Boing! Boing! highlights this Canadian story about a woman who underwent an ordeal based on a psychic’s claim that her 11 year old autistic daughter was being sexually abused,
“The teacher looked and me and said: ‘We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of “V.” And she said ‘yes, I do.’ And she said, ‘well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.'”
The school report’s the abuse to Children’s Aid, but the social worker who is dispatched determines the claim is “ridiculous” and quickly closes the case. The school board is still conducting an investigation, so no word on what sort of discipline those who perpetuated this outrage will suffer.
Frankly, I’m always as bit surprised to see just how widespread belief in psychic phenomenon is despite the absolute dearth of evidence for any form of psi. And sometimes support for psi shows up in places you would never expect it.
A few weeks ago I was thumbing through a copy of Psychotherapy Networker, which is a trade mag that targets psychotherapists. Buried in the back was a book review of Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind. Given that Mayer is overall very supportive of psi claims, I assumed the review was there to debunk psi as it applied to psychotherapy, but instead Richard Handler defended the idea and recommended it as something that could enhance therapy,
Finally, you might ask, what does this all mean for working therapists?
People in therapy can be ripe for anomalous experiences, in and outside the office. Psychic experience seems to thrive in the presence of intense emotion, dramatic states of feeling, even crisis. And in the therapy encounter, amid the heightened interaction, all sorts of feeling, strange or otherwise, leaches out.
But even more important, beyond the razzle-dazzle of telepathy and clairvoyance, Mayer is suggesting that “extraordinary knowing” is on a continuum with more common traits of intuition and empathy. Haven’t we discovered that no matter what therapy a person practices, the therapeutic relationship is the key to a successful outcome? And if it’s true that anomalous experience is a form of “radical connectedness,” a psychic muscle that reaches beyond our present capacities to connect, what a wonderful clinical tool it could make. And if these skills or gifts are on a continuum, can they be enhanced or taught? Can people be taught to access anomalous experience? If not, if it induced even a little more empathy, it would help the therapeutic encounter.
Ugh.
