Gef
Investigating Gef: Pt 3
Nandor Fodor Investigates
Harry Price was not the only psychic researcher to visit Cashen's Gap. Also hot on Gef's trail was Nandor Fodor, Research Officer for the International Institute for Psychical Research.
Fodor was heavily influenced by the theories of Freud, and later became a practising psychoanalyst himself. He pioneered the now-popular theory that poltergeists are not disembodied spirits, but manifestations of conflicts within the subconscious mind.
"In some as yet unknown manner, a part of you may refuse to be confined within your body," he explained in a 1948 magazine article, I Psychoanalyse Ghosts. "It may perform your unconscious desires even though you think you have nothing to do with it. When this happens, you have a Poltergeist".
"Usually it occurs in adolescents, but sometimes it takes place in mentally disturbed adults as well. But you can be sure that where Poltergeists are on the rampage, somebody is sick."
When Fodor arrived at Cashen's Gap, he was immediately struck by the isolation and poverty endured by the Irvings:
"The only meat they knew was rabbit, when Gef provided them, or when they caught them with snares. Most of the rabbits had to be sold because they fetched seven-pence apiece and this was, at times, the only cash income with which to buy other household necessities. Voirrey had no shoes, and used to walk barefooted four miles to Peel and lug back whatever supply she brought, as the bus was too expensive."
Fodor initially suspected that Gef was a product of Jim Irving's subconscious frustrations:
"The problem of mental starvation, for a man of Irving's intelligence, must have been even more serious. There was no way to relieve it by conscious means. So his unconscious took care of the job and produced the strange hybrid of Gef, fitting no category of humans, animals or ghosts, yet having common features with all of them."
Nevertheless, he was puzzled by the fact that Gef frequently manifested even in Jim's absence. He subsequently revised his conclusions and conceded that Gef might well have been exactly what he claimed to be - "an extra, extra clever little Mongoose":
"All the evidence is in favour of Gef being a talking animal. I cannot prove he is an animal. I have not seen him. He did not talk to me. He claimed to be an animal. I cannot disprove that claim."