Fact and Fable in Psychology

by Joseph Jastrow

IV

I turn to another point, in some respects the most important of all; I refer to the readiness with which we interpret as the remarkable frequency of coincidences what is due to a strong interest in a given direction. Inasmuch as we observe what interests us, a recently acquired interest will lead to new observations—that is, new to us, however familiar they may be to others. Take up the study of almost any topic that appeals to human curiosity, and it takes no prophet to predict that within a short time some portion of your reading or your conversation, or some accidental information, will unexpectedly reveal a bearing on the precise subject of your study, often supplying a gap which it would have been most difficult otherwise to fill; but surely this does not mean that all the world has become telepathically aware of your needs and proceeded to attend to them. Some years ago I became interested in cases of extreme longevity, particularly of centenarianism, and for some months every conversation seemed to lead to this topic, and every magazine and newspaper offered some new item about old people. Nowadays my interest is transferred to other themes; but the paragrapher continues quite creditably to meet my present wants, and the centenarians have vanished. When I am writing about coincidences, I become keen to observe them; such for example as this: I was reading for the second time an article on "Mental Telegraphy" (by Mark Twain in "Harper's Monthly Magazine," December, 1891); I was occupied with what is there described as a most wonderful coincidence, the nearly simultaneous origination by the author and by Mr. William H. Wright of a similar literary venture,—when I happened to take my eyes from the page and saw on my desk a visiting-card bearing the name, "W. H. Wright." It was not the same W. H. Wright, but a gentleman whom I had met for the first time a few hours before, and have not seen since. Had I not been especially interested in this article and its subject, the identity of the names would certainly have escaped my attention, and there would have been no coincidence to record. Quite apropos both of coincidences and of their dependence upon personal interest, I find recorded in a current magazine the experience of one who became enthusiastically interested in thoroughbred cats: "Strangely enough—for it is a thing which is recurrently strange—I, who had rarely seen any printed matter relating to cats, now found the word in every newspaper. Adopting a new interest is like starting a snowball; as long as it moves, it gathers other particles to itself."

It is only necessary to become deeply interested in coincidences, to look about with eyes open and eager to detect them, in order to discover them on all sides; resolve to record all that come to hand, and they seem to multiply until you can regard yourself and your friends as providentially favored in this direction. If your calling develops a taste for matters of this kind,—for example, if you are a writer, with a keen sense for the literary possibilities and dramatic effects of such coincidences, or if you are of an imaginative turn of mind with a pronounced or a vague yearning for the interesting or the unusual; if you have a more generous or more persistent endowment of the day-dreaming, fantastic, self-dramatization of adolescence, that is half unreal and yet half externalized in the vividness of youthful fancy,—is it strange that you should meet with more of these "psychic experiences" than your prosaic neighbor whose thoughts and aspirations are turned to quite other channels, and to whom an account of your experiences might even prove tiresome? If you cultivate the habit of having presentiments, and of regarding them as significant, is it strange that they should become more and more frequent, and that among the many, some should be vaguely suggestive, or even directly corroborative of actual occurrences?

The frequent coincidences, which form so influential a factor in disseminating an inclination towards such an hypothesis as telepathy, are doubtless largely the result of an interest in these experiences. This interest is very natural and proper, and when estimated at its true value is certainly harmless; it may indeed contribute material worthy of record for the student of mental phenomena,—or it may give spice to the matter-of-fact incidents of a workaday existence. To many minds, however, the temptation to magnify this interest into a significant portion of one's mental life, to invest it with a serious power to shape belief and to guide conduct, is unusually strong, in some cases almost irresistible. It is this tendency that is essentially antagonistic to a logical view and therefore to a scientific study of these irregular mental incidents; it is this tendency that is responsible for much of the spurious and the unwholesome interest in the problems of mental telegraphy.

It would naturally be expected that the nature and subject-matter of the more frequent types of coincidences and presentiments would throw some light upon their origin, and would in some measure reinforce the general position above taken. We should expect that such coincidences would relate to persons and affairs that are frequently in our thoughts, and that similarities of thought and presentiments based upon them should occur among persons intimately acquainted with one another's thought-habits, at least in regard to that line of thought to which the coincidence relates; these expectations are fairly well borne out by the facts. It is a commonplace observation that presentiments and unusual psychic experiences most frequently relate to those who are dear to us, or in whom we have a momentarily strong interest; that they deal with events which we have anxiously dreaded or desired, or with matters over which we have puzzled or worried; and again, that they occur under conditions of emotional strain, excitement, or anxiety. In brief, they deal with what is frequently in our minds or what more or less unconsciously furnishes the general emotional and intellectual background which gives character to our mood and to our associations of ideas. I need hardly add that it is the more successful and striking coincidences that we remember and record, and the others that are quickly forgotten. Moreover, so large a share of mental operations of the type in question takes place in the region of the subconscious, that our recollection of what has occupied our thoughts is by no means a final authority. Occasionally we detect these subconscious similarities of mental operations, when after a silence the same question or thought shapes itself on the lips of two speakers at the same time; and here again, are not many of those who give utterance to the same thoughts, or finish one another's sentences, intimate companions in the walks of life? Is it strange that in the daily intercourse with a congenial spirit, they should have absorbed enough of one another's mental processes to anticipate, now and then, a step in their association of ideas?

Still another factor that figures somewhat in coincidences relates to events which are sooner or later very likely or quite certain to occur, and in which the coincidence is confined to the close simultaneity of the action on the part of two or more persons concerned. The crossing of letters is easily the best illustration of this type of occurrence which has the semblance of thought-communication. It is so easy to fall into the habit of delaying all delayable matters as long as possible that it must frequently happen that your own sense of duty is aroused and your correspondent's patience is exhausted at nearly the same time. If A is to hear from B, or B from A, within a period not very definite but still reasonably limited, every day's delay makes it more and more probable that their letters will cross. The same consideration applies to other affairs of daily life; we delay a matter of business and are just about to attend to it when the other party concerned comes to us, or we delay offering some social attention until just as we are about to do so it is asked of us; and so on. In brief, we find not only in sickness and death, in family ties and friendships, in travel and adventure, but also in the special and in the complicated interests of our civilized life an abundant opportunity for coincidences; and we find that their frequency is clearly related to the commonness of the event, and to its familiarity and closeness of relation to our habits of thought.