My dear Miss [Addams]:
I am a school teacher in Oak Park. I have a friend who has a serious trouble and I am appealing to you in her behalf. She knows of you and your great work and has confidence in you as a woman and an authority.
This girl has had a [illegible] education. She left high school in the second year to take up her music in the Oberlin Conservatory. Consequently her training has not been rounded. She has never studied psychology and consequently or in some way she has gotten tangled in her ideas [page 2] about [telepathy], thought suggestions and hypnotism.
I have scoured all the Psychologies I know of to prove to her that her beliefs are wrong but I cannot find direct statements such that will satisfy her. I am hoping by writing to you for your ideas on the subject that I can get same direct statements regarding specific things which will put her on the right track. I have told her I would write you and get your opinions as to whether I am right or she. Either one is terrible [mistaken].
She believes that people whom she distrusts affect her from a distance. They show [illegible] influence around her. Sometimes they speak to her mentally and she is able to hear the messages though they are <hundreds of> miles away. Sometimes she is wakened in the night by them and then she struggles with [page 3] them the remainder of the night. Sometimes she doesn't sleep all night because she has been <is> nagged mentally by these people. Sometimes she has feelings in her body as if some one held her or <a> drawing in her face. These she attributes to these people miles away. I have quoted James to her that "the barrier between minds is the greatest <most absolute> barrier in nature" but I am not yet successful in settling the trouble. Perhaps I have no right to ask you to give some of your busy life to us, but I must get help somewhere and perhaps you will help us. Give your opinion on these points please.
Is telepathy a fact? Can a mind say 200 or even 1 mile away communicate thoughts to another? Can one mind cause sensations to occur in the body of another at a distance. [page 4]
If telepathy is an established fact how often many people in 1000 say, can use it? Can evil people use it with more power than the good? Have you ever known of a case of telepathy occurring under your observation?
In helping people by means of thought suggestions is not can a thought be presented other than through the senses?
That she has these bodily disturbances is a fact. How would you explain their occurrence? What does cause them? I have argued that the beliefs she holds alone causes them. Am I right and are these beliefs out of the range of possibilities or is she right and all her troubles possible realities.
Can you tell me how to help her?
Please answer quickly if you can.
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