Thoughtography

Thoughtography's modern history begins with Tomokichi Fukurai, a psychologist and associate professor at Tokyo Imperial University, who around 1910 coined the Japanese term nensha, "thought copying," for the claimed ability to imprint mental images directly onto photographic plates. Fukurai had already drawn controversy for his experiments with the young clairvoyant Chizuko Mifune; when his nensha experiments with other subjects also failed to produce results that satisfied his university colleagues, the resulting scandal contributed to his forced resignation.

The claim resurfaced decades later in America with Ted Serios, a Chicago bellhop who, in sessions with psychiatrist Jule Eisenbud between 1964 and 1966, produced hundreds of Polaroid images while holding a small paper tube, his "gizmo," against or near the camera lens and concentrating intensely, sometimes producing blurred or abstract images and occasionally what Eisenbud described as recognisable scenes. Eisenbud, a professional psychiatrist with no known conjuring background, documented the sessions extensively and published them in his 1967 book The World of Ted Serios, arguing the results could not be explained by ordinary means.

Serios's "gizmo" became the focus of exactly the scrutiny thoughtography claims invite, because it was the one physical prop present in every session and the one element a magician's eye would flag immediately. In October 1967, photographers Charlie Reynolds and David Eisendrath, both experienced amateur magicians, published an account in Popular Photography of a weekend spent observing Serios and Eisenbud, describing how they believed Serios could have concealed a miniature optical device, effectively a tiny pre-loaded image and lens, inside the paper tube, producing a "trick lens" effect that would explain the photographs without any need for a genuine mental phenomenon. Eisenbud and his supporters disputed that any specific instance of trickery had been caught on camera, and Serios's output did decline noticeably after the Popular Photography article and its scrutiny, an association critics read as significant and supporters attributed to the psychological pressure of increased suspicion.

No thoughtography claim, from Fukurai's original nensha experiments through the Serios sessions, has produced images under conditions rigorous enough to rule out a conventional optical method, and the specific, physically plausible trick-lens explanation identified for the Serios case remains the most cited account of how the effect was likely achieved.