Time Loops

by Eric Wargo

  18 See Charman, 2017.

  19 Halperin, 2014.

  20 See Twain, 2010, 350-352.

  21 Ibid., p. 561.

  22 Charman, 2017.

  23 It may be precisely such thoughts that are pushed not only out of awareness but actually into the past, where they “recur” in advance (or “precur”) as premonitions and dreams that make no sense at the time. It reminds me of the original series Star Trek episode “All Our Yesterdays,” about a planet where political undesirables were exiled via time machine into various times in the planet’s history, where their voice could have no meaning.

  24 May & Depp, 2015; see also Graff, 2000.

  25 Larry Dossey, commenting on Twain’s dream about seeing his brother dead, notes that from May’s entropy gradient theory alone we might have expected the writer to dream of the boiler explosion itself and not the scene at the wake, when the nurse placed a single red rose on Henry’s chest. But “for Twain, who loved his brother deeply and blamed himself for his death for the rest of his life, it was probably Henry’s death itself that was the most entropic, not the boiler that blew up” (Dossey, 2009, 118).

  26 Dale E. Graff, who directed the military remote-viewing project Star Gate, makes this point in his memoir River Dreams : “Fire, even the threat of fire, is a bright beacon in our emotional landscape—for this reality and for psi space” (Graff, 2000, 37).

  27 Kant, 2008, 91.

  28 Freud, 2015(1918).

  29 Cathy Caruth, in her essay “Traumatic Awakenings: Freud, Lacan, and the Ethics of Memory” (in Caruth, 1996) clarifies the crucial link between Freud’s “death drive” and survival.

  30 Becker, 1973, 2.

  31 Paradoxically, the logic of jouissance may also apply to many people’s premonitions related to their own death. Most of those who perished in the World Trade Center, for instance, would have had time to be aware of what was happening, and formulate hope for rescue. Their premonitory dreams may have conveyed this intensified awareness of their own mortality in the context of a mortal crisis. Could this explain sculptor Michael Richards’ obsession with being “pierced by planes” in the years and months leading up to his death on 9/11, for example? There is no way of knowing for sure, but it is very possible that he did not die in the initial impact of American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower. His studio was on the 92nd floor, the floor struck by the lowest wingtip of the jet. The artist may well have had time to be aware that a plane had crashed into his building, perhaps even to learn that a second plane struck the other tower. Similarly with William Stead’s possible premonitions of his death aboard the Titanic ; the uncertainty of the Titanic passengers’ fate must have extended up until the end as some dim hope for rescue that their premonitory unconscious may have interpreted as survival.

  32 The clip is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/​watch?​v=​ZUe30aXjS20

  33 Guinness, 1985, 34.

  34 Again, the well-established fallibility of memory will of course not prevent psi-skeptics from invoking cryptomnesia to account for anomalous experiences when it suits them to do so.

  35 Ibid.

  11. A Precognitive Seduction—Maggy Quarles van Ufford, Carl Jung, and the Scarab

  1 Jung, 1985(1937), 332.

  2 Forrester, 1990.

  3 Jung, 1973(1951), 109.

  4 Ibid., 110.

  5 Ibid.

  6 De Moura, 2014.

  7 Unless otherwise noted, biographical information on Madeleine Quarles van Ufford in this chapter, apart from what is stated or implied by Jung himself, comes from de Moura’s article, “Learning from the Patient” (de Moura, 2014). De Moura refers to Maggy by her married surname Reichstein, but because most of the events discussed in this chapter probably preceded her marriage in 1925, I have opted to use her maiden name or, in most cases, simply “Maggy” to avoid confusion. Besides Jung’s writings and de Moura’s article, other sources adding minor but interesting biographical details on Maggy Reichstein née Quarles van Ufford, although without awareness that she was the famous patient who dreamed of a scarab, include Broda (2013) and Jansen (2003).

  8 Broda, 2013.

  9 De Moura, 2014.

  10 Ibid.

  11 Jung (1996, 104) describes: “She could not adapt to European conditions because her instincts refused all along the line; she would not marry, she would not be interested in ordinary things, she would not adapt to our conventions. She was against everything, and so naturally she became very neurotic.”

