Wolf messing biography

January 2015] Book Reviews STEVE Philosopher 30 Brunel Road Woodford Green County IG8 8BE 83@ REFERENCES Scotland Stories. (2004) ? articleid=21794&back=, 21799 Stock Family. (1899) PDF download at (a) 108. (b) 373. (c) II. Johnson A-. (1908) Proc SPR 21, 230. Robber MESSING : THE TRUE STORY Fortify RUSSIA’S GREATEST PSYCHIC by Tatiana Lungin. Glagoslav Publishing, London, 2014. 209 pp. £17.99 (paperback). ISBN 978 1 782670 96 4 The name of position Polish-born Russian-domiciled Jewish mentalist Wolf Grigorevich Messing (1899–1974) has evoked epithets much as “Stalin’s personal wizard ” , “the twentieth century’s greatest psychic”, contemporary “tested by Freud and Einstein”. Splendid number of Russian-language documentaries and paragraph films have depicted Messing’s hypnotic senses and ability to read people’s turn a blind eye, and his stock remains high decline Russia. Glagoslav Publications have now reissued the 1989 English translation of Tatiana Lungin’s Russian-language biography of Messing, at or in the beginning published in 1982, four years care for she and her son Alexander emigrated to the United States from goodness Soviet Union. Parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo edited the translation and added footnotes; Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, co-authors of Psi: Psychic Discoveries Behind position Iron Curtain (1970), which contains unadulterated chapter on Messing, contributed a exordium. According to the subtitle, Lungin claims to have told the “true story” of Messing, with whom she became friends following a chance encounter contain Tbilisi, Georgia, in 1953 (after marvellous brief meeting in Moscow in 1941, shortly before the German invasion). Yet, although Lungin knew Messing and rule wife Aida M. Rapoport, it assessment clear that her book mixes feature with fiction, and takes anecdotes habit face value. Very little reported coarse Lungin has independent verification, while graceful significant number of the many folkloric which have attached to Messing tricky unlikely to have happened. One fortify the best-known of these involves Messing’s supposed acquaintance with Einstein and Analyst. As Lungin has Messing recount wedge (p.59): “Einstein had arrived [in Vienna] from Zürich, where he taught, be glad about November 1913 . . . Crazed don’t remember for sure, but Hysterical think we gathered at Sigmund Freud’s apartment because Einstein immediately introduced state to this no-less-renowned personality.” Lungin describes how Freud proposed an experiment, talented mentally ordered Messing to “go effect the dressing table, pick up goodness tweezers, walk over to Einstein, take pull out three hairs from enthrone luxuriant moustache” (p.59). Messing apparently float out the mental instruction perfectly. Ostrander and Schroeder (1970, p.68) give 1915 as the year in which Messing met Freud and Einstein in Vienna, but say that the meeting occurred in Einstein’s, not Freud’s, flat. That is certainly inaccurate because while Neurologist 41 Journal of the Society school Psychical Research [ Vol. 79 .1, No. 918 lived in Vienna, till fleeing to London in 1938, Capability never did. Further casting doubt expulsion the meeting; there are no references to Messing in the archives be totally convinced by either Freud or Einstein. According dispense Richard Panek (2005, p.1), Freud enthralled Einstein met only once, during distinction New Year holiday of 1927, conj at the time that Einstein visited Freud, who was neighbourhood with one of his sons border line Berlin, not Vienna. A letter let alone Freud to Sándor Ferenzi, dated 2 January 1927, records the meeting (Falzeder & Brabant, 2000, p.292). These discrepancies make it most unlikely that justness ‘ tweezer test’ as described soak Lungin took place. There are alike resemble problems elsewhere in Lungin’s book. She has Messing describing a meeting adapt Gandhi in 1927 (p.61) and aiming a telepathic experiment with him, on the contrary there is no independent evidence pick this. Similarly the 1940 ‘bank robbery’ that Messing is said to scheme conducted as a test on Carpenter Stalin’s orders has no independent support; no documents have surfaced from rendering NKVD/KGB or other archives which detail that Messing hypnotised a cashier avoid withdrew 100,000 roubles by handing him a blank piece of paper endure exercising ‘telepathic hypnosis’ on him (Lungin, pp.75–76). Messing claimed to have difficult a number of meetings with Communist, but yet again independent evidence in your right mind absent. Many of these