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Magical thinking: everything is about me

In upstate New York where I grew up, a nearby lake was a popular summer retreat. What I'll call Summer Lake was just a few miles in diameter. John, a family friend, once showed me a crude paper mache head mounted on a 2-by-4 piece of lumber, with a life jacket attached just below the head. When he was a youth, he and some friends tied a rope to the bottom, ran the rope through a pulley anchored a hundred yards from the shore, and fed the free end of the rope to a clump of bushes on shore hidden from view. On several occasions, when boaters came near to their lair, they'd let out some rope, and the head poked up just above the surface. The boaters would scream and get away as fast as they could. The boys then pulled on the rope, and the head disappeared. Great fun! They performed their "monster" act a dozen times, always in the same spot, and then put the apparatus in their garage, where I saw it years later.

Then the fun really began. There were confirmed sightings of the "Summer Lake Sea Monster" all over the lake. Eyewitnesses were irrefutable! People were terrified to go into the water. Newspaper articles described the life cycle of the Summer Lake Sea Monster: it had migrated from the sea through subterranean mountain streams, had baby sea monsters, and would soon return to the ocean. It was the talk of the town for a couple of years.

At first glance, religion or spirituality inherently involves what appears to be magical thinking -- all those angels and souls and miracles and such. It seems so scary to those of us who consider ourselves rational and concrete. How can you tell what's real and what's not? It's safest to reject it all.

I disagree. One can readily separate what Ken Wilber so helpfully calls "prerational thinking" (my term is "magical thinking") from "transrational" or "postrational" perception, or spiritual insight.

"Magical thinking" is a medical term that means the unrealistic, irrational thought processes of children as well as adults with certain mental illnesses. For example, young children often fear that if they become enraged with a parent, their thoughts will directly harm their mother or father. The paranoid schizophrenic's delusion "the FBI is controlling my brain with radio waves" is another example. The prototypical teenager engages in dangerous behavior convinced that the possibility of risk does not apply to him, even after innumerable reminders.

The initial belief of magical thinking is I can control things with my mind. Then, when I discover that usually doesn't work, I project that belief onto others. Thus my daddy can control everything (or the FBI). After that doesn't pan out either, then I believe that weird things I don't know much about have the power to help or hurt me in mysterious ways. ("Space aliens" are a good example.) Many people transfer their belief in magical thinking to God: He will see things their way and make it right.

Here are further illustrations:

When you say that someone is using magical thinking, you mean that they are at least temporarily out of touch with physical reality, the world "as it really is." Generally speaking this is a state to avoid, since reality has a way of reminding you it's still there with a bite.

Health care professionals sometimes use the term "magical thinking" to refer to irrational behavior of patients.

"Magical thinking" may also be used during medical training, when it refers to the trap awaiting beginning health care students as they are learn to relate to patients. The risk is real. When you first engage with your idealism and heartfelt desire to help others, almost inevitably at some point you will feel that your deep caring will prove magically beneficial -- the opposite of the toddler's fear of his wrath.

Of course, helping others involves a good deal more than just really, really wanting to be of help.

The problem is that usually at this point you decide that the patient is "just like me," and you lose touch with the need to find out just who this person is and how they are different from you. Moreover, engaging in wish fulfillment substitutes for carefully investigating and thinking through the problems at hand, leading to sloppy care and a high risk of error.

It takes years to learn how to be open and available to patients emotionally on the one hand, and yet to maintain impeccable boundaries on the other. One's sense of self must not become intertwined with what's going on with one's patient. It's simply not possible to practice medicine properly without a clear-cut sense of the distinction between practitioner and patient, as well as taking one's own conclusions with a grain of salt. Much of the culture of medical training is designed to support students and house staff during this maturation process.

"Magical thinking" may also used between health care professionals as a rebuke: "Larry, I think you may be engaging in some magical thinking there," in which case you mean that Larry has temporarily taken leave of his senses, and your judgment is superior to his. This is a terrible thing to be accused of by a peer, since it means you've on the verge of becoming unable to function.

This sort of rebuke is designed to snap someone back into line with "consensus reality." Particularly during medical school and postgraduate training, many doctors become so afraid of losing objectivity and of being ridiculed by their peers, they overcompensate and become emotionally distant, hiding behind cynicism or gallows humor. The difference between genuine intuition on the one hand and wishful thinking or leaping to conclusions on the other is poorly understood. People often ridicule what they don't understand. It's no wonder doctors often wind up mistrusting any thoughts or feelings which are not concrete and "scientific." (Restricting one's attention to the tangibly objective is a form of magical thinking all its own. But it has a lot of social support. One challenges conventional wisdom at one's peril.)

