of my grandfather two years before, it was an amazing and wonderful experience. I discovered in effect myself. Eisenbud's ability to interpret and to talk about psychoanalytic and parapsychological things was truly amazing. I learned how to think creatively, once again.

In terms of his ethics, which is actually an essential part of a successful analysis, he was as ethical as any man I have ever met. Falsifying things was completely alien to him. He was foremost a psychoanalyst -- even though he dealt in parapsychology,. his profession was to understand things psychoanalytically. His straight psychoanalytic writings are as brilliant as his parapsychological ones. If I had a criticism of him, there were two. The first was (as he subsequently told me) he was a little too harsh with me; he said he regretted it. It took my next analyst to undo aspects of that. And tied into that were two things: a tendency on his part to look too closely for psi connections, so that I sometimes felt that I was a subject of his interest rather than a patient of his; and also I think a tendency to underestimate me — both my psychoanalytic and parapsychological abilities and ambitions. But none of these faults, such as I perceived them, had anything to do with his consummate professionalism. That professionalism I learned from him even before I entered the psychoanalytic profession.

MP: You describe the influence of the paranormal on Tolstoy, Joyce, and other major literary figures. Are these influences acknowledged by mainstream critics or are they downplayed or suppressed? If the latter is true, why do you think this is?

RR: I do not really know the answer to this question, because I am not an academic literary person. I suspect, as I indicate throughtout my writing, that this is not a focus of literary critics, with one or two notable exceptions whom I mention. The foremost of the exceptions is Nicholas Royle, who has attempted to address exactly this issue — the parapsychological understanding of great dramatists and authors — but unfortunately I think that his writing is too opaque. He does not approach literature with a psychoanalytic and/or parapsychological eye. Yet he is a lonely voice in respect to what he has written.

One of the most foremost modern Shakespearean scholars, Stephen Greenblatt, with whom I used to compete in Yale college English classes as an undergraduate, and who has more than enough knowledge of Shakespeare to make an impact if he were so inclined, has avoided parapsychology entirely when speaking of Shakespeare. Rickard, whom I cite in speaking of Joyce, does a masterful job in exploring psi phenomena in Ulysses, but he fails to go the further step that I have taken in connecting Joyce's depiction to actual parapsychological facts. Nabokov recognized the shared psi dreams in Anna Karenina and also in Ulysses, and noted it, but again does not seem to have enough parapsychological knowledge to expand upon his observation. Yellen was a parapsychogist who observed psi events in Shakespeare which I mention. But I do not know that he was an established English professor.

I suspect the answer to your question is that no English department or professor, however talented as some of these are, has made it a point of exploring these things accompanied by a true parapsychological knowledge. I could find no text that did this and would be glad to know if I missed something. But it is frankly a shame.

MP: How does an understanding of paranormal influences on these writers enhance and deepen our appreciation of their books?

RR: I think we look to writers to give us a sense of the world. Our greatest writer, Shakespeare, did just that with parapsychological events in his work, as I have indicated, and others did as well, such as Tolstoy. Great writers provide us a sense of how the world is put together, how we play a part in it. It is a also a shame that we ignore what they tell us, because it adds to the mystery of our lives, it throws a light on what often appears to us as accident, when in fact it may be something else entirely.

MP: Freud is typically seen as hostile to the paranormal. You argue that his attitude was more complex, even conflicted. Can you elaborate?

RR: Freud was constantly intrigued by the paranormal. The problem was he was trying to establish a new science, psychoanalysis, and he did not want to add to that things parapsychological. It is well documented that one of his primary colleagues, Ernest Jones, did everything to discourage him from publishing in this area, for fear that it would hurt psychoanalysis. His other colleague, Ferenczi, on the other hand was constantly pushing Freud to write more in this area, and did a number of psi investigations with a medium or exploring telepathy. The material concerning Freud's ambivalence in this area is actually readily available, including also his discoveries of how to explore psi in psychoanalysis (to say nothing of his letter that if he had to do it all over again, he would become a parapsychologist). It is just that Freud's followers, particularly his American followers, were determined to excise Freud's explorations in this area — or to consign them to Jung whom they all criticized and did not like. The American psychoanalytic establishment has done much to minimize psi.

