Telepathy

Telepathy

TYPEParapsychological phenomenon

FIELDParapsychology

ALSO KNOWN ASThought-transference; mental telepathy

NOTABLE CASE(S)J. B. Rhine's Zener card experiments (1930s); the Ganzfeld experiments (1974–present)

STATUSUnconfirmed

Telepathy is the purported transfer of thoughts, feelings or information from one mind to another without using any recognised sensory channel. The term derives from the Greek tele ("distant") and pathos ("feeling" or "perception"). Within parapsychology, telepathy is treated as a form of extrasensory perception (ESP), alongside Clairvoyance and Precognition.

History

The term telepathy was coined in 1882 by classical scholar Frederic W. H. Myers, a founding member of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in London, to describe "communication of any kind from one mind to another, independently of the recognised channels of sense." The word replaced the earlier "thought-transference" and was coined jointly out of Myers's investigations alongside fellow SPR founders Edmund Gurney, Henry Sidgwick and William F. Barrett. Thought-transference was listed as the first of the newly formed SPR's six founding research subjects, ahead of mesmerism, mediumship and apparitions.

One of the earliest documented cases investigated by the SPR involved the Creery sisters, five young women from Buxton, Derbyshire, who from 1880 took part in card- and object-guessing games organised by their father that produced strikingly high success rates, prompting formal investigation.

Rhine's card experiments

In the 1930s, psychologist J. B. Rhine at Duke University conducted extensive card-guessing experiments using Zener cards — a deck of 25 cards divided among five symbols (circle, cross, wavy lines, square, star). A "sender" would concentrate on a randomly drawn card while a "receiver" attempted to guess its symbol; chance performance would average one correct guess in five. Rhine reported above-chance results across hundreds of trials, though scores tended to decline toward chance levels as experimental controls — separating rooms, screening the cards from view — were tightened, a pattern later termed the "decline effect." Rhine came to regard telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition as difficult to reliably distinguish from one another in practice, concluding they might represent a single underlying psychic function manifesting in different ways.

The Ganzfeld experiments

Beginning in 1974, psychologist Charles Honorton developed the ganzfeld ("whole field") technique as a more rigorous approach to telepathy testing, placing a "receiver" in a state of mild sensory deprivation — using halved ping-pong ball eye coverings and white noise — while a "sender" in a separate room concentrated on one of several randomly selected target images. The receiver would then attempt to identify the target from a small set of decoys; with four targets, chance performance is 25%.

Honorton's 1985 review of 28 early ganzfeld studies reported hit rates averaging well above chance. Psychologist and prominent sceptic Ray Hyman conducted a detailed methodological review of the same 42 early ganzfeld experiments, identifying flaws across 12 distinct categories — six statistical, six procedural, including inadequate randomisation, poor documentation, and the possibility of sensory leakage between the sender's and receiver's rooms. Every one of the 42 studies contained at least one of these flaws, and over half failed to adequately guard against sensory leakage; Honorton ultimately agreed with Hyman that, as a set, the 42 studies could not by themselves support a claim for the existence of psi. The two researchers subsequently issued a joint communiqué establishing agreed methodological standards for future ganzfeld research.

Later "autoganzfeld" experiments, designed to meet these improved standards, were themselves later criticised by Hyman for still not fully ruling out sensory leakage. Subsequent meta-analyses have reached differing conclusions: a 1999 meta-analysis by Richard Wiseman and Julie Milton, covering ganzfeld studies conducted in laboratories other than Honorton's own, found no statistically significant overall effect. By contrast, a 2010 meta-analysis by Lance Storm, Patrizio Tressoldi and Lorenzo Di Risio, covering 29 ganzfeld studies conducted between 1997 and 2008, reported a combined hit rate of 32.2% across nearly 1,500 trials — a result the authors described as statistically significant.

Scientific reception

Telepathy experiments have been criticised throughout their history for insufficient controls and poor repeatability, and mainstream science has not accepted telepathy as a demonstrated phenomenon; it is generally regarded by the scientific community as pseudoscience. Psychical researcher Eric Dingwall criticised SPR founders Myers and Barrett for approaching their research determined to prove telepathy rather than neutrally assessing whether it existed at all. More broadly, sceptics have pointed to the field's recurring pattern — promising early results that decline or fail to replicate as controls improve — as itself a significant finding about the psychology of belief, even where it does not support telepathy as a real phenomenon.

Relevance to The Vault

Telepathy sits at the historical and methodological centre of parapsychology as a discipline, and several organisations and researchers already documented in the Vault — including the Rhine Research Center and Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research — either originated from or engaged directly with telepathy research of the kind described above.

See also

• Parapsychology
• Clairvoyance
• Precognition
• J. B. Rhine
• Charles Honorton
• Rhine Research Center
• Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research
• Anomalistic Psychology

VAULT ASSESSMENT

CLASSIFICATION

Parapsychological phenomenon / form of extrasensory perception

EARLIEST REPORT

1880 (Creery sisters investigations); term coined 1882

MODERN REPORTS

1930s Zener card experiments–present; ganzfeld experiments 1974–present

EVIDENCE

Statistically above-chance results reported in some card-guessing and ganzfeld studies; effects have repeatedly declined under tighter controls, and meta-analyses of the same broad body of ganzfeld research have reached conflicting conclusions on significance

INVESTIGATIONS

Society for Psychical Research; J. B. Rhine at Duke University; Charles Honorton; Ray Hyman; Richard Wiseman and Julie Milton; Lance Storm, Patrizio Tressoldi and Lorenzo Di Risio

ASSESSMENT

No demonstration of telepathy has been independently replicated to the satisfaction of the wider scientific community; the phenomenon remains widely regarded as pseudoscience, though debate over specific meta-analyses of ganzfeld data continues within parapsychology itself

STATUS

Unconfirmed

External links

• Psi Encyclopedia — Frederic WH Myers
• Wikipedia — Scientific investigation of telepathy