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Dr. Ehrenwald has set himself a difficult task in attempting to present in a systematic and scientifically acceptable way those strange data that have forced themselves on the attention of numerous psychotherapists in the course of their work, data seemingly inexplicable on currently accepted hypotheses of mental structure and function, which have come to be known as psi phenomena. It would be surprising if such a pioneering attempt were uniformly successful, but Dr. Ehrenwald has earned our gratitude for the courage and initiative he has shown.
One of the most valuable of his contributions is to be found in his effort to specify more clearly what are the kind of clinical data that psycho-therapists should regard in this light. What can we consider as an 'unequivocal' psi phenomenon? We cannot rely on statistics, as in card-guessing experiments, and must find other criteria if we are to be in any degree objective. Such a criterion is what Ehrenwald calls the 'tracer effect', a term borrowed from biochemistry and defined as 'the appearance of well-defined identifying data or of a multiplicity of distinctive features in mental content presumed to be telepathic'. It may be objected that it remains a subjective judgment what are to be accepted as well-defined identifying data, but I suppose the same difficulty arises in statistical work on psi in relation to the odds against chance which one accepts as convincing evidence. Another criterion is to be found in the psychological significance of the supposed psi phenomenon—how does it fit into the total psychological constellation, especially into the current transference–counter-transference situation?
Ehrenwald describes clinical material from eight of his patients who showed one or more such unequivocal psi phenomena, and he gives an extensive account of six or seven incidents. The suggestion is made, however, that it is probably only the exceptional case of psi occurring in the course of psychotherapy that happens