FC, Telepathy, and the Allure of Transcendence: Thoughts about the Telepathy Tapes (Episode 9)

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Written By Janyce Boynton

As I start my review of the Telepathy Tapes, Season 1 Episode 9, I want to say how sad I was to learn that one of the participants featured in the podcast, a young man named John Paul, died in an accidental drowning at his home on September 24, 2023. Even though I do not agree with the family’s use of Facilitated Communication (FC) and the claims being made in the podcast about telepathic abilities in nonspeaking individuals with autism, I can hear the love and compassion in his mother Libby’s voice as she talks about her son. My deepest sympathies go out to John Paul’s family and friends.

In my last blog post, I talked about a 2019 study that used eye tracking devices to show how individuals influenced letter selection while using a planchette on a Ouija board. Although the participants in the study were not FC users, there are some parallels that can be drawn between the two techniques. Essentially, the person controlling the motion (via Ouija) looks at the letter ahead of his or her communication partner and guides the planchette to the target letter. As I said previously, I’d love to see Vikram Jaswal’s eye tracking study replicated with one change: put eye tracking devices on the facilitators as well as the individuals being subjected to FC (or its variants). The Ouija board has long been associated with the “mourning culture,” or users’ attempts to transcend the physical bounds of this earth and communicate with loved ones who have died. These themes are also addressed in this episode of the Telepathy Tapes.

Image from the 2019 Andersen et al. study.

While listening to and taking notes on the episode, I was reminded of a 1993 article by Kathleen M. Dillon comparing FC to Ouija board use. I’ve paraphrased her comparisons in this chart:

Summary of FC and Ouija comparison (Dillon, 1993)

Throughout the Telepathy Tapes series, we as listeners, have heard little bits and pieces of how difficult and overwhelming it can be for parents raising profoundly autistic children. For me, these tidbits of information are much more interesting than the imagined, fanciful, facilitated lives of individuals with autism and their families as portrayed by Ky Dickens, the credulous documentarian responsible for the series. In fact, throughout the series, I’ve often wished that more time could be devoted to informing people outside the autism community about the real-life challenges of raising profoundly disabled children who need constant attention and care. But, a realistic accounting of a day in the life of families with profoundly autistic children isn’t generally mystical or magical and, most likely, would not have gotten enough views to beat podcaster Joe Rogan in the ratings. Miracle stories of transcendence via the use of FC, as we’ve seen repeatedly in the media, are more likely to capture the imaginations of the general public and boost viewership.

The meaning of “profound autism” is debated in the autism community, but I’m talking about the nonspeaking or minimally speaking individuals who need 24/7 care that are often targeted for FC use. These children have complex speech/language difficulties, as well as cognitive and social impairments. They often exhibit repetitive or restricted behaviors. And, as we’ve heard, briefly, from the parents in the Telepathy Tapes, these children might bang their heads on the floor or walls, or exhibit other self-injurious behaviors, smear feces, make loud noises in public, have difficulty with self-care and life skills, and elope without warning at all hours of the day or night (e.g., escape into traffic or run to and into bodies of water without any sense of danger). And, perhaps most agonizingly, these children are unable to tell their parents (in words) when they are in pain or frustrated or sad or lonely. These children often cannot express their love to and for their parents in neurotypical ways.

Image by Diego PH

But, FC, proponents claim, magically erases all that. In the case of the families being featured in the Telepathy Tapes, FC is less of a communication technique than it is a coping strategy. For parents and educators who believe in the technique, FC opens all avenues of communication for their nonspeaking children or students—including psychic or telepathic abilities and other gifts from God that allow these individuals to transcend their physical bodies. Believers don’t care that these facilitator-dependent, FC-generated stories cannot be corroborated independently by the nonspeaking individuals who appear not to have the ability to communicate verbally or in writing without facilitator interference.

