Paranormal Occurrences In Heart Transplantation

The postoperative delirium in heart recipients that can accompany heart transplantation would then seem to be a moment of pre-integration. The mental state perhaps emanates from 2 processes—that of (a) the sub-atomic molecules comprising the recipient’s body and mind encountering those of the transplanted heart, and (b) the ensuing entanglement and integration (Radin, 2006). The practical and desperate need for heart transplantation appears to override the curiosity to investigate what processes might be occurring beyond cellular memory or how cellular memory operates to manifest transformations in the recipient’s personality. Absent the bizarre psi qualities that usually accompany paranormal occurrences, the notion that a heart transplant recipient can undergo changes in the way they experience, perceive, and respond to themself, others, and the world, evidences a presence of the numinous reflected in the characteristics of the feeling-responses of “mysterium fascinans and mysterium tremendum, the beautiful and the frightening aspects of the numinous respectively” (Hunter, 2023, p. 22, emphasis in original). There also occurs  “the occasional tendency of numinous experiences to slip over into a state of … “daemonic dread” – mysterium horrendum or the “negative numinous” – which can be ultimately terrifying for the experiencer, though no less powerful or significant” (Hunter, 2023, p. 22, emphasis in original).

While related to the non-rational, the numinous also speaks to that aspect of self which an individual can access and engage only through interaction with another, or as Rudolf Otto emphasized, “the wholly other” (as cited in Hunter, 2023, p. 22). Empirical science accounts for these experiences and observations through cellular memories potentially stored in transplanted organs (Braude, 2017). A focused investigation into the phenomenon of personality changes in heart transplant recipients and the delirium that some recipients display might reveal deeper intricacies of the mind-body connection and a clearer understanding of illness, recovery, and healing.

This aspect of self that represents that which is so completely different and so extremely illogical or irrational works to gain attention by presenting itself as that which is wholly other. The personality changes that some heart transplant recipients described experiencing and their family members witnessed exemplify encounters with the numinous, wholly other.

Heart Transplantation and Changes in Personality: A Case Study

Braude (2016) recounts the case, from research by Pearsall and colleagues (1999, 2005), of a White, middle-aged man who had received the heart of an African American male adolescent. The adolescent was killed on the way to their violin class. They died clutching the case containing their violin. His mother stated that he had loved classical music. The pathos of the image symbolized the passion with which his mother attributed his love for classical music, and his teachers described how he played the violin. 

The middle-aged man, disturbed by the fact he had received the heart of an African American male, expressed confusion that the adolescent played violin and loved classical music (Braude, 2016). The man confessed, “I used to hate classical music but now I love it… it calms my heart. I play it all the time” (Pearsall et al., 1999, p. 68). His wife confirmed this.

The man’s wife acknowledged that her husband had wanted to “…ask the doctor for a white heart when one came up” (Pearsall et al., 1999, p. 68). The wife described her husband appearing post-transplant more at ease with his African American colleagues from work. After receiving the adolescent’s heart, the man began inviting his African American co-workers over to their home, which he had not done prior. The wife validated that her husband now listened to classical music all the time and whistled various classical tunes that he never knew (Pearsall et al., 1999)

Both the White, male transplant recipient and his wife, presumably also White, expressed discomfort and confusion bordering on vexation with the fact that he had grown to love classical music after receiving the heart of the African American adolescent male who loved and played classical music (on the violin). “I used to hate classical music, but now I love it,” the man stated and added, “so, I know it’s not my new heart, because a black guy from the ‘hood wouldn’t be into that” (Pearsall et al., 2005, para. 25).

The man and his wife assumed the male adolescent, being African American, would have listened to different music. “You’d think he’d like rap music or something because of his black heart,” stated the man’s wife (Pearsall et al., 2005, para. 27). That the deceased adolescent was an African American male and played classical music about which he was so passionate symbolized the wholly other for the man and his wife (Hunter, 2023).

Having received the heart of an African American adolescent who loved and played classical music comprised a nexus of consternation and mystification for both the White, middle-aged man and his wife. They displayed both fascination and fear. Their fear hearkens to the fright of the flight or fright syndrome rooted in the sympathetic nervous system extending to the hippocampus and the amygdala via the autonomic and limbic systems (Ulrich-Lai & Herman, 2009). 

Their bewilderment that the adolescent did not take to rap music but instead classical music, which the man previously hated and his spouse continued to dislike, borders on mysterium horrendum. “He’s driving me nuts with the classical music,” stated the man’s wife, going on to conclude that “he doesn’t know the name of one song and never, never listened to it be­fore. Now, he sits for hours and listens to it” (Pearsall et al., 2005, para. 27).