  12 Jung, 1985(1937).

  13 Jung, 1996.

  14 According to May B. Broda (Broda, 2013), Maggy and her sisters had taken lodging at the house of Mrs. Gustawa Reichstein, a non-observant Polish Jew who ran a boarding house for young emigres (later, in the 1930s, she took in Jewish refugees) and was a friend of Jung’s. Particularly difficult cases frequently stayed with her, and she is said to have assisted with their treatment. She was also a protective mother figure for her various young lodgers, tolerant of their political activism and sexual behavior.

  15 Ibid.; https://it.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Ignaz_​Epper

  16 De Moura, 2014.

  17 Jung, 1996, 104.

  18 Jung, 1985(1937).

  19 Noll, 1994, 1997.

  20 Jung, 1973(1952).

  21 Describing them as “exteriorizations” of course obscures the possibility that the cracks had a mundane explanation but that Jung pre-sensed these startling noises in that emotionally charged context. This seems more likely, given that the noises continued to be heard by Freud afterward. In a letter dated April 16th, 1909, Freud wrote to Jung:

  I do not deny that your comments and your experiment made a powerful impression upon me. After your departure I determined to make some observations, and here are the results. In my front room there are continual creaking noises, from where the two heavy Egyptian steles rest on the oak boards of the bookcase, so that’s obvious. In the second room, where we heard the crash, such noises are very rare. At first I was inclined to ascribe some meaning to it if the noise we heard so frequently when you were here were never again heard after your departure. But since then it has happened over and over again, yet never in connection with my thoughts and never when I was considering you or your special problem. (Not now, either, I add by way of challenge). The phenomenon was soon deprived of all significance for me by something else. My credulity, or at least my readiness to believe, vanished along with the spell of your personal presence ... The furniture stands before me spiritless and dead, like nature silent and godless before the poet after the passing of the gods of Greece. (In Jung, 1965a, 361-362.)

  22 Jung, 1973(1951), 109-10.

  23 Jung, 1973(1952), 23-24.

  24 See, e.g., Hand, 2014.

  25 Falk, 1989, p. 477. In the same way and for the same reasons, the “synchronicity” of the Millenium Hilton and the rubble of the World Trade Center after 9/11 (Chapter 1) was also a product of taking a very singular point of view, a particular photo-op.

  26 Jung, 1973(1952), 19.

  27 Jung, 2015, 344.

  28 Main, 2007.

  29 Koestler, 1972.

  30 Tart, 1981. Tart argues that by implying that there’s no cause to be found, the synchronicity concept facilitates “being intellectually lazy and dodging our responsibilities” (i.e., as scientists).

  31 Jung, 2015, 541.

  32 Noll, 1994, 1997.

  33 Not surprisingly, Freud’s clinic was also an echo chamber; see Borch-Jakobsen (1996) and Borch-Jakobsen & Shamdasani (2012).

  34 Beitman, 2016, 120.

  35 See, e.g., Carpenter, 2012.

  36 Radin, 2018; see also Radin, 2006, 2009, 2013.

  37 Jung, 1973(1952), 23.

  38 Despite Jung’s parenthetical claim that Maggy “did not happen to know” the rebirth symbolism of scarabs, it is quite possible she did have some idea. Scarabs were popular at that point, and Maggy was a highly educated and curious woman who could have encountered discussio
n of scarab symbolism in any number of then-current sources, including her own doctor’s Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido . Even if she had not encountered the idea in a book at some point, she is likely to have known the symbolism of scarabs via the decorative arts. Scarab jewelry, of the sort the dream-figure gave her, had been popular since the Egyptian Revival of the mid 19th century, its ancient meaning of rebirth or metamorphosis reasonably well understood in that context. The Parisian jewelry designer Lalique, for instance, was famous for his Art Deco, Egyptian-style scarabs, as well as for other art jewelry that depicted the surreal metamorphosis of women into insects. As a woman from a wealthy aristocratic family, Maggy would have known the language of jewelry and high fashion, whatever she knew or didn’t know about ancient Egypt. (Scarabs would enjoy a second wave of popularity after 1922, with the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb—although I am inferring that the episode in Jung’s clinic probably preceded that.)

  39 Jung, 1965b, 179.

  40 Jung, 2012, 253.

  41 Jung, 1985(1937).

  42 Noll, 1997, 151.

  43 Noll, 1994, 1997.

  44 Beitman, 2016, 120.

  45 Ibid.

  46 Priestley, 1989(1964).

  47 Freud, 1974(1899), 50.

  48 ESP phenomena have frequently been observed to manifest especially in conditions of impeded connection. Jule Eisenbud (Eisenbud, 1982) also noted that the over-expression of precognitive abilities seemed linked to socially repressed sexual orientations and desires, literally “forbidden love,” as we will see in Chapter 12.