I truly can empathize with the parents featured in these episodes who, through FC-generated messages, visualize a better life for their children. If it’s true that the bodies of these nonspeaking children with profound autism are broken, then from the FC believers’ perspective, at least these children can live a rich inner life filled with unique, profound, and neurotypical experiences. The use of FC—and the staunch devotion not to test for authorship—is the key to maintaining this illusion.  

As sad as I found this episode, I was also deeply troubled by it when, as listeners, we were told by John Paul’s mother, Libby, that she believes John Paul planned his own death and, further, that his friends on “The Hill” knew about his plans in the weeks leading up to his death. For those who are new to the series or to my reviews, “The Hill,” we are told, is a place where nonspeaking individuals with autism telepathically go to interact with and learn from other nonspeaking individuals. Never mind the fact that facilitators (the very people controlling letter selection during FC sessions) around the world are sharing stories with each other about this mythological place that they think their children are visiting. (There is no proof, besides anecdotal stories from believers that “The Hill” exists).

We, as listeners, are also told that, after one of Libby’s friends posted on social media about the news of John Paul’s death, Libby started getting (facilitated) messages that John Paul had, telepathically, told his nonspeaking autistic friends from “The Hill” that he was planning to leave this earth. In other words, commit suicide. “It was a choice,” Libby tells us, “It was a choice.” This idea seems to give her comfort.

For me, though, this raises a serious question. If it’s true that all these other people (telepathically) knew ahead of time about John Paul’s supposed plans to commit suicide by drowning, why the secrecy around it? Why didn’t anyone say anything to John Paul’s mother? If this issue came up with a neurotypical child, we wouldn’t sit idly by knowing the person was suffering. We’d want to intervene, if we could, and get the child the professional support needed to safely move beyond the crisis point of suicidal ideation.

Book cover: Wish and Wisdom: Episodes in the Vagaries of Belief (Jastrow, 1935)

One of our regular contacts recently recommended a 1935 book to me (thank you!) called “Wish and Wisdom: Episodes in the Vagaries of Belief.” I’m not going to review the book today, but I mention it here because the author, Joseph Jastrow kept repeating a phrase that I can’t stop thinking about: “the pre-possessed mind finds what it looks for.”

Jastrow discusses how we, as human beings, want to transcend the harsh realities of life and often seek out magical solutions to overwhelming or soul-crushing events in our lives: like the early death of a loved one or coping with the realities of caring for a non-speaking individual with profound autism.

Sometimes, the tools people use to aid in this process go beyond daydreaming about a better life to include some sort of magic or supernatural tools: the Ouija board, fortune telling, seances and other trickery. He even references what sounds to me like an automatic writing session (a precursor to FC?) in a chapter titled “Gate of Remembrance by F. Bligh Bond and J. Allen Bartlett.”

For those new to the concept of automatic writing, it is most associated with a type of “non-conscious” or stream-of-consciousness writing used by psychics, Ouija board users, spiritualists and others whose (unproven) claim is that the technique allows them to make direct contact with the spirit world. Automatic writing was particularly popular in the late 1800s/early 1900s and also used by surrealists as a way to suppress conscious control and to tap into their own unconscious minds while they were writing, painting or drawing. I’ve heard writers describe this state as a “flow state” and they often attribute the ideas that are generated in this dissociative state of mind to something or someone other than themselves (e.g., a divine spirit or muse).

Early critics of FC recognized the technique as a form of automatic writing and attributed at least some of the cueing facilitators exhibited to the ideomotor response or small non-conscious muscle movements. (See Kezuka, 1997 and Burgess et al., 1998). Researchers now know that facilitator cueing comes in many different forms (e.g., physical, visual, auditory) and that physical touch is not a prerequisite for influencing or controlling letter selection.

