Reality Foreshadowed in Thought

“Bleedback” is my name for a peculiar phenomenon that is well documented. Dramatic events are often prefigured in art and literature. There was a book published in the early 1900s that described the sinking of a mighty ocean liner called the Titan. The story featured many uncanny similarities to the Titanic incident a few years later.

There was a play written about a presidential assassination that bore many an uncanny likeness to the Kennedy assassination.

Psychotherapists working in Germany and other parts of Europe noted that many patients dreamed about a nationalist leader who would soon rise to power and summon the war clouds to hang once again over the continent.

Somehow, certain significant events seem to bleed back into the consciousness of people, especially artists and writers. Is the mind a psychic organ? Is it a reality generator? A reader of the map of time? A conduit of the prints of fate? Or, are our ambitions and fears simply similar and their outcomes predictable? What explains “bleedback”?