  49 It now appears as an appendix to the volume The Practice of Psychotherapy (Jung, 1985[1937]), and a less detailed version of the story appears in Jung’s notes to a 1932 seminar on Kundalini Yoga (Jung, 1996).

  50 Jung, 1985(1937), 330.

  51 Ibid., 331 (italics in original).

  52 Broda, 2013.

  53 Jung (1996, 105) describes: “At the same time she really loved a man but could not think of marrying him. And then the thought entered her head that I, or circumstances, might persuade her to marry and have a baby, but that was impossible.”

  54 Jung, 1985(1937), 332.

  55 I dreamt that I was walking along a country road at the foot of a steep hill. On the hill was a castle with a high tower. Sitting on the parapet of the topmost pinnacle was a woman, golden in the light of the evening sun. In order to see her properly, I had to bend my head so far back that I woke up with a crick in the neck. (Ibid., 332.)

  56 According to Baynes’ daughter, Baynes himself had a short extramarital affair with Maggy (who also was by that point married, with children) and called the Dutch artist a “devotee of eros” (Jansen, 2003, 225). It is when Baynes described to Jung the “extraordinary impression” Maggy had made on him that Jung described her as “the ideal anima woman. It is her vocation” (Ibid.). When Baynes was involved with Maggy, Jung inexplicably became coldly distant, and Baynes surmised that it was because of Jung’s feelings for her: “I have a feeling that his coldness to me now is very largely on account of [Maggy]. He is very attached to her and feels her great value because it developed literally under his hand” (Ibid., 245).

  57 Douglas, 1993.

  58 See, e.g., Bair, 2003; Launer, 2014; McLynn, 1996; Noll, 1997. It was in the context of the scandal that erupted during Jung’s intense relationship with Sabina Spielrein, a 19-year-old Russian patient he had treated at Zurich’s Burghölzli mental hospital, that Freud first used the term “countertransference” in a letter to Jung. Whether or not that relationship was physically consummated has been a matter of considerable, often acrimonious debate among Jung’s followers, biographers, and critics; some of the latter, like Noll, argue that Jung actively preached the virtues of polygamy to his patients (Noll, 1994, 1997; see also Heuer, 2017). In contrast, Lance Owens (Owens, 2015) cites some evidence that the relationship with Spielrein remained sexually unrequited. (Owens argues that Jung sublimated his desires into a higher mystical gnosis, a mysterium coniunctionis. )

  59 Jung, 1985(1937), 333.

  60 In his “On Synchronicity” lecture, he writes, “This experience punctured the desired hole in her rationalism and broke the ice of her intellectual resistance. The treatment could now be continued with satisfactory results” (Jung, 1973[1951], 110).

  61 The similarity of the two narratives raises some question how accurate either one may really have been: On one hand, they seem like stereotyped vignettes of therapeutic breakthrough and could have been based as much on Jung’s fantasies about the efficacy of his method as on reality. In addition, both narratives were written decades after the incidents they described, and he clearly didn’t take notes (since de Moura remarks that Jung wrote to Maggy in 1949 asking for her recollections of the scarab incident, so he could write about it; de Moura, 2014). On the other hand, the fact that Maggy was indeed moved if not transformed by some of her experiences in Jung’s consulting room is not in doubt, given her continued correspondence with Jung about events in her therapy.

  62 Jung, 1985(1937), 333-334.

  63 The meaning of these symptoms wending their way up his patient’s chakras—the secret thought the bird was releasing—was, Jung asserted once again, a very conventional-bourgeois desire for a child, which Jung says his patient was compelled disappointingly to own up to:

  For as soon as the kundalini serpent reached manipura, the most primitive centre of consciousness, the patient’s brain told her what kind of thought the shakti was insinuating into her: that she wanted a real child and not just a psychic experience. This seemed a great let-down to the patient. But that is the disconcerting thing about the shakti: her building material is maya, “real illusion.” In other words, she spins fantasies with real things.

  This little bit of Tantric philosophy helped the patient to make an ordinary human life for herself, as a wife and mother … (Ibid., 336-337.)