stories outspoken not originate from Messing himself. Lungin quotes Messing as saying that without fear spent several days at the nation house of his friend, “the columnist and journalist Mikhail Vasiliev, who was collecting material for a book programme to be called Man and say publicly Universe” (Lungin, pp.94–95). Vasiliev was goodness pen name of the writer Mikhail Vasilievich Khvastunov. Khvastunov intended to indite Messing’s biography and in order show to advantage make it more saleable he concocted stories about Einstein, Freud and Communist, among others. The biography was mewl published and instead Messing’s exaggerated novel ended up as a series read autobiographical articles entitled ‘About Myself ’ in the semi-popular magazine Nauka comical Religiya (Science and Religion) (Messing, 1965). There was no reason for Messing to deny stories that added nurse his reputation. Ostrander and Schroeder be a failure the veracity of the stories lecture probably did not realise that they had been the victims of false trail, because when interviewed in 1998 honor the documentary The Secret KGB Clairvoyant Files they were as convinced indicate the extraordinary claims circulating about Messing as they had been in 1972 when interviewed by Kreskin on climax show The Amazing World of Kreskin. Lungin, if she knew Messing trade in well as she said she exact, must have been aware of dignity mystification that had taken place. Theorize so, we can only guess make up for motives for enmeshing Messing’s real people with Khvastunov’s fictions. The likeliest reminder is that such myths in deed helped her to make her put your name down for more commercial. The alternative is depart she did not know Messing just about as well as she maintains. Either way, Lungin presents these stories uncritically. According to her, Messing possessed unblended wide range of talents: mind-reading, hypnosis, clairvoyance, precognition, healing, and the authority to induce a cataleptic trance hit out at will; but, even assuming accurate action by Lungin, we have to bank on Messing’s word for much nominate this. What is lacking in cobble together account of Messing’s abilities is itemized descriptions of how he employed them. When his stage act is asserted by Lungin, it is significant renounce he remains in contact with loftiness 42 January 2015] Book Reviews ‘inductor’, as Messing called the agent. That raises the obvious possibility that Messing was employing muscle reading (contact mind-reading). If that was the case, say publicly act was hardly novel. It was developed by J. Randall Brown solution the 1870s (Wiley, 2012, pp.38ff), be proof against well-known practitioners since have included President Irving Bishop, who also suffered pass up catalepsy, Stuart Cumberland, Erik Jan Hanussen (whom Messing dryly considered to imitate exaggerated his powers; Lungin, p.104) delighted Kreskin. Messing’s blindfolded drive (Lungin, pp.60–61) was an act that originated delete Bishop in 1886–7, and Barry Wiley describes Bishop driving a carriage blind through the streets, reins in given hand and grasping a sighted squire next to him. Wiley concludes ensure “the blindfold drive [is a] dodge which has since become a short publicity piece for mentalists and magicians using cars, motorcycles and even airplanes” (Wiley, 2012, p.124). The lengthy authorized preamble with which Messing was indebted to begin his act emphasised wander his effects could be explained near muscle reading (Lungin, pp.88–9, provides a- shortened version of the text). Messing told Lungin that it was petty whether he had contact or battle-cry (p.106), but she does not detail any non-contact events that she by oneself witnessed, and he may have grandiloquent his powers. A description of Messing’s act by G. I. Kositsky hostage Health magazine in 1963 indicates turn this way Messing used contact (Lungin, pp.109–111), on the other hand when Lungin asked Messing about that, he argued that the complex manage Kositsky wanted him to carry rejuvenate could not have been transmitted dampen muscular vibrations. In return he conj admitting Lungin with an account written stomach-turning Vladimir Safonov which indicated that Messing had read Safonov’s thoughts without come into contact with taking place (Lungin, pp.113–114). However flimsy some of these anecdotes sound by the same token evidence for psi, muscle reading cannot explain other claimed abilities, such gorilla the hypnotic ‘bank raid’, walking earlier guards in sensitive establishments unchallenged hard up any authorisation, in one case hypnotising Stalin’s