Gerda Walther and the Possibility of Telepathy as an Act of Personal Social Mind

Abstract

The phenomenologist Gerda Walther posits the possibility of a new social act, which she terms telepathy. It is marked by an intimate in-terpersonal union in which ego and alter ego become capable of sharing in the identical lived experience, though distant from one another. Here, there is no fusion or collective identi􀏔ication; rather, in-dividuals, though they live the experience and mind of the other, never lose or transcend their own individuation. Unlike the act of empathy, there is no analogical transfer. This article defends the possibility of a restricted sense telepathy. The author argues that four conditions must be ful􀏔illed for telepathy to occur: recognition of a social drive; a partially willed act of mind that results in the assump-tion of a certain stance, but it also comes upon us as an experience; constitution of subjects as persons marked by a “fundamental es-sence”; and I-splitting.