MP: Books like George Hansen’s The Trickster and the Paranormal argue that the paranormal is marginalized in most societies. Yet some anthropologists report a ready acceptance of psi in cultures that have not been influenced by the West. As the author of a book titled The Paranormal Surrounds Us, do you think the marginalization of psi is a feature of all (or most) cultures, or is this marginalization distinct to Western post-Enlightenment culture?

RR: I think Western culture, as part of its emphasis on rationalism and "scientific" thinking, has so far managed to marginalize any investigation of these phenomena. It began early on. I am not enough of a philosopher to localize this way of thinking, that we are heir to, but in my emphasis on Navajo theories of causality, I am trying to show that other societies put more credence in parapsychological facts than we do.

MP: Doubt about anomalous claims is understandable, but some people go much further and are committed to aggressively debunking every case, often on the basis of incomplete information. An example would be the self-styled “guerrilla skeptics” who populate Wikipedia. As a psychologist, what do you think accounts for militant hostility toward the very idea of the paranormal?

RR: No one wants to think about the aggressive possibilities inherent in psi. That is one aspect of things. The other is a kind of reversal, not unlike siding with the aggressor. My guess is that these people suffered a narcissistic blow as children when they were told that wishes could not bring about events, that one's thoughts could not influence the outside world. And so, with a kind of vengeance, having accepted this, they turn against those who suggest that perhaps, particularly unconsciously, we can influence the world at times. I explore this aspect of things in speaking about how magicians function in the Western world, and how they are unable to recognize that their sleight of hand history comes from a place they never dreamed: from shamans who were trying to elicit psi by convincing people that it was taking place.

MP: Thanks, Richard, for your thoughtful answers. I hope you find a wide and receptive readership for The Paranormal Surrounds Us.

Comments

[Eric Newhill]

Thank you Richard & Michael!

I'm very much looking forward to reading this book.

[Roger Knights]

The second edition of The World of Ted Serios, published in hardcover in 1989, 22 years after the paperback best-seller, is available "from $107" in 12 used copies on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/World-Ted-Serios-Thoughtographic-Extraordinary/dp/089950423X/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=The+world+of+ted+serios%2C+second+edition&qid=1557196426&s=books&sr=1-1-fkmr0

I fortunately got a copy much cheaper over five years ago It is the version serious students should consult, because its Preface states:

"no one, despite numerous unsubstantiated claims to the contrary, has yet found a way to relegate his efforts to the world of deception and fraud. The present edition does so in a more lucid and compelling way.... [T] new edition has battened down a few hatches with new material, some never before published. The final chapter presents highlights of the ongoing controversy about Ted and the world he has created on film."
----------

I liked this reply, re capital-S Skeptics:

MP: As a psychologist, what do you think accounts for militant hostility toward the very idea of the paranormal?

RR: No one wants to think about the aggressive possibilities inherent in psi. That is one aspect of things. The other is a kind of reversal, not unlike siding with the aggressor. My guess is that these people suffered a narcissistic blow as children when they were told that wishes could not bring about events, that one's thoughts could not influence the outside world. And so, with a kind of vengeance, having accepted this, they turn against those who suggest that perhaps, particularly unconsciously, we can influence the world at times.

[Roger Knights]

PS: That 2nd edition was also published by McFarland.

[Matt Rouge]

Great interview!

[Rabbitdawg]

Just downloaded the Kindle version.

