Sinclair, Mary Craig, 1883-1961; Sinclair, Upton, 1878-1968; Telepathy; Telepathy -- Case studies
These drawing tests afford a basis for psycho-analysis, and it is
interesting to note some of the facts thus brought up from the childhood
of my wife. For example, fires! She was raised in the “black belt,”
where there are nine Negroes to one white, and the former are still
close to Africa. When Craig was a girl, a nurse in the family, having
been discharged, set fire to the home while the adults were away, and
the children asleep. Another servant, jealous of an unfaithful husband,
put her two babies into a barrel full of feathers and burned them alive.
Other fires occurred; so now, in her home, Craig keeps an uneasy eye out
for greasy rags, or overheated stoves, or whatever else her fears
suggest. When in these drawing tests there has been anything indicating
fire or smoke, she has “got” it, with only one or two failures out of
more than a dozen cases. Sometimes she “got” the fire or smoke without
the object; sometimes she supplied fire or smoke to an object which
might properly have it—a pipe, for example. The results are so curious
that I assemble them together—a series of fire-alarms, as it were.
You recall the fact that in one of the early drawing tests—those in
which, instead of giving the drawings to my wife, I sat in my study and
concentrated upon them—I drew a lighted cigarette, and thought of the
curls of smoke. Craig filled up her drawing with curves, and wrote: “I
can’t draw it, but curls of some sort.” At this time the convention that
“curls stood for smoke” had not been established. But now, in the series
drawn by my secretary, appeared a little house with smoking chimney, and
you will see that my wife got the smoke better than the house (Figs. 36,
36a):
[Illustration: Fig. 36]
[Illustration: Fig. 36a]
This apparently established in her mind the association of curls with
smoke. So when, in series six, I drew a pipe with smoke-curls, my wife
first drew an ellipse, and then wrote: “Now it begins to spin, round and
round, and is attached to a stick.” She then drew (Figs. 37, 37a):
[Illustration: Fig. 37]
[Illustration: Fig. 37a]
In series eight I drew a sky-rocket going up. My first impulse had been
to draw a bursting rocket, with a shower of stars, but I realized that
would be difficult, so I drew this instead (Fig. 38):
[Illustration: Fig. 38]
My wife apparently took my first thought, rather than my drawing.
Anyhow, she made half a dozen sketches of whirligigs and light (Figs.
38a, 38b, 38c):
[Illustration: Fig. 38a]
[Illustration: Fig. 38b]
[Illustration: Fig. 38c]
And here in series twenty-two is a burning lamp (Figs. 39, 39a):
[Illustration: Fig. 39]
[Illustration: Fig. 39a]
And here in series thirty-four another, with comment: “flame and sparks”
(Figs. 40, 40a):
[Illustration: Fig. 40]
[Illustration: Fig. 40a]
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