Reviewed by Nemo C. Mörck
Ted Serios (1921-2006) and Jule Eisenbud (1908-1999) were an odd couple. Serios “never matriculated past the fifth grade but didn’t formally drop out of school until he reached his teens” (p. 34). Ted appreciated beer, booze, cigarettes, and women. He had no interest in working, but held a job as a bellhop for some time. Ted would have remained a marginal character if it were not for the thoughtographs. Serios appeared to have an ability to impart images onto Polaroid film. Eisenbud was a psychiatrist and a practising psychoanalyst. When he first became aware of Ted he had recently written that he didn’t believe it was possible to “produce anything like a psi event on demand” (Eisenbud, 1963, p. 260 — reprinted in Eisenbud, 1983). His paper was, understandably, not appreciated by the parapsychology community. However, in 1964, he received a letter from Curtis Fuller, co-founder of Fate magazine. Fuller described what he believed was a repeatable experiment involving Ted Serios. Eisenbud replied, threw Fuller’s letter, and did not expect to have anything to do with Serios — he would find himself working with Ted for years.
In 2023 an exhibition, Mind’s Eye: The Psychic Photographs of Ted Serios, was arranged in Toronto. The anthology Ted Serios: The Mind’s Eye was created to accompany the exhibition. Paul Roth, director of The Image Center at Toronto Metropolitan University, has long been fascinated by the story about Serios and writes: “This book is the first comprehensive examination and reassessment” (p. 7). However, Textem Verlag has published a similar anthology, Ted Serios: Serien. In addition, a proper reassessment would require detailed study of Eisenbud’s publications and sceptics’ attempts to explain the phenomena as being due to fraud rather than a paranormal process. Emily Hauver has curated two exhibitions that included thoughtographs from Eisenbud’s archive, held at the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Hauver provides some historical context about the 1960s and notes that contributors “aim to bring a new perspective ... and to encourage a renewed appreciation for the work ...” (p. 16).
The contributors have not written with parapsychologists in mind — without context the many expertly reproduced thoughtographs just appear as curious photos. Eisenbud (1967, 1989/2011), later Braude (2007), and Reichbart (2019) have argued that fraud cannot explain the images. Mikita Brottman notes: “The art world is different. Here, the ontological ambiguity of the images is part of their visual appeal” (p. 27). Brottman is an author and a psychoanalyst. She has previously written about Eisenbud and Serios (Brottman, 2011, 2019) and learned that the subject can evoke strong reactions (Brottman, 2012). For example, the magician James Randi (2012), one of the original public critics of the research with Serios, wrote: “This was a display of some 60 examples of how rationality can be easily abandoned when a sufficiently attractive woo-woo subject is brought up.” Perhaps not surprisingly Randi’s recollections of the NBC Today Show he participated in, with Eisenbud and Serios, 4 October 1967 do not align perfectly with Eisenbud’s (1975, 1989/2011): Eisenbud was not impressed by his demonstration of how thoughtographs could be produced fraudulently.
Brottman focuses on Eisenbud in her essay. Hauver writes about Serios, and notes that he “appears to have operated at the margins of society from an early age ...” (p. 31). She managed to uncover that Serios was born in 1921 rather than in 1918 as often claimed (included by Serios himself). It is evident that Hauver has done her best to convey the backstory, about Serios and his parents, but gaps remain. For example, she notes that Serios was once institutionalized for schizophrenia, in 1944, but no documentation supportive of the diagnosis was found by the psychologist J. Finley Hurley, who made Eisenbud aware of the institutionalization. Serios comes across as a unruly character that developed alcoholism early in life and had many run-ins with the law. Eisenbud compensated Serios in various ways for his participation in research. Hauver notes: “The transactional nature of some of these dealings raises doubts about Eisenbud’s objectivity” (p. 40), but, eventually, concludes “these particular transgressions don’t undermine Eisenbud’s character or findings” (p. 41).
Mark Alice Durant, an artist and author, describes the experimental sessions:
... Serios’s chaotic behavior. His erratic moods and drunkenness often threatened to undermine the clinical atomsphere (p. 54).