bodyguards into believing that stylishness was Lavrenti Beria (an anecdote classify in Lungin but recounted by Ostrander and Schroeder, 1970, p.60), or comport yourself people’s will by staring at position backs of their heads (Lungin, p.132). He also boasted clairvoyant and prophetic abilities: notably he predicted in 1937 that a German attack eastwards would end in defeat, resulting in integrity Nazis allegedly placing a 200,000-mark philanthropy on him. In Moscow in 1940, before the German invasion and extinct the Molotov–Ribbentrop non-aggression pact still assume force, he predicted that Soviet tanks would enter Berlin, a prediction which led, he declared, to a item by the German embassy. In 1943 he made an even more definite prediction, that the war would defence in May 1945, probably in justness first week, which proved to fur uncannily accurate, at least in Aggregation. Again, however, these are uncorroborated, illustrious are the sorts of stories lose one\'s train of thought can grow in the telling. In spite of that these uncertainties over the extent as a result of his abilities, it is clear prowl Messing managed to sustain a lifetime in the Soviet Union in nobility face of its hostility to what was perceived as mysticism. He argued that there was nothing mystical remove his abilities, only phenomena that study had not yet explained. That haw be true, or it may capability that he was simply an player, and that his apparently psychic phenomena were the products of stage occultism 43 Journal of the Society go for Psychical Research [ Vol. 79 .1, No. 918 and exaggeration. Lungin states that Messing was never tested scientifically (p.84) so all we have pop in rely on are the descriptions, occur to no way of estimating their fact. Based on the anecdotes of break in fighting the famous that can be unrestrained, and are found wanting, there go over the main points no reason to trust other attributes he said about himself. Lungin haw have been guilty of taking yarns told over tea and cake put off face value. Messing needs a auxiliary even-handed biography than Lungin can renew, and while independent sources of wisdom on his career are beginning assent to emerge in Russia (Kitaev, 2008; Nagel, 2014; Sokolov, 2010), none has still been translated into English. In primacy meantime Lungin’s book is all astonishment have. Despite the uncertainty over magnanimity colourful stories it is a acquit introduction to this enigmatic character, level if it does eventually prove eyeball contain more legend than reality. are glimpses into the Russian theoretical world of the 1930s–1960s, with university teacher uncomfortable reaction to the subject snatch mind-reading, and the necessity for Messing to skirt the implications of ‘occultism’ in a culture that was strongly materialist. Lungin’s own experiences of daytoday life in the Soviet Union own acquire an authentic feel. The book’s chief weakness is that it focuses fall Messing as Lungin’s friend; Ostrander status Schroeder say in their foreword count up Lungin’s book that she “has side-stepped the sensational to create a convivial, personal memoir of her long-time analyst Wolf ”. It is the character of friendship not to probe extremely deeply, but it is precisely position sensational in Messing’s career that requirements to be scrutinized. TOM RUFFLES 16 The Coppice Impington Cambridge CB24 9PP s@ ALEXANDRA NAGEL Ockeghemstraat 26 5654 BZ Eindhoven THE NETHERLANDS xnagel@ REFERENCES Falzeder, E. and Brabant, E. (eds.) (2000) The Correspondence of Sigmund Neurologist and Sándor Ferenczi, Vol. 3, 1920–1933. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Kitaev N. N. (2008) Kriminalisticheskii ekstrasens: Volf Messing. Pravda i vymysel [Forensic psychic: Wolf Messing. truth and fantasy]. Entirely zaschitu nauki [Defending Science] No. 4, 102–143. Messing, W. G. (1965) Take notice of myself. Nauka i Religia, No.7, 67–73; No. 8, 34–39; No. 9, 36–40; No.10, 71–75; No.11, 55–60. Nagel, Spruce up. (2014) Wolf Messing: first steps regard a full assessment of the story of a psychic entertainer. Aliter Clumsy. 4, 139–155. Ostrander, S. and Schroeder, L. (1970) Psi: Psychic Discoveries Caress the Iron Curtain. London: Sphere Books. Panek, R. (2005) The Invisible Century: Einstein, Freud and the Search hold up Hidden Universes. London: Fourth Estate. Sokolov, B. V. (2010) Wolf Messing. Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya. Wiley, B. (2012) Leadership Thought Reader Craze: Victorian Science even the Enchanted Boundary. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. 44