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THE JOURNAL OF NEI
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CEREBRAL LOCALIZATION AND THE PSI SYNDROME
JAN EHRENWALD, M.D.'
On trying to correlate the psi syndrome with a neural substrate, it is
necessary to distinguish between spontaneous, "macropsychological" and
experimental, "micropsychological" incidents of the card-calling type. On
comparing telepathic drawings with drawings made by brain-injured patients
suffering from optical agnosia, the identical tendency to distortion and
disorganization of the target materials can be discerned. It suggests that the
telepathic subject is "agnostich' in relation to psi impressions, and that his
central processing takes place in the right rather than the left hemisphere. The
capricious nature of extrasensory perception (ESP) responses of the card-cal-
ling type points to fluctuations in the reticular and limbie midbrain system in
warding off the intrusion into awareness of subliminal or irrelevant percep-
tions from the outside world.
Among the reasons for the slow, uphill
struggle of parapsychology for recognition
by the scientific community are the built-in
preconceptions with which many parapsy-
chologists have approached their subject
matter. Psi phenomena, by contrast to the
ordinary, run-of-the-mill sensory-motor
transactions studied by the neurophysiolo-
gist, were supposed to be of a basically
nonphysical, spiritual nature. They were
described in such negative terms as ESP or
"extra"-sensory perception; as PK, or psy-
chokinesis-that is, as a miraculously ef-
fective motor impulse without the aid of a
detectable effector organ.
.
Such preconceived ideas contributed
their share to the scientific ostracism of the
phenomena and their relegation into the
sphere of the supernatural. Even today
many behavioral scientists are inclined to
brush aside experimental ESP or PK data
as statistical artifacts, or frankly errone-
ous, fraudulent findings, or outright delu-
sional claims. On the other hand, the last
thing parapsychologists were prepared to
do was to give serious consideration to
their correlations and apparent similarities
to psychiatrie or neuropathological condi-
tions.
' Consulting Psychiatrist, The Roosevelt Hospital,
New York City.
Send reprint requests to 11 East 68th Street, New
York, New York 10021.
This precisely is the purpose of the
present paper. I propose to review, first, a
few early experiments with telepathic
drawings carried out by the French para-
psychologist René Warcollier (19), and by
Mr. and Mrs. Upton Sinclair (16) in this
country. This will be followed by a brief
discussion of the problems posed by the
statistical ESP experiments of the card-
calling type developed by Rhine and his
associates (15). But instead of pointing to
the few "striking" cases obtained in-such
tests, I will call attention to the apparent
failures or "near misses" scored by the
respective telepathic percipients.
Figure 1 illustrates the telepathic draw-
ings of one of Warcollier's experimental
subjects. It shows the distortion and disor-
ganization of the target picture, a dirigible
which the subject failed to recognize, In-
stead, he sketched part of its oval shape,
caught the impression of the propeller,
repeated the motif twice, and placed one
correctly at the lower part of the picture.
Experiments with telepathic drawings car-
ried out by Upton Sinclair and his wife
(Figure 2) show the same tendency to
distortion and disorganization of the target
pictures. The same is true for more recent
experiments with dream telepathy carried
out by Ullman and Krippner and their
associates (18), using verbal descriptions or
drawings of telepathic target pictures
made by their subjects.
893
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TARGET
-
,
IMPRESSION
8
Fic. 1. Top. An airship, drawn by the agent.
Bottom. Telepathic impression. Note the correct .
rendering of an oval shape. The propeller motif
appears twice. The scribble above the oval is unex-
plained. (From Warcollier, R. Mind to Mind. 1948.
Reprinted by permission.)
Critics have found fault with the imper-
fect match of targets and telepathic im-
pressions in experiments of this order and
are inclined altogether to reject the tele-
pathic interpretation on these grounds.
Parapsychologists, on the other hand, were
quick to apologize for the poor showing of
their subjects and pointed to the occasional
"perfect hits" obtained to bolster their
case.
I submit that these much vaunted per-
fect hits are in effect atypical and mislead-
ing, and that the imperfect cases or near
misses are far more significant for our
understanding of the psi syndrome. Figure
3 shows the drawings produced by a brain-
injured patient of mine seen many years
ago in the neuropsychiatrie clinic of the
University of Vienna (4). The patient was
admitted to the hospital following a suici-
dal attempt with a penetrating gunshot
wound in the left parieto-occipital region.
