Anticipatory awareness of emotionally charged targets by individuals with histories of emotional trauma

Journal of Parapsychology, The, Spring, 2004 by Theo K. de Graaf, Joop M. Houtkooper

The following two case histories illustrate the role of the PSF in the occurrence of what seemed to be a precognitive dream. The first one, about a dream of a 9-year-old girl, does so in a quite straightforward manner, which in children seems to be the rule rather than the exception.

Case 3

   When the first author and his family immigrated from Israel to
   the Netherlands, my daughter, then at the age of 7, had been sad
   for some time about having to separate from her little friends in
   the kibbutz. About 1 year later she told us that she and her
   classmates had bid farewell to a girl called "Nicola," who had
   returned to her country of birth, and that "all the children had
   wept a great deal." About 1 year after that, my daughter woke up in
   the morning and told the family members present that during that
   night she had dreamt that "Nicola" had returned to their class
   and that "everybody was very happy." That afternoon, upon coming
   home from school, she reported with much delight that, indeed,
   that very morning "Nicola" had quite unexpectedly made
   her appearance in their class and that "all the children had been
   very happy."

In this case the PSF ostensibly consisted of the painful experience of separation. The congruency of the life event that--as a day's residue-in-the-future--had elicited the precognitive dream consisted of the circumstance that, just like the dreamer herself, "Nicola" was a girl from abroad. The 9-year-old girl had thus selected a future event that was pre-eminently suited to undo or "detoxify" the original traumatic experience.

Case 4

   One of the first author's clients told him that during a visit to
   her physiotherapist she had noticed a photograph on the wall
   that had not been there before. It was a photograph of his two
   grown children. Suddenly, she "saw" a third child in the photograph
   and said to him: "Why do I feel that there should be a
   third child there? That is what I am missing in that photograph!"
   The man proceeded to tell her that their first child
   had died just prior to birth and was stillborn. He and his wife
   had only recently been confronted anew with these tragic
   memories due to the birth of their first grandchild. When we
   asked this woman's physiotherapist for further details--with
   the client's permission--he told us that he and his wife were
   still suffering because of the fact that the doctors had not allowed
   them to see the stillborn child at the time. Due, in part,
   to this they had not experienced the clairvoyant or telepathic
   observation by the client as shocking, but rather as very consoling.
   However, this incident proved to be significant for our
   client as well. She had two children of her own but she would
   have liked to have a third child. She had had a miscarriage in
   between the births of her two children. When she turned out
   to be pregnant again, her husband insisted on an abortion.
   However, she refused. She did not dare even to talk about a
   third child from then on. Nevertheless, she had continued to
   blame herself for this and she had also harbored a grudge
   against her husband. She felt relieved to finally be able to talk
   to somebody about this.