Psi and the nature of abilities

Journal of Parapsychology, The, Sept, 1992 by Stephen E. Braude

Let me turn, now, to some issues concerning memory. The amazing mnemonic displays of savants and some others raise various questions about the nature and function of memory generally, and they suggest additional parallels with psychic functioning. First, however, we should consider whether to speak of memory as an ability or a capacity. I would suggest that memory can plausibly be regarded as both. Most organisms have some mnemonic capacity, however rudimentary; but in addition, there are specific mnemonic abilities not shared by all who have the capacity to remember--for example, the ability to remember very long digits, or nonsense syllables, or even the more mundane ability to remember telephone numbers. Because nothing in what follows seems to hang on whether we regard memory as a capacity or an ability, I shall temporarily use these terms rather loosely and relatively interchangeably.

When we examine the lives of so-called mnemonists, it is tempting to describe their mnemonic ability, not as a gift or marvelous endowment, but as an affliction or a handicap. In the most dramatic of such cases--for example, Luria's famous study of the subject he called "S" (Luria, 1968/1987)--exceptional memory seems to be incapacitating. Indeed, rather than describe mnemonists as people with superb mnemonic abilities or capacities, it is tempting to describe them as people lacking a certain useful ability, namely, the ability to forget. In that respect, the mnemonic abilities of most persons benefit from what we could describe somewhat paradoxically as liberating constraints. Without the ability to forget, life would become virtually unmanageable. Hence, the normal constraints on our memories make a great deal of sense adaptationally.

Moreover, most if not all of what we forget seems to be dissociated from conscious awareness. Nevertheless, under the right circumstances (e.g., hypnosis and other altered states) we can remember what we had previously forgotten. In fact, that sort of retrievability is an essential feature of dissociative phenomena (Braude, 1991). Now it is not clear whether all people have (at least latently) the ability to recall consciously virtually everything that has happened to them, as Luria's subject was apparently able to do. But it is clear that most of us remember subconsciously many things that we do not remember consciously. Hence, the familiar and adaptationally appropriate constraints on normal memory seem primarily to be constraints on our ability to remember consciously.

Similar points have sometimes been made about ESP. If people were always and consciously gaining psychic access to every recognizable state of affairs, even those within a reasonable distance, their mental lives would presumably be hopelessly cluttered. In fact, our cognitive psi abilities would make little sense adaptationally if they were not constrained in the way our memory seems to be. Hence, the inability of even good psychics to use their ESP on demand and without limit may parallel the inability of normal persons with good memories to remember everything. Moreover, we may be psychically active on a subconscious level even though there may be no conscious indication or awareness of that activity. For all we know, then, the apparently liberating constraints on our psychic functioning may apply primarily to our ability to be psychic in ways that are consciously detectable.