Subject: 11/10/97 FC NET Message
 Date: Sun, 9 Nov 1997 22:08:28 +1000 (AEST)
From: Kim Johnson - Internet Client johnski@rvib2.rvib.org.au
To: Patricia Edwards pedwards@ashland.edu
Subject: Re: 11/6/97 FC NET Message
To Yechiel Menachem Sitzman, in response to your posting of 11-6-97

Dear Yechiel,
People will continue to find it hard to believe "FC works and is real"
while those purporting to support FC misrepresent it. FC is not ESP -
facilitators merely give support to the user, and in no way interfere with
their message. If you feel that your thoughts are being expressed when you facilitate someone, perhaps you should consider some serious thinking about facilitator influence (perhaps Rosemary Crossley would be able to help you here), and work hard at preventing it - in fairness to the person you are facilitating. If you have thoughts you want expressed, write them down and sign your own name to them.
If ESP is real, it can stand on its own feet. Attempts to link it to F only make the task of those of us facilitating severely disabled people infinitely more difficult. Please desist!
Also, please do not keep my report confidential - you have my specific permission to publicize it.
Yours sincerely,
Jill Johnson
P.S. Giving the user full support enables her to communicate QUICKER.

Subject: 11/19/97 FC NET Message
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 17:46:18 -0800
From: Dvar Dvar@netmedia.net.il
To: pedwards@ashland.edu
To: Jill Johnson (and any others who may have misunderstood my posting of Nov 6 97)
From: Yechiel Menachem Sitzman

Subj: Clarification of my FCNet posting of Nov 6 97
I did not intend in that posting, and do not intend in this reply to your response of Nov 9, to give a thorough presentation of my approach to reconciling all the seemingly conflicting evidence regarding FC. This I plan to do in a paper on which I have begun work, and which I expect to be too lengthy to submit as a posting on the FCNet. My purpose in the Nov 6 posting was simply to ask for assistance of members of the FCNet in my research on this subject.

> People will continue to find it hard to believe 'FC works and
> is real' while those purporting to support FC misrepresent it. FC
> is not ESP.

While I agree that FC and ESP are not synonymous, I contend that, in most if not all cases, there is a distinct telepathic component at work in FC. This has been described by many FC users, among them Ben Golden, a 25-year-old who is autistic and nonverbal. In a facilitated communication on Jul 24 97, Ben explained that it is the physical contact with the facilitator which enables him and other FC users to be instantly literate in any language known by the facilitator as well as to access the deepest memories of the facilitator. This process is most likely what Ann Donnellan was referring to when she wrote: "Are they learning to 'read' each other in some subliminal way, as some of the present learners have begun to suggest and learners and parents have reported in the past (Rimland, 1978)?" (Donnellan, "Topics in Language Disorders, 1992).
This is a unique form of ESP which appears to be responsible for the success of FC. The content of the messages usually originates with the facilitated, rather than with the facilitator, as a 9-year-old girl explained using FC: "You are my keyboard but I arrange the words in a specific order." If this is the foundation of FC, the psychic connection between the facilitator and the facilitated is sufficient to explain facilitator influence which is so often observed and obviates the need to postulate other inadequate explanations such as inadvertent cueing.
> If ESP is real, it can stand on its own feet.
Certainly ESP is real, as real as FC, and nonetheless both of them have had difficulty "standing on their own feet" in the scientific community.
Haskew and Donnellan suggested that "the sixth sense [which] is present in all of us at birth ... fades as speech and locomotion develop [leaving in many people only] vestigial psychic abilities." The rarity and lack of consistency of these phenomena make them difficult to verify using normal scientific procedures.
I agree with you, Jill, that as long as the scientific community has not accepted ESP, attempts to link it to FC can make the position of those who use FC more difficult. I mentioned this link in my posting because I assumed that the FCNet is composed of supporters of FC and that no harm would be done by circulating my message internally.
Reports of ESP associated with FC and/or autism have already been made public in a number of sources, including "Emotional Maturity and Well- being, Psychological Lessons of FC" (Haskew and Donnellan), "A Child of Eternity" (Kristi Jorde and Adriana Rocha), "Memoirs of an Autistic Child" (John Chambers), "QIM Tunes" (Tom Smith), "Nobody Nowhere" (Donna Williams), and "Je choisis ta main pour parler (I choose your hand to talk)" (Anne-Marguerite Vexiau of Paris). My contribution is merely to suggest that the phenomenon revealed by these many reports from around the globe is not merely incidental to FC but rather an integral part of the process. If so (and as I wrote above I am working on a paper to present my theory in detail), then it is not I who misrepresent FC (though I can understand how you might have gotten that impression from my earlier posting, which is why I am now taking the trouble to clarify it) but rather those who try to suppress or discredit these and other such reports. At the same time, I recognize that many such people are motivated by a genuine concern for the needs of the severely disabled people who use FC and am even prepared to admit that their actions may well have some legitimate justification.
The opponents of FC cite much scientific evidence that autism and mental retardation are not merely motor disorders and that "postulation of a caught not taught' theory of pragmatic communication development seems ludicrous at best and irresponsible at worst'" (Diane Twachtman-Cullen, "A Passion to Believe", p. 123). They suggest instead that the literacy and pragmatic communication of the facilitated is a result of inadvertent cueing, not realizing that it is no less ludicrous to postulate a mechanism which would account for the complex and novel messages obtained through FC as a result of cueing. (See Donnellan in the Jan 97 issue of "The American Journal of Mental Retardation.) However, it is hard for supporters of FC to argue this point as long as they themselves invoke the explanation of inadvertent cueing to account for facilitator influence.
> Attempts to link [ESP] to FC only make the task of those of us
> facilitating severely disabled people infinitely more difficult.
> Please desist!

It is certainly not my intention to hinder the efforts of people like you. Rather, it is my hope to arrive at and disseminate a deeper and more accurate understanding of just what is going on in FC in order to make it more widely accessible to the many people who would benefit from it.

I have received some support in this endeavor from Scott Danforth, Ph.D., an assistant professor of education at the University of Missouri who is sympathetic to FC. After reading his article "On What Basis Hope? Modern Progress and Postmodern Possibilities" ("Mental Retardation" April 97) which discusses some aspects of the FC controversy, I sent him a preliminary draft of my paper, which is not yet ready for public dissemination, and he urged me to complete it and publicize it.
Both ESP and FC are rejected by large segments of the community, and my opinion neither of them can stand alone. Together they can clarify and authenticate each other to enable FC and ESP to gain wider acceptance and thus provide an important boon for mankind.

Yechiel Menachem Sitzman