Diane H Powell

Integrative Medical Doctor, Neuropsychiatrist, Psychotherapist, and Author

The Telepathy Tapes Podcast

Had I gone to medical school anywhere other than Johns Hopkins, I would have probably become a neurologist or neurosurgeon. I was a neuroscientist, and interested in the brain. Most of the other psychiatric programs were psychoanalytical at the time, which was not my orientation, but psychoanalysis is a valuable tools that I use regularly. The Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins was chaired by Dr Paul McHugh, who was a neurologist before he became a psychiatrist. Our “bible” was not the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel (DSM), which was used primarily by lawyers and insurance companies. It was a book called “The Perspectives of Psychiatry.” McHugh’s approach to psychiatric illnesses was a precursor to integrative medical approaches. We were trained to look for medical, as well as personal and social, causes of mental illness and psychological suffering.

In 1987 I spent six months at the London Institute of Psychiatry with Sir Michael Rutter, who was knighted for his work on autism. Upon my return to the United States, I was told that there weren’t enough cases of autism for me to make that my specialization, so I focused on other conditions, such as Alzheimer’s Disease. Approximately ten years ago, while I was doing research on autistic savants, the CDC announced a dramatic increase in autism. The latest estimate of autism prevalence, 1 in 68 children, is up 30 percent from the 1 in 88 rate reported in 2008, which was more than double the 1 in 150 rate in 2000, and more than two hundred times the rate when I was in training.

There has also been a major shift in our understanding of the causes of depression and anxiety, both of which have also increased during the course of my career. Many of these conditions are now thought to have a medical origin. In search of answers as to why these increases are happening, and how to help ameliorate symptoms, I started attending conferences whose presenters are working diligently to advance psychiatric practice to address root causes.

While I was on faculty at Harvard, one of my responsibilities was to do consultations on the medical and surgical floors at Cambridge Hospital. It was in this context that I met a patient who changed my life. She had been admitted for a possible heart attack the night before, but wanted to sign out against medical advice because she claimed to be psychic. She said that she knew her test results would come back normal and that the ghosts in her room were freaking her out. Most psychiatrists would have decided that she was not competent to sign out. Instead of automatically filling out the paperwork, I sat down to talk with her. What she did next blew my mind. She told me that she was getting a strong reading about me, and asked if I minded being told. I encouraged her to go ahead. She told me that my husband was a chemist, which was true, and that he was applying for jobs in two different cities, which was also true…his interviews were that very week. She told me that we would be moving to San Diego, California, and that we would have one child, a daughter. Both of those predictions came true. She also told me several specific things about my present and past life. How was that possible? My training had taught me that people who believe in such things are mentally unstable.

A theory must fit the facts. Our current theory for the brain does not take into consideration the possibility that we might have innate precognitive and telepathic abilities. Our model in neuroscience is so incomplete, it doesn’t answer the basic questions. I simply asked, how can we be so certain these things are impossible, especially when telepathy and precognition have been reported across all cultures, and throughout recorded history. This inspired me to write my first book, The ESP Enigma, which was published in 2008 (available as an e-book on Amazon in 2025).

I was on a whirlwind tour the first year after publishing my book (The ESP Enigma).It was well received by clinicians and academicians, and was even used in one of my former colleague’s neuroscience course. It landed me a position in the LA Festival of Books as a first-time author, and found its way into many libraries, including those of universities across the country. Then the proverbial hit the fan. Less than two years later, my license was suspended on an emergency basis because a psychiatrist told my medical board that I had written a book on ESP and therefore must be psychotic. I had no history of mental health issues, and all of my colleagues and patients were outraged.

I underwent extensive psychological and neurological testing, and my license was restored at the next board meeting, three months later. The psychologist’s report concluded that I was an eccentric who was willing to think out of the box I could have told them that. What I wanted to know was, why was my book so threatening? Physics had undergone a revolution over a century ago which paved the way for a paradigm that would allow for such phenomena.

After having my license restored, I had two goals. One was to find the most compelling evidence that I could for psychic phenomena. This is why I chose to do research with autistic savants, whose abilities are so similar to ESP that they are almost indistinguishable. I chose to work with children because they are reported as more likely to retain these abilities than adults. After making my hypothesis known that autistic children are the best candidates to exhibit telepathy, I received numerous phone calls, emails, and comments from parents at conferences that I am on to something. I have formally tested three children thus far, and am convinced that there might be something there.

Over time I began to realize that the problem with acceptance of ESP is not the lack of data; it is, ironically, our incomplete model for the brain. That is why for the past three years I have turned my attention to working on a new way of thinking about the brain and its relationship to consciousness. My approach has been to look at the anatomy of the brain, including all of its subcellular components, the way that an engineer would if they stumbled across a device from a foreign culture and were trying to understand its function. Instead of ignoring anomalous phenomena such as precognition, telepathy, clairvoyance, and out of body experiences, I wondered if there is a model that could explain all of these. It turns out that there is. My proposed model will be the topic of my next book to be released in fall 2026.