Second Sight

June 3, 1996
While growing up in California with her mother, a Beverly Hills family practitioner, and her father, a radiologist, Orloff says she had psychic experiences and could foresee deaths, illnesses, earthquakes. Now a psychiatrist and assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, she works with police departments by using her psychic abilities to help locate missing persons and identify suspects. In her clinical practice, she claims, her clairvoyant gifts enable her to get information about patients' health, relationships, careers and childhoods, and to discern stumbling blocks that are not readily apparent. A premonition warned her of one patient's upcoming suicide attempt. With another patient afflicted with debilitating rheumatoid arthritis, Orloff says, she successfully used hands-on healing, or therapeutic touch. She encourages analysands to use prayer, meditation, ritual and dream journals to promote emotional healing. She movingly describes the dreams and visions that helped her draw closer to her mother, who succumbed to cancer in 1993. Orloff's unconventional attempt to bridge the worlds of Freud and the paranormal will appeal to open-minded readers. Author tour.