[Carl Jung on “Paranormal Cognition.”]

To Laurence J. Bendit

Dear Dr. Bendit, 12 November 1945

I have read your essay on Paranormal Cognition (P.C.) with greatest interest and I fully agree with you in all your general statements.

There are only some minor points which I want to comment on.

The fact, for instance, that you couldn’t find a word about the famous 1;2 in my writings is merely due to the misfortune that a considerable part of my work is not translated .

You would have found not only an acknowledgement of “telepathy” but also an example of P .C . in Kerenyi and Jung : Einfiihrung in das Wesen der Mythologie (Amsterdam 1 941, p. 2 30 f.).

I’m acquainted with P .C. and I have seen many a case of it.

The reason why I haven’t said more about it publicly is that I don’t like to talk about things which are difficult to prove.

I include P .C. in the concept of intuition, “perception by the way of the unconscious.”

Sensation is perception in absolute time and space, intuition is perception in relative time and space, or “elastic” time and ditto space.

Dunne is by no means the first to have recognized the prophetic quality of dreams.

Any old medicine man 1o,ooo years ago has done so.

What’s wrong with intuition?

Is there any difference between “perception by the way of the unconscious” (i.e., you don’t know how you get it ) and P .C. which is also “perception in an unknown way”?

Or does P.C. claim to know what P.C. is?

I confess I don’t know how to make a difference between intuition and P .C. I like your little book, and I appreciate your unorthodox attitude in that case where it was chiefly a matter of an insufficient adaptation to P .C.

I suppose you have also seen cases where P .C. developed under the influence of analytical treatment?

I am fully aware of the extraordinary importance of such phenomena, which transcend our actual means of understanding.

They give you a certain feeling of hopelessness.

This has been one of the main reasons why I tried to explore the unconscious from another side, which seemed to be more accessible than the “parapsychological” phenomena, which are, at least for the time being, far beyond the reach of our actual mental capacity, although I always kept them in mind and left a place for them in my definition of intuition.

Physiology has not done so yet, but it ought to leave room for paraphysiology, which comes in where it is a question of materialization .

I have seen enough of this phenomenon to convince me entirely of its existence.

Being an honorary member of the British and American SPR I have read almost all the important publications in this field.

All this on top of my own experiences has led me to the conclusion that space as well as time and matter are relative to the psyche, i.e., they are to a certain extent psychic functions.

I discussed this problem with Rhine whose experiments with the space and time factor prove my hypothesis with sufficient evidence.

I don’t know whether Rhine has already published his experiments concerning the psychic influences on mechanical dice-throwing.

They prove, as far as I know, the extension ofpsychic relativity to matter.

If this is true, my hypothesis would be at least a point of view from which a theoretical handling of P .C. and paraphysiology could start.

I should like to send you something in exchange for your book but unfortunately I have no copies left of my English translations.

Not knowing whether you are sufficiently acquainted with the German language I don’t dare to send you one of my German publications, but let me know in case you do read German.

Sincerely yours,

C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Pages 389-390.

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