Freud and the Disenchantment of Telepathy: Thought-Transference Analysed and the History of an Unpublished Paper

Abstract

This article discusses Freud’s presentation on telepathy to his close colleagues at the meeting in the Harz mountains in 1921. It considers the fate of his paper and the reasons why he never published it as a single piece. The development of Freud’s ideas about telepathy during the succeeding years and the reasons that prompted him finally to publish his views on thought-transference in 1925 are also considered. The article also discusses the place of the four cases presented in his writings on telepathy over this period, culminating in his new ‘lecture’ on Dreams and Occultism in 1933. It is suggested that Freud’s persuasion that psychoanalysis could credibly account for thought-transference was in part affected by the degree of trust he held in those presenting him with material, but most of all by his own personal experience. Freud held out against opposition from people like Jones on the matter of the worthiness of the subject for investigation, but never succeeded in integrating it more fully into psychoanalysis, and this position is largely unchanged today.