You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
To negotiate the tightrope between pragmatism and mysticism, skepticism, and gullibility, is no small feat. Yet with the aid of cautious disclaimers and the qualification of psychoanalytic expertise to sustain her between these polarities, Dr. Mintz presents a noteworthy account of paranormal and transpersonal phenomena she has experienced in her private practice and as a leader of marathon groups.
The first portion of her work concentrates on psi phenomena, which the author differentiates from the transpersonal occurrences described in the later chapters. Whereas the validity of psi has been demonstrated by experimental laboratory data, she explains, “our concept of the transpersonal dimension is not based on observation and experiment, but is based only upon direct, subjective experience … as subjective as love or the enjoyment of beauty or music”(p. 15). But as she herself acknowledges elsewhere, transpersonal illuminations in marathon groups occur from time to time through such unexpected yet felicitous matchings, spontaneous utterances, and intuitive role enactments as to suggest the participation of telepathic or precognitive process. Moreover, one might add, the concurrences of psi in private treatment (which allows for closer study), are so infinitely more complex than laboratory psi that they are not even comparable. The “proof of psi in this area lies precisely in the domain of psychoanalysis; the observation of relevant transferential elements prevailing between therapist and patient as well as mutual resistances and their temporal juxtaposition.
Clinicians will not fail to appreciate the sensitive recommendations offered by Dr. Mintz in Chapter 3 on the handling of psi material produced in private treatment, as well as indications and contraindications for verbal