  64 De Moura (2014) notes that Mischa later sent Maggy her notes of the lecture, with references to the fantasies Jung didn’t understand until he read Arthur Avalon’s book underlined.

  65 Freud and his colleague Josef Breuer encountered and recorded many such seductions, also with appropriate clinical detachment, in their 1895 volume Studies on Hysteria (Breuer & Freud, 1957[1895]; see also Forrester, 1990). It would be interesting to revisit those cases with an eye to any possible precognitive symptomatology.

  66 This same mechanism might also have accounted for the tendency of Freud’s patients to produce Oedipal material, as well as for the general tendency of patients to produce dreams and symptoms that match the theoretical orientation of their therapist.

  67 De Moura, 2014, 405.

  68 Ibid.

  69 Coincidentally or not, Jung does cite Phantasms in his Synchronicity monograph, just before the scarab narrative; we know that he read it and that it was an influence on his thinking, at least insofar as the authors had made an attempt to cover the same ground of meaningful coincidence.

  70 Jule Eisenbud is one exception. He chronicled numerous manifestations of “psi” behavior on the part of his patients, often intended (albeit unconsciously) to elicit his approbation, approval, or sexual interest (Eisenbud, 1970, 1982).

  71 Jung was clearly wrong when he wrote in his 1952 Synchronicity monograph that “nothing like [the scarab incident] ever happened to me before or since, and … the dream of the patient has remained unique in my experience” (Jung, 1973[1952], 22).

  72 De Moura, 2014, 391.

  73 See Forrester’s (1990) discussion of the question of payment and contracts in relation to “free speech” in psychoanalysis.

  74 The peril of active hermeneutic engagement with symptoms or dreams is that they will turn out to be precisely that engagement that is precognized, resulting in the kind of vertiginous hall of mirrors that will, not without justification, nauseate a scientist-skeptic. A reader of my blog, The Nightshirt , proposed that some dreams might be precognitive of the very act of recalling or writing the dream down
upon waking (or by extension telling it to a spouse over breakfast, or reflecting upon it in some way later). If thoughts sparked by the act of recording the dream are emotionally salient in some way, this could indeed be the case; falsifying that hypothesis in any given case would be extremely difficult—although again, difficulty of falsification is not in itself evidence of falsehood.

  75 Eisenbud, 1970.

  12. Fate, Free Will, and Futility —Morgan Robertson’s Tiresias Complex

  1 Eisenbud, 1982, 75.

  2 Ehrenwald, 1954.

  3 Jule Eisenbud’s chapter “Is There A Merciful God in the House?” in his book Paranormal Foreknowledge (Eisenbud, 1982), gives essential insight into Robinson’s life and works, and is a touchstone for my thinking in this chapter.

  4 Robertson, 1974(1898), 23-24.

  5 Kripal, 2011.

  6 Francis, 1915, 100.

  7 In Gardner, 1998, 2.

  8 Robertson, 1905, 88.

  9 In a short autobiographical piece called “My Skirmish with Madness” (Robertson, 1915b), he describes a few weeks he spent in Bellevue Hospital undergoing detoxification—and his ultimate return to drinking. In another autobiographical piece he wrote and published anonymously a year before his death, “Gathering No Moss,” he describes a visit to a hypnotist, ostensibly to help with his writing, but likely in fact to help with his drinking.

  10 Robertson, 1915a, 29.

  11 Ibid.

  12 Ibid., 29-30.

  13 Žižek, 1989, 71. Something similar obviously can be said about the ruins of the World Trade Center, or the ruins of Auschwitz/Birkenau, or a Civil War battlefield; they all represent sites of trauma yet are also repeatedly revisited and “enjoyed” in a kind of obsessive-ritualistic way.

  14 Žižek writes, “even before it actually happened, there was already a place opened, reserved for it in fantasy space. It had such a terrific impact on the ’social imaginary’ by virtue of the fact that it was expected” (Ibid., 69).

  15 There is, of course, a whole can of worms here for psychoanalytically inclined parapsychologists who take seriously the possibility of psychokinetic or PK effects—or the effects of intention. Despite their disturbing overlap with regressive ideas of the “omnipotence of thought,” Eisenbud (1982) considers PK and other “active hypotheses” more realistic than true retrocausation. Again, it’s a topic way beyond the scope of this book; but a good case can be made that at least some of what looks like PK is really misrecognized precognition (see, e.g., May, 2015).