Second Sight

In effect this is an EHE autobiography. In the first half Orloff describes what it was like to grow up psychic with parents who were MDs. She describes her personal struggles, one of which ended in an NDE, which opened her to an inner source of strength. Eventually, from working with Thelma Moss and Stephan Schwartz, she began to ground her psychic feet and accept herself. She became an MD and then a psychiatrist. Although her training required her to distance herself from her psychic ability for several years, gradually it spontaneously broke into her psychiatric practice until she found she had to incorporate it for the good of her patients. Later in life she learned from her mother that she too had been psychic as a child and had even used her ability in the course of her profession, but she had wanted to preserve Judith from the conflict and trauma involved in being psychic. Moreover, she learned her mother’s mother was psychic.

In the second half she teaches how to live with and develop psychic ability and use it in one’s life and possibly even one’s work. She uses many illustrations taken from her clinical practice. She places much emphasis on dreams as an internal guide through the psychic unknown and also offers exercises people can use. Above all, she normalizes the paranormal while honoring its wonder. Interestingly, in an Afterword she tells how the act of writing the book in effect was "a journey toward freedom" (p. 359), in life and in her profession. She took the steps every EHEer must do in order to move forward on their life paths. "As I came into my own as a psychic woman, I hungered...to put into words the yearnings of my deepest heart. This book has been my salvation, revealing the secrets I’ve kept to myself for such a long time. So many of my emotions are laid bare here. It has made me strong. This has been my healing" (p. 360). Moreover, her life as revealed in this book shows how potentially the psychic relates to the spiritual: "For me, the beauty of being psychic is moving closer to the wisdom of our own hearts. Though it can be simply a means of information gathering, I’ve found its highest value is in penetrating the layers of reality that reveal the interconnectedness of all things. My hope is that by turning inward, by pursuing a psychic path, you begin to feel a connection with yourself, with others and with the world around you, but most important with spirit. Then our pangs of loneliness and longing can finally be eased: the exile from ourselves is over. At last we’ve come home" (pp. 360-361).