ABSTRACT
Many of the pioneers in depth psychology had an interest in what would today be referred to as anomalous phenomena. For example, Jung’s, Freud’s and Ferenczi’s ambivalent fascination with spiritualist mediums is now well known. Jung wrote his medical dissertation “On the psychology and pathology of so-called occult phenomena” (1902) based upon his analysis of séances he attended, observing his mediumistic cousin, Helly Preisewerk (Goodheart 1984). Ferenczi, whose first, pre-psychoanalytic paper was on mediumship, induced Freud to join him on trips to visit several mediums. Thus, from the various correspondences between these pioneers now published, we know that Freud and Ferenczi went to see the medium Frau Seidler in Berlin in 1909 on the trip home from the USA, as soon as Jung departed for Zurich. Freud, who wrote variously on telepathy, the uncanny, dreams and the occult (see e.g. Rieff 1963; Devereux 1953), also remarked to Karl Abraham that his daughter Anna possessed “telepathic sensitivity” (Falzeder 2002:550).
