Gerda Walther and the Possibility of Telepathy as an Act of Personal Social Mind

Abstract

The phenomenologist Gerda Walther posits the possibility of a new social act, which she terms telepathy. It is marked by an intimate in-terpersonal union in which ego and alter ego become capable of sharing in the identical lived experience, though distant from one an-other. Here, there is no fusion or collective identi􀏔ication; rather, in-dividuals, though they live the experience and mind of the other, never lose or transcend their own individuation. Unlike the act of em-pathy, there is no analogical transfer. This article defends the possi-bility of a restricted sense telepathy. The author argues that four conditions must be ful􀏔illed for telepathy to occur: recognition of a social drive; a partially willed act of mind that results in the assump-tion of a certain stance, but it also comes upon us as an experience; constitution of subjects as persons marked by a “fundamental es-sence”; and I-splitting.