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3. Fortune-Telling and the Occult: What Lies Behind Our Fascination with the Irrational?

Why do our modern, rational societies continue to be fascinated by the occult? Psychoanalysis sheds light on the unconscious mechanisms behind this paradoxical fascination with fortune-telling and divination, rooted in existential anxiety and the desperate search for meaning.

When we explore the relationship between the fortune-teller, their client or the observer, we find a revealing perspective in the psychoanalytic concept of transference. When we consult a fortune-teller, we unconsciously assign them knowledge about our desires and our fate. In Lacan’s terms, we position them as the “subject supposed to know:” the fortune-teller becomes the fantasized bearer of a hidden truth about ourselves or our environment, a truth we yearn to uncover. Yet, we cannot bear to acknowledge the existence of a terrifying existential void.

This imaginary projection is at the core of the divinatory encounter. Unlike in analytical therapy, where transference is gradually deconstructed and examined, fortune-telling thrives on its amplification. The more the client or observer invests in the medium as the bearer of revelatory power, the more intense and convincing the experience becomes. Our deepest hopes and fears, suddenly laid bare under the gaze of a captivating other, are magnified beyond measure.

Yet, the fortune-teller is not a mere passive receptacle for our projections. Driven by what Melanie Klein calls projective identification, they develop an uncanny ability to attune to the seeker’s psyche, sensing their hidden expectations, unspoken shames and wildest fantasies. This intuitive empathy enables them to offer revelations that “ring true,” resonating with a buried experience that we vaguely recognize as our own.

Should we resort to calling it magic or telepathy? Freud invites us to adopt a more nuanced perspective. If the fortune-teller’s words resonate with such sharpness, it is because, beyond our personal histories, they address the universal themes of the human unconscious—such as our deep-seated desire to exert control over an often unpredictable existence. Our fantasies, fears and most unacknowledged desires find their reflection in a collective unconscious from which the medium draws, whether consciously or not. In this way, fortune-telling is always true, but a truth that transcends individual anecdotes to reach the very essence of our shared humanity.

The fascination with the occult is rooted in the very beginnings of psychic life. The all-powerful child – that each of us once was – believed that the world bent to the force of their desires and representations. Who hasn’t, at some point, believed—or wished to believe—that they could influence the course of events with nothing but the magic of their mind? Childhood beliefs reveal the sense of absolute control over one’s environment, inherited from the earliest stages of life when the infant could not yet distinguish their self from the outside world.

This feeling of omnipotence never fully disappears. It persists into adulthood in a diminished form, manifested in our superstitions, protective rituals and our unspoken belief that “it will work” because we believe it so strongly and repeat it endlessly. In this sense, magical thinking is never far behind. It represents the persistence of an archaic mode of functioning where desire and reality are one, offering the intoxicating illusion of escaping the frustrating constraints of the reality principle.

In this regard, Freud was intrigued by the possibility of telepathic phenomena due to the psychological implications of believing in such experiences. He suggested that telepathy could symbolize unconscious desires for connection and communication, circumventing the constraints of verbal language.

In reality, the obsession with the occult is, above all, a refusal by the subject to acknowledge their irredeemable exile from the “lost paradise” of original wholeness. By projecting onto the medium knowledge that might fill the gaping void at the core of their being, the seeker tries to deny what no prediction can ward off: the abyssal solitude brought about by their status as a desiring subject, forever divided by their entry into the symbolic order of language.

For psychoanalysis, the fascination with the occult represents a fantasy of immortality, a desperate longing to bypass the lack and loss that define our existence as speaking subjects. Confronted with the existential anxiety at the core of human desire, fortune-telling offers the illusion of imaginary omnipotence. However, this attempt to patch the wound in the unconscious with magic remains illusory: it is precisely from its inherent incompleteness that desire derives its power for creativity and renewal.

At its core, it is indeed existential anxiety that lies at the heart of our fascination with the occult, like a secret and powerful driving force. This visceral fear of the unknown, which has gripped the human soul since the dawn of time, this vertigo in the face of an opaque destiny over which we have no control, is what relentlessly drives us to seek out oracles and fortune-tellers. Not so much for entertainment or to relieve boredom, but to ward off that quiet unease that lurks at the edges of our unconscious, hidden in the cracks of our meticulously arranged lives. For what we are witnessing here is truly a “return of the repressed,” with primal fears, concealed beneath the veneer of our pseudoscientific certainties, reemerging in the most unexpected places: in an advertisement for a fortune-teller, during a casual conversation, on a television show or in the esoteric section of a bookstore.

Faced with this existential void, the individual taps into the full creative potential of their psyche. Beliefs, superstitions, occult rituals—these are the dazzling fetishes held up like talismans in defense of the unspeakable nature of our existence. Against the terrifying freedom of being oneself, they offer the comforting structure of a predetermined fate, readable only by a select few. In place of the vertigo brought on by contingency, they introduce the intoxicating certainty of a hidden plan that governs the apparent chaos of the world.

However, even when they prove to be illusory, these illusions still serve a vital purpose. They create a fragile protective shield against the anxiety that constantly threatens to engulf the ego, offering the subject an imaginary sanctuary where they can lay down the overwhelming burden of their existence. By redirecting the enigma of their desire onto the supposedly all-knowing words of a fortune-teller, the individual revives the comforting fantasies of childhood, when their thoughts shaped the world at will. The predictions, even if foreboding, are always more bearable than the deafening silence of an abyss that disregards our childish expectations. They provide a semblance of control over an inscrutable fate and weave a narrative thread through the chaotic tangle of events.

In times of crisis, when all familiar anchors collapse, the irrational emerges as the sole lifeline to prevent one from sinking. This helps explain its inevitable resurgence during periods of profound collective or individual upheaval, as though magical thinking thrives on the cracks in the symbolic order created by historical catastrophes and the ruptures in the social fabric.

Thus, this esoteric realm acts as a bridge, helping society reconcile its disenchanted modernity with an insatiable thirst for the extraordinary. It offers a socially acceptable form for those enduring shadows that have shaped the human psyche for centuries, never fully subsumed by the rational light. In this way, it serves a crucial role in re-enchantment and the creation of meaning, without which the modern individual's fragmented existence might spiral into an abyss of despair.

Beneath the apparent constancy of its central themes, occultism has consistently reinvented itself to capture the deepest aspirations and fears of the human soul. It reflects the speaking subject's relentless quest for meaning, grappling with their desires and limitations, and their inclination to project fantasies onto the shadowy spaces where reason falters. In this way, understanding occultism sheds new light on the psyche's complexity and the boundless creativity of the unconscious, even in its most perplexing manifestations.