When "telepathy" awakens skepticism: a French case of FC
This report was sent to us by an anonymous contributor from France who, for reasons that will become clear as you read this, wishes to remain anonymous.
An incredible story spread by the media
It all starts with the story of a non-verbal French autistic writer who was diagnosed with profound autism at an early age. When she reached the age of 14, her mum, who hadn't noticed much progress, decided to take her out of the institutional setting in which she was placed. The mother’s research had led her to the conclusion that to achieve anything, her daughter first needed to "reconnect with her own body". She worked with her daughter in that direction through daily exercises until she eventually found out that, despite never having learnt how to read, her daughter could actually communicate and spell perfectly constructed sentences. Her limited motor skills, however, wouldn't allow her to write with a pen. Instead, she expresses herself by picking up alphabetically arranged cardboard letters, one after another, and arranging them into words.
Over the past 15 years, the daughter has published several books, and some of her texts were adapted for theatre, snatched up by musicians and singers, read on national radio, etc. In 2016, her story led to a documentary which entered film competitions and was aired on television, and to her regular participation on a popular TV show featuring autistic journalists interviewing celebrities. The daughter’s story has raised questions about our perception and understanding of severe autism, and she's actually been working with a cognitive science researcher from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS – Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). Recently, she joined this scientist for a lecture about autism, hyperlexia and the "intimate experience of language." In an older lecture with a member of the parliament, the daughter offered this severe characterization of her years spent in residential facilities and medical institutions: "a big void.”
Credit: @LeTelegramme on Youtube
A puzzling encounter
I personally felt very lucky when I got the chance to meet with the daughter some years ago. Her mother welcomed me to their place and, without me having to ask her anything, she began telling me their story. She explained how difficult it was to get in touch with her daughter: "Years spent like being in front of a wall, with no communication at all." But then, within a few minutes of our conversation, she casually let it drop that nowadays she and her daughter experience "telepathic" communication. She smiled at me and noticed my skeptical face, but kept going. She said that her daughter doesn’t learn the way we "neurotypicals" do but instead has direct and unlimited access to knowledge.
After that disturbing talk I was invited to have an exchange with the daughter. The three of us entered a small room and sat at a table where the letters had been left. It wasn't much of an exchange. The daughter started picking letters and composed sentences for several minutes in her mysterious and sometimes poetical way. At some point, recalling the telepathic confession she had made earlier, the mother said to me that her daughter had "just changed her mind"—as if she already knew the words that her daughter would arrange on the table... And actually, shortly afterwards, her daughter wrote: "I will do a telepathy."
The mother handed me a small piece of paper and a pen. She explained that this is a game that her daughter likes to play sometimes. I would have to get out of the room, write a short sentence and then call her. So I stood up, left the room and once my words were written, I called the mother. She joined me, read the sentence, folded the paper and put it inside the back pocket of her pants. We went back together to join her daughter in the room and sat as before, the mother in front of her, and me on the side. As soon as we were in our chairs, the daughter started grabbing the correct letters, one after the other. For a few seconds, I felt dizzy and my vision even got blurry. I told them that it was ok, that there was no need to spell it all, but the mother insisted: "When we do this, she enjoys laying down all the letters."
Credit: @festival.haizebegi on Youtube
A skeptical awakening
This encounter left me very much confused. The next day, after very few hours of sleep, I called some friends to share the "telepathy" experience I had been involved in. While giving details on what had happened, I found that I couldn’t totally convince myself. One friend then helped me realize that I must have missed something there. Just like other people familiar with the story of that non-verbal writer, I had first had doubts... but the quantity of articles and the collaborations with cultural institutions, above all with the CNRS, had made them all vanish. The story was positive, beautiful, and worthy to be shared to shake prejudices about vulnerable people and call more attention to them.
Despite the tragic conclusion that this might lead to, I decided to search for online videos of the mother and daughter writing. I was very surprised to see that in all of them, the mother was moving a lot. In my memory, I pictured her completely still. My attention must have been caught by the movements of the letters while the surroundings had been left to my imagination. Then I started noticing a few strange and sudden movements by the mother... until finally, after watching the same videos again and again, it struck me: it's almost as if the daughter's hand was connected to her mother's by an invisible thread. As for the sudden and more vigorous movements, they happened when the daughter was about to grab the wrong letter. At that moment, this seemed to me almost as incredible as the original story... telepathy aside obviously. Who could come up with such an idea? How many hours of training were needed to achieve such result? Did the mother now believe her own story?
"A discredited technique known as Facilitated Communication"
With so many questions in mind, I assumed that other people might have also noticed the mother's cueing, and I ended up finding one negative review of their documentary calling it "a trickery." This review also mentioned a discredited technique known as "facilitated communication" which I had never heard of. I later found two other comments relating this story to FC, one reacting to a promotional Facebook post published by an autism resource center and another one on a forum page about "non-verbal autistic individuals who can write." Since the phenomenon was much more widely spread in the US, my research soon led me to facilitatedcommunication.org, I watched the PBS documentary "Prisoners of Silence" and finally learned about the ideomotor response, which helped me see how facilitators are also victims of this belief system.
Regarding this impression of telepathy described by facilitators, once one has heard of the phenomenon of FC, a logical and less magical explanation appears: facilitators are convinced of not being the authors of the messages BUT they may realise they know the words before being spelled by the non-verbal individuals, SO facilitators conclude that the non-verbal individuals they facilitate are telepathic.
