Loening post on 11/26/97 FC NET Message
 Date: Tue, 25 Nov 97 10:21:09 PST
From: Regina Bringolf Loening bringolf@bestweb.net
To: pedwards@ashland.edu
Subject: ESP -- Once more with feeling....

 I've been reading the exchanges about the ESP component in FC with great interest.
Here is my concern: Proving ESP or any other psychic phenomenon "scientifically" has never been very successful. The reason for this probably has to do with the elusiveness of such phenomena: They do not manifest themselves very well under scientific testing conditions. And there will always be those who will dismiss these phenomena out of hand.
Maybe some of you will remember that the famously infamous "Frontline" program of October 19, 1993 was preceded by a "Nova" program on which a McArthur award winner went to Russia (with the required film crew) to debunk all kinds of psychics who were dispensing their services there. That's precisely the kind of connotation that we want to avoid as Advocates for FC.
 Considering the opposition that FC is encountering in so many quarters, I think that what must be stressed is the validity of FC that has now been established in so many cases. The ESP hypothesis is an interesting one and may well be valid in some cases. But I doubt that it can be generalized, or proven to the satisfaction of the skeptics, and therefore, in a general debate about FC, I think that it is a red herring.
Regina Bringolf Loening
  12/8/97 FC NET Message
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 1997 13:59:23 -0500
From: Yechiel Menachem Sitzman dvar@netvision.net.il
To: "<Patricia Edwards" pedwards@ashland.edu,
Subject: Response to Message of Loening on FCNet dated Nov 26 97 and others

I wish first to concur with the advice of Regina Brungolf Loening not to inject the topic of ESP into the general debate about FC -- now. To do so runs the risks she mentions. However, this should not preclude us from discussing it among ourselves.
In order to hope to succeed in furthering the cause of FC, using an explanation of ESP would require proof of an overwhelmingly persuasive kind together with a conceptual framework to explain ESP. This is what I am trying to do and I want to take this opportunity to thank those members of the FC net who are helping me by supplying me with accounts of their experiences.
The tests which were made to try to prove ESP were made using people who lacked mental disabilities and for that reason, as Haskew and Donnellan suggested (Emotional Maturity and Well-being), these phenomena were too elusive to provide the necessary proof.
C.E. Hansel, a non-believer in ESP, wrote in his book "ESP, a Scientific Evaluation" (p.7) that if the claims of the proponents of ESP are justified, "a complete revision in contemporary scientific thought is required at least comparable to that made necessary in physics by Einstein." Actually this revision in scientific thought has already begun in physics even without proving ESP. Physicist Max Planck, the father of the quantum theory, wrote (as quoted in "Main Currents in Western Thought" by Franklyn Leven Baumer, p.662): "The essential point is that the world of sensation is not the only world which may conceivably exist, but that there is still another world. To be sure, this other world is not directly accessible to us, but its existence is indicated, time and time again, with compelling clarity not only by practical life but also by the labors of science." This statement provides a key for solving the enigma of FC.

The famous neurosurgeon W. Penfield conducted extensive experiments which brought him to the conclusion that the mind is a basic element in itself, which cannot be accounted for by any neuronal mechanism ("The Mystery of the Mind: A Critical Study of Consciousness and the Human Brain). In the book "The Self and Its Brain" by Karl. R. Popper and J.C. Eccles, Penfield is quoted as writing, "The physiological basis of the mind is the brain action in each individual; it accompanies the action of the spirit, but the spirit is free; it is capable of some degree of initiative. The spirit is the man one knows." Neuroscientist and Nobel Laureate Sir John Eccles wrote, "It is my thesis that we have to recognize that the unique selfhood is the result of a supernatural creation of what in the religious sense is called a soul" ("Mind and Brain" p.89).
FC is rejected not only because of the difficulty which researchers found in validating it under controlled conditions but mainly because accepting FC would "challenge the scientist's standpoints" regarding autism, mental retardation, and intellectual development ("A History of Facilitated Communication" by John W. Jacobson, James H. Mulick, and Allan A. Schwartz). Also, as Diane Twachtman-Cullen points out in "A Passion to Believe" (p.120), "even when high functioning individuals with autism do possess sophisticated language skills they nevertheless manifest problems in the area of pragmatics, that is, in the use of their language for social communication purposes.
One can use the findings of Max Plank and W. Penfield to overcome these objections.
When using FC with clients who are verbal, one frequently discovers that what the client says contradicts what he communicates using FC. Diane Twachtman-Cullen discusses this at length in "A Passion to Believe." On page 39 she reports a description of a facilitated session in which a non-verbal profoundly retarded client was angry and his facilitator asked him what was going on. Via facilitation he replied, "I hate Jeff," and "Kill Jeff." The facilitator didn't know who Jeff was so she asked him many questions about Jeff. His answers to these questions brought her to the conclusion that Jeff was really himself -- "as many autistic people use a name to describe their behaviors that they can't help."
This seems to indicate that the personality or the "soul," as Sir John C.
Eccles calls it, consists of diverse elements. We have much evidence that the part of the "soul" which is handicapped and was referred to as "Jeff" has the main control of the body and it is this personality which is the focus of the scientific studies that appear to be challenged by FC. However there is a deeper or higher portion which has only a minimal ability to influence the body and exists mainly in the "other world" referred to by Max Plank. The technique of FC enables that portion of the personality to bypass or neutralize the more powerful outer part so that it can communicate. As this part exists mainly in the domain of the spirit and is not handicapped by the physical infirmity of the body, it can obtain its knowledge of literacy from the spirit of the facilitator (as I described in a previous posting). Its mastery of pragmatics is either an innate quality, or is also acquired along with the linguistics from the facilitator.
Whether this is actually what occurs in all instances of FC or only in some is an interesting question, beyond the scope of this posting.
What concerns us here is what the availability of such an explanation can do for those who oppose FC. FC is a phenomenon which has been produced and can be repeated in the laboratory. The debate concerns only the source of the literacy, pragmatics and the message of FC communications. Not wanting to accept that autism, mental retardation, etc., are merely neurological problems, as claimed by the proponents of FC, the opponents have explained FC as coming from the facilitator through inadvertent cueing and unconscious responding, both of which have been suggested in the past to explain other phenomena ("A Passion to Believe" pp. 141-148). These are both examples of ideomotor action in which "Ideas may become the sources of muscular movement, independently either of volitions or of emotions" (quoted from William B. Carpenter in "A Passion to Believe", p.146). They ignore the consideration that suggesting this to be the mechanism at work in FC requires the preposterous supposition that thave consciously mapped out in advance the total message of their clients, for only then will there be the conditions conducive to ideomotor action which can produce unintentionally and involuntarily the spelling of every letter of the message of their supposedly illiterate clients.
I doubt that merely stressing the cases in which FC has been validated will change the attitude of the FC opponents. Diane Twachtman-Cullen herself reported incidents in which the facilitator clearly did not know the contents of the message until it was facilitated, such as the one mention above, "I hate Jeff." She did not, in her book, ask the question how was this non-verbal, profoundly retarded, client able to spell these words without ideomotor action from the facilitator.
For her and her colleagues it seems that it is easier to ignore such accounts of validated FC and give ridiculous explanations for what occurs in FC than to reject "scientifically based research findings across several fields."
There has been no scientific evidence against ESP. Until now there has just been a lack of convincing evidence for it. The explanation which I have suggested above, accompanied with more evidence and clarification, can enable those who presently oppose FC to retain their commitment to accepted scientific research findings and also to recognize FC as a valid method of communication.