[Roger Knights]

Excerpts from The World of Ted Serios, 2nd edition (1989), by Jule Eisenbud; Ch. 12, page 185:

“In principle, Fukurai’s experiments should have been a definitive test of [i.e., definitive support for] widely accepted theoretical grounds for rejecting the possibility of radiations as the vehicle for thoughtographic images. In actuality, however, … due to an inherent peculiarity of all paranormal phenomena, the only principle that can be relied upon within the field is that “principle” is not the most reliable guide to fact. The extreme variability of parapsychological data, as well as the overall unrepeatability of experiments in the field, has tended sooner or later to nullify any regularities that now and again appear to emerge. For this and other reasons, at any rate, it has been difficult to wean investigators and theoreticians away from the idea of obscure electromagnetic emanations of some sort behind paranormal phenomena, theoretical considerations and Fukurai’s experiments notwithstanding. Not surprisingly, the idea has continued to surface in the modern garb of quantum theory.”

The concept of a non-material level of “reality” is indeed too mind-boggling to accept easily, or at all.

[Roger Knights]

Excerpts from The World of Ted Serios, 2nd edition (1989), Chapter 14 (Epilogue), by Jule Eisenbud.

“In his three years in Denver prior to the publication of the first edition of this book in 1967, Ted produced over 400 paranormal prints on 100 different themes. Then, what both Ted and I had dreaded the very start came with unseemly directness…. In a session on June 15, 1967, Ted kept getting blackies which he felt should have been pictures. [page 207]
………
[A failed test was observed by two photographers who wrote about it in aa pair of articles in Popular Photography in the October 1967 issue. As bad as the failure was this (page 222–23):] “Ted, discouraged and with enough beer under his belt to fell a horse, sullenly refused to hand over his gismo when asked to do so.”

“What most than anything seemed to turn public opinion against Ted were repeated assertions … ‘that his feats had been duplicated by a conjurer known as “The Amazing Randi.”’ Indeed, according to Martin Gardner in a review in Nature, Randi ‘demonstrates it regularly and with more skill.’

The fact is that at no time in James Randi’s well publicized career was he ever able to demonstrate an image on film under conditions remotely approximating those used by Ted. On October 4, 1967, for example, millions of viewers of the NBC Today show were treated to one of Randi’s special demonstrations. … Randi struggled with a botched attempt to obtain a recognizable image with a lens-transparency gimmick that any alert seeing- or non-seeing eye dog would have been able to spot at once. when he tried to ditch it under the table …. [At the end he announced[ with appropriate flourish and brio that he gladly accepted my challenge to duplicate Ted’s feats under test conditions. The show’s host (Hugh Downs) … bravely accepted the bid and informed his by now largely bored audience that this was just what was needed and that the test would be duly arranged and the results broadcast on a later show.

“But Randi, who was not known as an escape artist for nothing, lost no time in backing out of his ill-considered offer. … What counted, Randi took to saying, was not that he couldn’t do it (not that he couldn’t or hadn’t) but could Serios actually do it, a somewhat disingenuous switch after it became public knowledge, from about 1969 onward, that Ted’s thoughtographic days were over for the nonce. [pages 226–227]”

[Roger Knights]

Excerpts from The World of Ted Serios, 2nd edition (1989), by Jule Eisenbud; Ch. 12, page 183:

“Not unexpectedly, Fukurai’s work came under severe attack. According to him, a pair of physicists, one the former president of the Imperial University of Tokyo where Fukurai held a professorship, “maliciously” rigged an experiment in which they were asked to participate as witnesses so that the lady sensitive would appear to have cheated. They then saw to it that she, Fukurai, and thoughtography were roundly attacked in the press, resulting in Fukurai’s resignation from the university. When the true facts came out, a confession of “carelessness” and an apology were offered by the former university president, but a few weeks later the accused sensitive, vowing never to take part in another experiment, fell ill and died (“of influenza”) while another of Fukurai’s sensitives committed suicide when she learned of the first one’s disgrace.”

[Roger Knights]

Eisenbud was a class act; Randi is a crass act.

[James Oeming]

Thank you for a great post, Michael!