Credit: CRAIF Centre de Ressources Autisme Ile de France on Facebook
"Communication Facilitée" and "Psychophanie" in France
FC was introduced in France in 1993 by speech pathologist Anne Marguerite Vexiau after a one-month FC training in Australia. In 1995, she founded "Ta Main Pour Parler" ("Your Hand For Speaking") an association that aims to spread FC in France. In 1998, she took a more esoteric turn by extending the use of FC to people without any neurodevelopment trouble or speech disorder. She gave it a new name: "Psychophanie." According to Vexiau, FC could allow everyone's unconsciousness and deepest emotions to be expressed. Just like with regular FC, the facilitation may result in poetic or even spiritual messages, but in the case of people without cognitive disorder, it is also presented as therapeutic, helping to release supposedly repressed traumas... which basically amounts to inducing false memories. In 2002, Vexiau founded a "school of FC and Psychophanie" to train both professionals and parents to become facilitators, and those sessions still regularly happen to this day.
Credit: Le site de la Psychophanie on Facebook
New names and newer forms of FC
More recently, FC has appeared under new names, for example CPA for "Communication Profonde Accompagnée" ("Deep Accompanied Communication") by Martine Garcin-Fradet and EP for "Écoute Profonde" ("Deep listening") by Marie Vialard Hauser. The method remains the same: physical facilitation above a keyboard for non-verbal individuals but also for people with "Alzheimers, and people in comas or at the end of life, as well as babies and young children...". The FC lineage isn't hidden; these new methods seem more like re-brandings driven by commercial interests. Both Garcin-Fradet and Hauser regularly advertise facilitator training sessions.
Regarding newer forms of FC without physical touch, I could only find a few examples. One of them involves an association strongly pushing for the rights of autistic people that previously invited Elizabeth Vosseler to do a presentation of S2C. That association advocates for change in the perception of non-verbal autism and for society to "presume competence" regarding profound autism: that is, a reframing of profound autism as it's been reframed by FC advocates for more than 30 years. A member of that association is a young non-verbal and autistic man facilitated by both his mother using a letterboard and a facilitator cueing him while he types on an iPad. He's a student (with his facilitator) at Rennes Law School and a member of the European Network on Independent Living (ENIL). He's been invited to discuss neurodiversity and the autism rights movement at INSEI, a French institution doing research in the field of inclusive education, and he recently joined UN Human Rights and Education Above All (EAA) Youth Advisory Board. His personal experiences led to a full article on the United Nations website. Meanwhile, he is also a Spelling to Communicate "influencer," as mentioned on I-ASC website.
Credit: United Nations Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner, www.ohchr.org
Denouncing FC in France
In 2003, in an article for Charlie Hebdo, the journalist Antonio Fischetti reported an example of FC being used in a residential facility in Brittany, fully financed by the National Health Service. Fischetti also described it as "charlatanism" and explained how opponents of the method within the institution were pressured not to speak out, revealing a relatively cult-like atmosphere surrounding this practice. The journal had to deal with lawsuits by FC proponents for its censorious description. In the end, all charges were dismissed by the court.
Around the same period, Houssine Jobeir, a professor at the University of Brest and psychologist reported the use of FC by some of his peers. He, too, had to face lawsuits—in this case by those peers. Again, the court ended up dismissing the case and Professor Jobeir was later invited to write about FC and participate in a parliament report on the influence of cult-like movements and their practices on physical and mental health of children. FC then got listed as a "non-recommended method" by the HAS (French Health Authority). This helps as a deterrent, but doesn’t prevent people from trying FC-like alternatives.
In France, unfortunately, the hassle of being prosecuted for defamation discourages some people, including health professionals, from speaking out. I myself published a video about the case I mentioned above, and I did so under a pseudonym. I emailed journalists and some institutions who supported the daughter and mother's extraordinary story, emphasizing the dangers of FC and its newer forms, as well as the risks of spreading misleading depictions of non-verbal and severe autism, but I received very few responses. I'm guessing the topic of disability remains taboo when not presented as positive, spectacular or entertaining. Also, FC requires time to be understood, especially, I think, when one is unfamiliar with the ideomotor response. Moreover, cueing is in some cases so subtle that it’s difficult for people who are just discovering the phenomenon to believe that such guiding is even possible.
Credit: Jeffrey Chan & Karen Nankervis
I'm also wondering if our current times are making critiques of FC harder to be heard? As the inclusion movement is spreading worldwide, FC-proponents' stories become even more compelling and are easy to grab on to in order to advocate for non-verbal people's rights. Proponents call for better treatment of non-verbal individuals while actually failing to respect the fact that they simply cannot fit literacy and communication norms... but who's to be blamed if parents in distress get caught up in such belief systems? As Jeffrey Chan and Karen L. Nankervis have written, "Facilitated Communication is an abuse of human rights." Yes indeed, for those who understand how FC works, this is a fact. Therefore, why would it even be legal to use? I personally think there is an institutional flaw here. FC should be seriously looked at, worldwide. With FC proponents now promoting their methods abroad through online video conferences and so on, there is an urgent need for FC critics and autism specialists to be given the opportunity to be heard by associations and institutions around the world.
