The_Info_Web/50 - CONCEPTS & TECHNOLOGY/PSI_PHENOMENA/Psychoenergetics.md

created	updated	title	aliases	category	tags	summary
2026-05-15	2026-10-05	Psychoenergetics	Psychoenergetics Psychotronic Research Psychotronics Psychoenergetic Psycho-energetics Soviet Psychoenergetics DIA Psychoenergetics Program Bioelectronics	Psi Phenomenon	Concept PSI DIA Stargate Soviet China ColdWar Military Biofield PopovSociety	Soviet term for the study of informational and energetic processes in paranormal mental functioning, listed by the DIA from 1972 and used for its own classified 1981 program, the organizational predecessor of STAR GATE.

Psychoenergetics was a term in the Soviet literature for government-sponsored research on Clairvoyance, Telepathy and Psychokinesis as processes involving "energy" and information in the body. The Defense Intelligence Agency listed it in July 1972 among the terms that "normally mean parapsychology" in Soviet writing, beside psycho-physiology, psychotronics and biophysical effects, with "biocommunications" as the Soviets' preferred umbrella term.¹ A DIA report of March 30, 1978 stated that "a Soviet term, 'psychoenergetics,' has been gaining popularity," referring to "the study of informational and energetic processes associated with paranormal mental functioning," that Soviet researchers had earlier used bioinformation for telepathy and bioenergetics for psychokinesis, that psychotronics, the term of Warsaw Pact researchers, was "similar in meaning" but emphasized instrumentation, and that the newer terms "tend to lessen or avoid adverse views sometimes associated with the older terminology."² In the early 1980s the DIA adopted the word as the designation of a classified program to assess Soviet and Chinese research and to develop comparable American capabilities.³

Soviet research before 1975

A DIA review of 1982 traced Soviet psychoenergetics research to the work of Leonid Vasiliev at the Bekhterev Institute of Brain Research in Leningrad from 1921 to 1938, resumed in 1960 and continued until his death in 1966, after which the main open facility was the Popov Society's Laboratory for Bioinformation, founded in 1965.⁴ The Society, whose full name was the A. S. Popov All-Union Scientific and Technical Society of Radio Engineering and Electrical Communications (NTORES), is described in that report as a professional body under the administrative control of the Ministry of Radio Industries of the Soviet Union.⁴ The 1972 DIA report, written by the U.S. Army's medical intelligence office, stated that "the major impetus behind the Soviet drive" came "from the Soviet military and the KGB," that the USSR had "twenty or more centers" for the study of parapsychological phenomena, and that annual spending was estimated in 1967 at over 12 million rubles (13 million dollars) and "reported to be as high as 21 million dollars."¹ Annie Jacobsen and Jim Schnabel describe Soviet research as intensifying in the 1960s and 1970s under reports in Western channels of Soviet investment in "psychotronic" weapons and remote influence.³

The 1975 DIA study, prepared by the Army's Medical Intelligence and Information Agency, recorded a sharpening of official hostility: the Voice of America's broadcast about Ostrander and Schroeder's Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain was construed as a politically motivated attack; Zinchenko, Leontiev, Lomov and Alexander Luria published "Parapsychology: Fiction or Reality?" in Voprosy Filosofii in 1973, stating that "some so-called parapsychological phenomena do happen"; and Edward Naumov, formerly director of the Institute of Technical Parapsychology in Moscow, was arrested in March 1974 and sentenced to two years.⁵ The 1982 DIA report read the 1973 article as the work of a commission of Party-requested psychologists whose first review had been "highly critical of one particular laboratory" and whose second, a few years later, was favorable, and called the Zinchenko report the setting for the commission that followed.⁴

