Telepathy is the claimed ability to transmit or receive thoughts, feelings or images directly from one mind to another without the use of the known senses. The term was coined in 1882 by Frederic W. H. Myers of the Society for Psychical Research. Parapsychologists have tested it for well over a century, but mainstream science holds that it has never been reliably demonstrated.
Telepathy at a glance
| Etymology | Greek tele (distant) + pathos (feeling) |
|---|---|
| Coined | 1882, by Frederic W. H. Myers |
| Category | Extrasensory perception (ESP) |
| Classic tests | Zener cards, ganzfeld, dream telepathy |
| Key researchers | J. B. Rhine, Charles Honorton |
| Scientific status | Not demonstrated; widely considered pseudoscience |
Origins of the concept
Stories of thoughts passing between people, especially at moments of crisis or death, are found in many cultures. The modern term was introduced in 1882 by Frederic W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in London, to replace older expressions such as "thought-transference." The word joins the Greek tele, "distant," with pathos, "feeling."
Early SPR researchers collected thousands of reports of "crisis apparitions" and conducted guessing tests with volunteers. Some of the most promising early subjects, including the Creery sisters and the stage duo of Smith and Blackburn, were later found to have used codes or trickery, an early lesson in the need for strict controls.
Laboratory research
In the 1930s J. B. Rhine at Duke University popularized the term extrasensory perception and tested telepathy with Zener cards, a deck of five simple symbols. His book Extra-Sensory Perception (1934) reported above-chance scores, but critics identified sensory leakage, loose record keeping and statistical problems, and other laboratories often failed to replicate the results. The novelist Upton Sinclair described home experiments with his wife in Mental Radio (1930).
From the 1960s, researchers at the Maimonides Medical Center in New York tested telepathy in dreams, and from the 1970s Charles Honorton and others used the ganzfeld technique, in which a receiver in mild sensory deprivation describes images while a sender concentrates on a target. Meta-analyses of ganzfeld studies remain disputed, with critics such as Ray Hyman pointing to methodological flaws.
Government programs and famous claims
During the Cold War both the Soviet Union and the United States funded research into psychic phenomena, including remote viewing. The American effort, later known as the Stargate Project, was ended in 1995 after an evaluation concluded it had not produced useful intelligence.
Stage performers have long presented "mind-reading" acts. Some, such as Julius and Agnes Zancig, were shown to rely on elaborate verbal codes, and modern mentalists openly use psychological techniques, suggestion and cold reading. The later exposure of the statistician Samuel Soal, whose celebrated card-guessing results were found to have been manipulated, damaged confidence in the field.
The scientific assessment
The mainstream scientific view is that telepathy has not been demonstrated under controlled conditions. A 1988 report for the United States National Research Council found no scientific justification for the existence of phenomena such as extrasensory perception after more than a century of research. No physical mechanism is known that could carry thoughts between brains, and positive results have tended to shrink as controls improve.
Psychologists explain many personal experiences of telepathy through coincidence, the tendency to remember hits and forget misses, shared knowledge between people who know each other well, and subtle nonverbal cues. Parapsychologists who continue the research argue that small effects persist in some data; this remains a minority position.
Telepathy in esoteric and popular culture
In Spiritualism, Theosophy and New Age thought, telepathy is often regarded as a natural faculty that can be developed through meditation, visualization and attention to intuition. Practice exercises of this kind appear in popular books and are summarized in the entry Ten Steps to Master Telepathy, which also notes the lack of scientific support. Related claimed abilities include precognition and psychokinesis.
Telepathy is also a staple of science fiction and fantasy. Separately, neuroscientists use the phrase "brain-to-brain communication" for experiments linking brain-recording and stimulation devices; these rely on technology, not on any paranormal ability.
Related concepts
Telepathy is one of several abilities grouped under the heading of psi or extrasensory perception. Clairvoyance is the claimed perception of distant objects or events without a sender; precognition is the claimed knowledge of future events; psychometry is the claimed reading of information from objects. Because these are hard to separate experimentally, parapsychologists often speak of "general ESP."
Nineteenth-century theories of animal magnetism and mesmerism, which claimed that hypnotized subjects could perceive the thoughts of the operator, were important forerunners of the idea. Spiritualist mediums were also often explained by early researchers as unconsciously using telepathy rather than contacting the dead, a hypothesis sometimes called "super-psi" in later debates.
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Frequently asked questions
Who coined the word telepathy?
The word telepathy was coined in 1882 by Frederic W. H. Myers, a classical scholar and founder of the Society for Psychical Research in London. He combined the Greek words tele, meaning distant, and pathos, meaning feeling, to describe the supposed transmission of thoughts and impressions from one mind to another without the ordinary senses.
Has telepathy ever been scientifically proven?
No. More than a century of experiments, from card guessing to ganzfeld studies, has not produced results that are reliably replicable under strict controls. Reviews such as the 1988 United States National Research Council report found no scientific justification for extrasensory perception, and most scientists regard telepathy as unproven or pseudoscientific.
What is a ganzfeld experiment?
A ganzfeld experiment is a parapsychology test in which a receiver relaxes in mild sensory deprivation, often with halved table-tennis balls over the eyes and soft noise in headphones, while a sender elsewhere concentrates on a target image. The receiver then tries to pick the target from several options. Its results remain heavily disputed.
Sources and further reading
This entry replaces an article from the original Mystica encyclopedia (online since 2001). It was rewritten from the sources above by The Mystica Editorial Team under our editorial standards. Last reviewed: September 30, 2026.