Watching film documentation of Serios’s performance, one is stuck by several things. Despite the efforts to frame the proceedings as controlled experiments, there was a lot of improvisation. Serios is a fidgety guy, he squirms, gets up, sits down, turns to reach for his cigarettes, and mutters under his breath (p. 54).
Ellie Howard, a photographic writer, describes the thoughtographs and Eisenbud’s interpretations of them. She also touches on the curious distortions – sometimes there were differences between the presumed target and the image, for example, misspellings. Parapsychologists, arguing that fraud is an insufficient explanation, focus on this and the fact that the Polaroid cameras were not always within Serios’s reach when images where taken.
In the penultimate essay, Beth Saunders, curator and researcher, speculates:
The possibility of weaponizing Serios’s psi abilities became a frequent topic of consideration for Eisenbud, since government support would add a new level of authority to the study of paranormal phenomena (p. 165).
Like Eisenbud did, Saunders notes that many thoughtographs look as if the image was taken from above. She provides historical context and notes that the experiments took place during the Cold War between the USA and the Soviet Union. Saunders also acknowledges criticism of the experiments. As mentioned earlier, Randi participated in the NBC Today Show, 4 October 1967. She quotes Randi from the programme: “I don’t know how Ted Serios produces his wonders. I certainly cannot prove that Ted Serios does not do it by some means of psychic power” (pp. 172-173). During the programme Randi accepted Eisenbud’s $10,000 challenge to reproduce the phenomena under similar conditions: “The magician never made good on the offer” (p. 173). The correspondence between Eisenbud and Randi is revealing (Fuller, 1974) and a more recent amusing letter, dated 17 June 1982, to Randi from Eisenbud is reproduced (p. 207). Serios “became obsessed with gaining recognition from the CIA” (p. 175) in the 1980s – Eisenbud attempted to help him, but their efforts did not result in anything. Saunders ends her essay by noting:
While the men never gained the legitimacy they sought, the thoughtographs form a window into a particular moment in US history when the optimistic belief in the potential of psi matched that of the new frontiers of space travel and of a reimagined social order (p. 177).
In the final essay, Clément Chéroux, director of the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris, writes that the thoughtographs continued to be disputed: “Each party held firmly to their positions and the discussion did not move forward” (p. 187). However, the art world embraced the thoughtographs. Chéroux notes that the first exhibition featuring them was arranged in 1990 by the artist Barbara Ess. Nevertheless, to many this situation will likely seem frustrating – should the thoughtographs be allowed to exist in some kind of indeterminated state? However, the anthology does not focus on evidence for psi or fraud. Instead this it is more like an appreciation and history of the work that has been done. Admittedly, I would have liked to see more documents reproduced, such as correspondence, and less overlap with Eisenbud’s (1967, 1989/2011) book. I remain bemused by the phenomena.
References
Braude, S. E. (2007). The gold leaf lady and other parapsychological investigations. University of Chicago Press.
Brottman, M. (2011, 20 February). Ted Serios and psychic projections. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Brottman, M. (2012). Psychoanalysis, resistance and telepathy: The case of Ted Serios. In S. Kakar & J. J. Kripal (Eds.). Seriously strange (pp. 28-48). Viking.
Brottman, M. (2019). Phantoms of the clinic: From thought-transference to projective identification. Routledge.
Eisenbud, J. (1963). Psi and the nature of things. International Journal of Parapsychology, 5(3), 245-273.
Eisenbud, J. (1967). The world of Ted Serios: “Thoughtographic” studies of an extraordinary mind. William Morrow.
Eisenbud, J. (1975). [Letter to the Editor]. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 69(1), 94-96.
Eisenbud, J. (Ed.) (1983). Parapsychology and the unconscious. North Atlantic Books.
Eisenbud, J. (2021). The world of Ted Serios: “Thoughtographic” studies of an extraordinary mind (2nd Ed.). White Crow Books. (Original work published 1989).
Fuller, C. (1974). Dr. Jule Eisenbud vs. The Amazing Randi. Fate, 27(8), 65-74.
Randi, J. (2012, 12 March). It never stops... James Randi Educational Foundation.
Reichbart, R. (2019). The paranormal surrounds us: Psychic phenomena in literature, culture and psychoanalysis. McFarland.
A separate review by Sarah Sparkes will appear in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.