A Patient's Claim to Paranormal Powers

This paper concerns a 19-year-old patient who expressed a conviction that she possessed a group of extraordinary paranormal powers. In classical psychoanalysis, beliefs in such powers are usually interpreted as reflections of magical thinking and infantile omnipotence, which have become regressively reactivated and/or which have never been fully relinquished in the developmental process. The case to be described here illustrates how these beliefs may also be seen to serve vital defensive and reparative functions in the person's life. Specifically, it will be shown how the patient's professed paranormal talents were bound up in her striving to consolidate and protect a precarious sense of selfhood and find a release from unbearable experiences of emotional isolation and loneliness.

The patient claimed that she could discern the first name of anyone she met, purely on the basis of a few moments of observation. In addition, she said that once she had been told the name of someone she did not know, she could accurately predict his most salient characteristics and habits. The name and the essence of a person were for her intimately interconnected. According to her account, this ability had come into being when she was five years old, and she recalled many occasions during her childhood when she had taken pleasure from walking up to total strangers and telling them their names. The patient also claimed she possessed a more general telepathic capability, which had been repeatedly demonstrated by her reading of the thoughts of family members, friends, and teachers in school. This mind-reading talent tended to manifest itself in connection with the most private and personal concerns of those around her. Still another of her reported extraordinary abilities involved experiences in which her mind traveled out of her body and invisibly observed the activities of friends and acquaintances far removed from her in space. The first of these mental journeys had coincided in time with