At its core, magical thinking involves believing something you know isn't true. The problem is rational adults use magical thinking much more frequently than we admit.

My favorite example is the gambling industry. Many towns want a casino because of the buckets of money it brings in. They turn a blind eye to its low-paying jobs and the tendency to attract less desirable hangers-on. Many gamblers are convinced they are the ones who can beat the system. Without humanity's propensity for magical thinking, the entire industry would disappear. Here are some other examples:

Spirituality challenges conventional thinking, points out its distortions and illusions, and leads the way to a more open sense of self. Elsewhere I address the pervasiveness of illusion in the human condition. I consider the possibility that spiritual reality is more accurate, more "real," than the conventional or "Newtonian" worldview.

But once one acknowledges the possibility of an overarching spiritual reality, where do you stop? Maybe everything I think does have sort of a reality of its own. If a physician tells a patient they have cancer, will that "traumatic diagnosis" create a self-fulfilling prophecy and kill the patient? If prayers are answered, isn't it possible that in some way the small child is right to fear his anger and fantasies of revenge? How do I know that invisible angels aren't guiding our every step?

I've met more than one individual who seems perfectly rational and mature in his or her normal adult existence, but who accepts the most improbable beliefs when it comes to the religious. The attraction of cults is precisely their carefully circumscribed areas of astounding magical beliefs. It's as if people go from one extreme -- total cynicism -- to the other -- unthinking acceptance of anything that meets their fantasies and emotional needs.

A little reflection reveals that magical thinking and what we'll call spiritual or intuitive insight are quite different. Yes, they both begin as hunches and nonrational insight. But the focus of magical thinking is the individual in the narrow sense: my safety, my health, my survival, my power, my happiness. It fulfills grandiose wishes. It distances me from others. The more outrageous something is, the more compelling.

The extreme form of self-absorbtion is "Me TV": all my attention is turned to myself. I experience everything that happens, all my interactions with others, as if it were a television show with me as the star. This might sound fun, but in fact exclusively focusing on myself causes enormous suffering. Every little personal problem becomes a national disaster. If only people treated me better! I wind up alienated and deeply dissatisfied.

Spiritual insight soothes the need to focus on self. It heals and promotes growth; at times that growth is painful. Its particular gift is deeply satisfying intimacy with the ordinary.

In practice, how can I tell if a particular "insight" or "revelation" I've had is genuine or simply reflects wish fulfillment? The following table highlights the differences.

 Characteristic  Magical thinking Intuitive/Spiritual insight
Mood Excited, euphoric, grandiose or paranoid Loving and peaceful or neutral; at times upsetting. Exquisite.
Personal reference "Me TV": I'm the focus and at the center of everything. My personality and needs don't seem as important
Individual separation or union Personal enhancement or protection; little relationship to others outside oneself Breaks down isolation and the damaging sense of self as separate
Wish fulfillment Yes -- or the converse, fear of disaster Issue underlying the wish tends to disappear or to be seen as unimportant or irrelevant
Sense of veracity Feels too good to be true Deep echo or ring of truth
Likelihood of becoming true or "real" Unlikely Usually mostly or partly true, but the insight may be hard to understand clearly, like the Delphic oracle. Sometimes you figure out what it means after the fact. Occasionally painfully untrue.
Ultimate purpose Enhances survival, safety, power, sex, money, etc. Promotes healing and/or growth in self or other
Willingness to relinquish People don't easily let go of these; feel essential to survival Apt to come and go on their own. Deepest insights can be transitory and evanescent but leave an echo.
Societal support Closely linked to "tribal"/ family/ cultural beliefs. Deeply rooted. Attempts to question provoke inquisitions (e.g., Ku Klux Klan, Galileo) Little societal support unless it can be translated into more acceptable magical form
Origin Rumor, casual conversation, conventional wisdom, passed down in families Show up on their own, spontaneous, often following intensive spiritual practice, deep prayer, meditation. Dreams can produce insight.
Source A mysterious, occult, or divine power or intelligence is in control. Connection to all things

Here is my resolution of this problem. First, I am suspicious of a strictly concrete view of reality. The truth is not limited to what I can see, hear, smell, or touch. But the mythical and spiritual overlay is quiet and subtle. It does not yell or scream. It requires thought, attention, appropriate skepticism, and the willingness to take my time and listen to my heart. Yet I know sometimes I'll lose it and engage in wish fulfillment and childish ideas.


Last updated Fri, Nov 25, 2005

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©2008, James Gagné, MD