The bullet had been removed by surgery
but the patient was left with marked dami-
age to both his personality and intellectual
functions. His speech was halting; at times
he was at a loss to find the names of objects
or persons; he showed evidence of amnestic
aphasia. His handwriting was impaired,
showing slight agraphic disturbances. He
was unable to perform the simplest calcu-
lations; he lost his way in the hospital
ward, and he was confused about spatial
relations. He showed the same confusion of
up and down, right and left in space.
Figure 3 is a sample of his drawings which
he verbally described as follows: a) a
French window in the hospital ward; b) a
face en face; c) a window latch; d) a ship;
e) a tree, drawn upside down, with the root
O
JL
.
FIG. 2. Top. Face, meant to represent a jack-o'-lan-
tern, drawn by agent. Bottom. Telepathic impression.
A moon sickle with "star," resembling nose in the
target drawing. Note that an eye tdrawn and in-
scribed upside down) was added by the recipient as an
afterthought. ( From Sinclair. U. Mental Radio, p. 69.
1962.)
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C
b)
itti
b
Fic :. 3. Drawings of the Vienna patient. a) a French window; b) a face, en face; c) the window latch; d) n ship;
e) a tree drawn upside down, with a) the root; b) the trunk; c) the crown. (From Ehrenwald, J. p. 525. 1931.)
.
at the top, the crown at the bottom and the
trunk in the middle.
Here, again, the most striking feature is
the utter disorganization of the material. It
seems to be broken into pieces, jumbled
like meat passed through a chopping ma-
chine. In short, displacement inversion and
gross deviations from the horizontal and
.
the vertical were characteristic features of
his spatial orientation and motor behavior.
in space. My teacher, Professor Otto
Poetzł (13), Poetzl and Hoff. and many
others, have published a number of similar frequently have exactly the same difficulty
observations. They all point to lesions in -
the left parieto-occipital region, sometimes
extending to the corpus callosum and to
the right hemisphere.
More recently, Professor A. R. Luria (9)
of the University of Moscow has published
a series of similar observations in patients
suffering from optic agnosia. Figure 4 illus-
trates samples of their drawings. The pie-
ture on the left represents the patient's
jumbled impressions of an elephant. On
the right can be seen equally disorganized
impressions of a camel. It should be noted
that the drawings of these brain-injured
patients exhibit much the same distortion
and spatiotemporal disorganization as the
samples of telepathic drawings produced
by normal subjects. It is also interesting to
note that such patients, in addition to the
impairment of their drawing ability. also
tend to confuse the meaning of a given
object or picture, They can perceive its
part but do not grasp. it as a whole. One of
Luria's patients, when shown the line .
drawing of spectacles, said: "There is a
circle ... and another ... a stick ... a cross-
bar ... Why, it must be a bicycle!" (p.
116).
Telepathic (or clairvoyant) __ percipients
in giving a "correct verbal account of-a
telepathic or clairvoyant target. They are
both equally handicapped in trying to
organize their perceptions into meaningful
wholes. Evidently, the difference between
the two lies in the fact that in one case we
are dealing with a patient suffering from
optic agnosia; in the other, with a normal
subject's difficulty in the central process-
ing of his telepathic impressions.
Two tentative conclusions can be drawn
from this state of affairs. First, it suggests
that. as .a general rule, the telepathie.
process operates without the aid of the
dominant left hemisphere. Secondly, the
rudimentary drawings of both telepathic.
subjects and patients suffering from lesions
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Specimen
Camel
b
head
ayes
ears
mouth
leg
back
Copyi
head
Man
legs
0
log
belly
trunk
back
1
Copy lt
(with oral
head
boots
assistance)
belly
KY
mouth
head
boots
trunk
FIG. 4. Drawings of Professor Luria's patients with optic agnosia. Top left. Elephant. Bottom left. Two at-
tempts at copying the original. Top right. Jumbled drawing of a camel. Bottom right. Figure of a man. Note
disjointed bits and pieces of his anatomy. (From Drawings by patients with optic agnosia. In Lurin, A. R. The
Working Brain: An Introduction to Neuropsychology, p. 119. Translated by Basil Haigh, O Penguin Books,
ltd. 1973. Translation @ Penguin Books, Ltd., 1973, Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York. Reprinted by
permission.)
in the dominant left hemisphere reflect the
groping, faltering attempts of the right
hemisphere to register, to process, and to
help produce correct pictorial representa-
tions of perceptual stimuli impinging from
the outside world.
