In Search of the Absent Analyst: Commentary on Janine de Peyer’s “Uncanny Communication”

Abstract

The subject of telepathic phenomena in psychoanalysis has been highly controversial ever since it was introduced into psychoanalysis by Freud in 1921. Following a theoretical-clinical introduction, my explanation for these profoundly mysterious phenomena combines contributory factors involving patient, archaic communication, and analyst, regarding massive primary traumatic absence that was imprinted in the patient’s nascent self and inchoate relating to others. The telepathic occurrence in treatment bursts forth as a search engine when the analyst is suddenly emotionally absent in order to seek and find the analyst and to halt the process of abandonment and collapse into the despair of the early traumatization. This is discussed here with regard to de Peyer’s clinical examples. Thus, the telepathic phenomena embody the enigmatic “impossible” extreme of patient–analyst deep-level interconnectedness and unconscious communication in the analytic process.