As described in Jastrow’s book, Bond claimed to be a “psychic archeologist” who could commune with monks from an ancient abbey in Glastonbury. In a demonstration to show how this connection to the spirit world was made, Bond enlisted the help of an assistant (Bartlett). During the demonstration, the two men agreed to “remain passive and talk casually” while Bond held a pencil in his hand. As they talked, Bartlett lightly placed his right hand on the back of Bond’s hand, which caused the pencil to “began to write as if guided by an alien intelligence.” The men then asked the “alien intelligence” to tell them about Glastonbury and proceeded to write out what they claimed was ancient text as revealed to them by this spirit being (presumably one of the monks from the Abbey). However, a later analysis of the text revealed that the information in the written text was either incorrect or reflected information that was already historically known about the Glastonbury Abbey. In other words, the “alien being” produced no new information about the abbey during the automatic writing session. (See also Christopher French’s article The Mystery of Glastonbury Abbey).

Whether this was the first debunking of FC, I don’t know, but I found Jastrow’s 1935 description of the writing session fascinating, since it involved the same hand-over-hand technique that (some) current-day facilitators are using with their clients. In the image below, the student looks at a box containing snacks while his facilitator holds the pen, looks at the notebook, and writes. The student puts his hand on the facilitator’s hand, but apparently doesn’t need to pay attention. (See also NSW Teachers and FC - Too Much of a Helping Hand?). And while the facilitator(s) working with the individual seem to believe they are not influencing the spelled messages, I think it’s worth taking a closer look at the facilitators’ behaviors during letter selection under reliably controlled conditions (e.g., conditions that separate facilitator behaviors from those of their client).

Image by 9 News, 2022

We’ve seen, through the Telepathy Tapes podcast, how the investigators in the series have failed to adequately control for facilitator influence in the tests of telepathic abilities they conducted. Ky Dickens and the other “experts” featured in the podcast take a “seeing is believing” approach to the spelling sessions without ruling out any and all external stimuli by the facilitators. (It’s important to note that not all facilitator cueing is detectable by the naked eye). And, as each episode wears on, listeners are asked to believe in increasingly outrageous—and unproven—claims based solely on the belief that FC works. And FC works, we’re told, because people using FC say it works. For me—and other critics of the technique—this is not good enough, especially considering there is a significant body of evidence disproving believers’ claims of communication independence for those beings subjected to the technique. (See Controlled Studies and Systematic Reviews)

As this episode of the Telepathy Tapes highlights, FC use seems to be less about a communication technique for nonspeaking individuals and more about some form of wish fulfillment for facilitators who want to transcend the realities of having a child with profound autism. And as Jastrow points out in his book, “when wish runs high, wisdom runs low.”

Astonishingly, I still meet people who take a “what’s the harm?” attitude toward the use of FC/S2C/RPM. But, it was never so clear to me as in this episode that, despite FC’s apparent usefulness to some people as a coping strategy, its continued use masks and distorts the realities of living a life with and supporting the needs of individuals with profound autism…sometimes with tragic consequences.

References and Recommended Reading

Andersen, M., Nielbo, K.L., Schjoedt, U. et al. (2018). Predictive minds in Ouija board sessions. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. DOI: 10.1007/s11097-018-9585-8

Beals, K. (2021). A recent eye-tracking study fails to reveal agency in assisted autistic communication. Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention, 15(1), 46–51. DOI: 10.1080/17489539.2021.1918890

Burgess, C.A., Kirsch, I., Shane, H., Niederauer, K.L., Graham, S.M., Bacon, A. (January 1998). Facilitated Communication as an Ideomotor Response. Psychological Science, 9(1), 71-74. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40063250

Jastrow, Joseph. (1935). Wish and Wisdom: Episodes in the Vagaries of Belief. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company.

Kezuka, E. (1997). The role of touch in facilitated communication. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 27, 571-593. DOI: 10.1023/A:1025882127478

Spitz, H. (1997). Nonconscious Movements: From Mystical Messages to Facilitated Communication. Routledge. ISBN 978-0805825633

Janyce Boynton
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Spelling to Communicate Goes on Trial: Part V