Such an active, conceivably compensa-
tory, role of the "other side" of the brain
has been suggested by R. W. Sperry (17),
E. Bogen (2), M. S. Gazzaniga (8), R. E.
Ornstein (12), and others. They suggest
that the left hemisphere is the logician, the
specialist 'in linear, analytical thinking,
while the right hemisphere is the artist, the
poet-the Listener with Third Ear-pre-
siding over the intuitive, nonanalytical
mode of consciousness. If this is true, we
may well assign the central processing of
psi impressions to the right, rather than to
the left side of the brain. This would well
account for the conspicuous absence of the
coordinates of both space and time on the
psi level of functioning. By the same token,
it is no coincidence that psi phenomena
duplicate in many respects the distortion
of spatiotemporal relationships seen in my
Vienna patient, or in Professor Poetzl's or
Luria's cases of optic agnosia.
It should be recalled, furthermore, that
telepathy and related phenomena are basi-
cally preconceptual and preverbal (5, 6) ..
Telepathy operates independently of the
subject's linguistic skills, localized as they
are in the speech centers of the dominant
hemisphere, Professor Luria has rightly
pointed out that it is precisely the higher,
symbolic, gnostic skills of this order which
tend to be "lateralized," or relegated to the
dominant side of the brain (9). If this is
true, it would lend added support to the
conjecture that psi phenomena are a func-
tion of central structures which have not,
or not as-yet, come under the sway of the
dominant, culturally favored hemisphere.
Such considerations throw some light on
at least one phase of the telepathic
response-on the central processing of psi
phenomena involving the complex target
materials used in telepathic drawing tests.
'They may be also applicable to spontane-
ous incidents in everyday life, under crisis
conditions, and to observations in the psy- .
choanalytic situation (5-7). But it is read-
ily understood that they cannot possibly
account for such elementary, "micropsy-
chological" psi events as are involved in
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397
the statistical ESP incidents of the card- gists, and Norman Dixon's (3) study of
calling type.
Psi responses of this order occur in a
given series in occasional bursts or as
isolated "hits" in a more or less random
distribution. They are, however, subject to
Rhine's position or decline effect, suggest-
ing fatigue or flagging interest on the part
of the subject. They are usually uncon-
scious and, in this respect, reminiscent of
subliminal perceptions or subceptions
studied by experimental psychologists.
This more elementary prototype of ex-
perimental ESP brings into focus another
phase of the psi syndrome. Yet instead of
it poses a new question. It challenges us to
ask not how such fitful, capricious psi
perceptions come about. but why it is that
we are not being flooded by such hit-and-
run perceptions or subceptions all of the
time? The philosopher Henri Bergson (1),
in his theory of "attention to life" in
conjunction with his filter hypothesis, has
offered an intriguing, although highly spec-
ulative answer to this question. He_pro-
.posed that the brain cortex serves as a
screen to ward off biologically irrelevant or
undesirable external stimuli from con-
scious awareness-among them telepathy
and,clairvoyance. Bergson could not fore-
see that the functions of the reticular
formation, discovered by Magoun and his
associates some 60 years later (10), were in
good keeping with his thesis. We know
today that the ascending and descending
reticular tracts are indeed concerned with
facilitating or inhibiting the flow of sensory
stimuli from both inside and outside the.
organism to the higher centers. They are
responsible for regulating arousal, vigi-
lance, sleep, wakefulness, and its fluctua -.
tions in the rapid eye movement state.
subliminal perceptions point in the same
direction. According to McLean (11), a
secondary, limbic-midbrain system is like-
wise concerned with regulatory functions of
this order. Norman Dixon has suggested
that the latter is particularly involved in
the processing of subliminal stimuli.
Professor Luria (9), Karl Pribram and his
co-workers (14) have noted, furthermore,
that the frontal and temporal cortex like-
wise play an important part in the selective
filtering or "afference" of input from out-
side.
What, then, is the relevance of these
revealing more about its psychodynamics, findings to the micropsychological, ESP
type of psi incidents? They suggest that the
fitful, capricious occurrence of correct hits
in a series of card-calling tests of the Duke
type may be due to the random occurrence
of minor flaws in the screening or inhibi-
tory functions of the reticular formation
and higher centers. They result in the
intrusion of a few equally capricious bursts
or clusters of psi incidents into a subject's
scoring pattern-conscious or unconscious.
If this is true, psi responses of this order are
essentially flaw determined: they are due
to flaws in the operation of the subject's
perceptual defenses, the screening function
of the Bergsonian filter or of what Freud
described as the Reizschutz protecting the
ego from being flooded by stimuli from the
id. They can be contrasted with the essen-
tially need-determined psi responses of the
spontaneous type, as can be studied in the
psychoanalytic situation (6, 7).
