Nandor Fodor: Analyst of the Unexplained*

One of the outstanding pioneers in bridging the gap between parapsychology and depth psychology was an extraordinary Hungarian who practiced psychoanalysis in New York for more than twenty years—Nandor Fodor.

Before becoming an analyst, this unusual man was a professional ghost-hunter and exorcist in Britain, and a recognized authority on psychic subjects. After he entered the ranks of psychoanalysis, Fodor brought to bear the insights of Freud et al., and not a few of his own, on the problems of psychical research. In more than ten remarkable books, he explored the hazy borderland between psychoanalysis and the occult.

Fodor, to say the least, was an original theorist. Some of his ideas became accepted theoretical concepts, notably “poltergeist psychosis,” which he defined as “an episodic mental disturbance of schizophrenic character, which manifests itself in purported ghostly phenomena.” …

Fodor elaborated Rank's “birth trauma” into a theory of prenatal traumata based on telepathic contact between the mother and her unborn child. This intriguing study, entitled The Love Life of the Unborn, contains Fodor's speculation that nymphomania, satyriasis, and a number of other aberrations are due to the influence of the mother's sex life on the fetus.