Author looks into psychic phenomena

Is it coincidence? Intuition? Or something more?

In her book, "The ESP Enigma,” Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell uses intriguing anecdotes and scientific findings to address the curious world of psychic phenomena.

Much is unknown about why some people seemingly can predict future happenings or connect with the thoughts of others. Powell asks what is consciousness anyway? Does the brain actually create consciousness or merely process it?

Most of the scientific community, she argues, has thought too narrowly for too long.

"The astonishing hypothesis is that ‘you’ — your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will — are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules,” writes Powell in quoting the late Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.

Powell is a neuropsychiatrist trained at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a former faculty member at the Harvard School of Medicine.

She became interested in psychic phenomena at age 13, when she met a circus magician through a friend. As they stood in her friend’s living room, the magician recited, word for word, passages from books that Powell randomly pulled off the bookshelves — about 20 feet away. She knew the books belonged to her friend’s family. She could detect no mirrors, no tricks.

The magician’s feat is one of numerous examples of psychic ability, much of which has been documented in clinical research worldwide, Powell writes.

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