. It is needless to say, however, that these
conjectures about the part played by the
reticular formation or the right hemisphere
as the neural substrate of the psi syndrome
fall far short of solving the enigma of the
ultimate origin of psi phenomena. They
In a similar vein, it may well be argued
that it is the inhibitory function of the
reticular formation which constitutes the
first line of the organism's defense against
the influx of such biologically indifferent or
undesirable perceptual stimuli as ESP, or
suggest that psi-like all other aspects of
our mental organization-has its neural
base in a hierarchical structure of the
central nervous system without having at -
tained the stage of strict lateralization
characteristic of most "higher" functions.
against the mobilization of such poten- They provide some tentative clues as to
tially wasteful motor impulses as PK. The, their modus operandi, but they cannot tell
concept of perceptual defenses or subcep-
us how, in the last analysis, a telepathic
impression is turned into conscious aware-
tions proposed by experimental psycholo-
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ness, or how a PK impulse is brought to
bear on an external object without the aid
· of an effector organ.
It may be as well to recall, however, that
we are likewise at a loss to explain how a
certain wavelength of light is ultimately
perceived as "red." Nor do we know how
volition, or an ordinary motor impulse
originating in my brain, is converted into
action. The last step in an extrasensory
impression, or the first step in a volitional
act (or PK) is equally mysterious. All we
know is that both take place in the little
black box of my skull. The difference
between the two merely lies in the fact that
in one case the gap in our understanding is
small and inconspicuous, while the gap
looms woefully large in the case of ESP or
PK. Nevertheless, psychologists and be-
havioral scientists in general have learned
to live comfortably with the gap and to go
about their business as usual in life or
laboratory without trying to fill it. It
should be only fair to grant the same
privilege to their parapsychological con-
freres, without pressing them for ultimate
answers which have so far eluded those
engaged in more solidly established fields
of scientific inquiry.
REFERENCES
1. Bergson, H. Matter and Memory. George Allen
and Unwin, London, 1911.
2. Bogen, E. The other side of the brain, 1. II, III,
Bulletin, The Los Angeles Neurological Socie-
ties, 34: (No. 3), July, 1969.
3. Dixon, N. Subliminal Perception, The Nature of a
Controversy. McGraw Hill, London, 1971.
4. Ehrenwald, J. (Hans). Disturbance of temporal
and spatial orientation, of drawing and calcula-
tion, in a brain-injured patient (transl.) Zeits-
chrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychia-
trie, 132: (3) 518-569, 1931.
5. Ehrenwald, J. Mother-child symbiosis: Cradle of
ESP. Psychoanal. Rev., 58: (No. 3) 1971.
6. Ehrenwald, J. New Dimensions of Deep Analysis.
Grune & Stratton, New York. 1954.
7. Eisenbud. J. Psi and Psychoanalysis, Grune &
Stratton, New York, 1971.
8. Gazzaniga, M. S. The split brain in man. Sci.
Am. (Aug.) 24-29, 1967.
9. Luria, A. R. The Working Brain. Basic. Books.
New York. 1973.
10. Magoun, HI. W. The Waking Brain. Charles C
Thomas, Springfield, Ilinois, 1963.
11. Mclean. P. D. The limbic system 'in respect to
two basic life principles. In Brazier. M. The
Central Nervous System and Behavior. Tran-
sactions of the 2nd Conference of the Josiah
Macy, Jr. Foundation, Princeton, N. J., 1959.
12. Ornstein. R. E. The Psychology of Consciousness.
Viking Press, New York, 1972.
13. Poetzl. O. Die Aphasie Lehre com Standpunkt
der klinischen Psychiatric, Die Optisch-agnas-
tischen Storungen. Deuticke, Leipzig. 1928.
14. Pribram, K. H. Psychology of the Frontal Lobes.
Academic Press, New York and London, 1973.
15. Rhine, J. B. New World of the Mind. William
Sloane, New York, 1953.
16. Sinclair, U. Mental Radio. Charles C. Thomas,
Springfield, Illinois, 1962.
17. Sperry, R. W. The great cerebral commissure.
Sci. Am. (Jan.) 42-52, 1964 .-
18. Ullman, M., Krippner, S., and Vaughn. A. Dream
Telepathy. Macmillan, New York, 1973.
19. Warcollier, R. Mind to Mind. Creative Age Press,
New York, 1948.
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