Review commission and Bioelectronics Section, 1975 to 1978

The DIA report of March 22, 1982, "The Soviet Psychoenergetics Research Program," signed for the Director by Jack Vorona, concerned "the results of a high level Soviet commission that reviewed psychoenergetics research in the USSR." The commission began in 1975, was chaired by the radar pioneer Yuri Kobzarev "under the direction of V. A. Kotel'nikov, vice president of the Academy of Science and director of IRE," spanned about three years, reviewed earlier work and, in the DIA's words, "arranged experiments and took part in them as observers." The report stated that it produced a statement signed by Kobzarev in 1978, "I am persuaded that the phenomena demonstrated by N. Kulagina ... are by no means tricks," and a similar document signed by Kotelnikov, Kobzarev and others, and that its recommendations led to a resolution of the Popov Society of October 31, 1978 (Protocol No. 14) creating a Bioelectronics Section.⁴ Its bureau was chaired by the philosopher Alexander Spirkin, a corresponding member of the Academy, and listed Yuri Kholodov of the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity, Aleksandr Dubrov of the Central Scientific Research Institute of Reflexotherapy, a representative of the missile design bureau VYMPEL, and three Ministry of Defense members, two of them colonels.⁴ The DIA concluded that "now, for the first time in the USSR, a high-level Party-approved channel exists for psychoenergetics research," that most work was in closed laboratories with a controlled public sector used to locate talented subjects, and that classified portions reflected "military and KGB interests."⁴

The report identified the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics in Moscow as the institute "where considerable psychoenergetics research is known to occur," active since 1977 or 1978 under Deputy Director Yuri Gulyaev, and listed other participating facilities: the Institute of Psychology, the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity, the Institute of Problems of Information Transmission, Kazakh State University in Alma-Ata under V. M. Inyushin, the Institute of Molecular Genetics, the Institute of Chemical Physics, the Institute for Control Problems, the Institute of Biophysics, and the Moscow and Leningrad universities. It noted that the subject Ninel Kulagina could "make the rounds" of laboratories, that popular press articles had described Leonid Brezhnev's affiliation with the healer Dzhuna Davitashvili, and that research with healers took place in the Bioelectronics Section's laboratory and at the institute. It concluded that "the DIA considers investigation in this area to have breakthrough potential, and that significant military applications may result."⁴

Laboratory of physical fields of biological objects, 1981 to 1985

The Moscow journalist Lev Kolodny wrote in 1990 that the study of Davitashvili at the institute, dated 1982 to 1985 in the abstract and 1981 to 1985 in his later book, began with the backing of the Gosplan chairman Nikolai Baibakov, the academicians Guriy Marchuk and Anatoly Aleksandrov and Kotelnikov, and a Central Intelligence Agency abstract of his article records an order signed by Aleksandrov and the health minister, a seven-channel instrument set, two groups (one under Eduard Godik at the institute) and an interruption of the work in April 1985.⁶ The physicist Alexander Taratorin wrote in 1997 that the laboratory was given funds and staff positions on a Central Committee instruction, that it was led by Godik under Gulyaev, and that after 1983 generals and admirals visited it, one proposing to irradiate an enemy army's psyche with a radar antenna.⁷ The engineer Serge Kernbach, summarizing Russian open sources in 2013, reported a Central Committee and Council of Ministers resolution of January 27, 1986, No. 137-47, on a program for "management of living objects," whose text he stated is not public, and a Center of Non-Traditional Technologies established by a decree of December 22, 1989.⁸

Air Force briefing, 1987

On June 12, 1987, Colonel Henry Shinol, Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Studies and Analyses at Headquarters United States Air Force, asked DIA's Deputy Director for Scientific and Technical Intelligence for "an informational briefing on the substance and status of Soviet parapsychology research" for June 30 or July 6, "as part of AF/SA's continuing support to Maj Gen Bissell, AF/IN." DIA's note of July 14 recorded that the briefing "reviewed soviet research in this field, with emphasis on the recent integrated efforts of several U.S.S.R Academy of Science laboratories," and that Shinol "expressed an interest for additional details." The slides, headed "Soviet Activities in Psychoenergetics," ran from Vladimir Bekhterev and Leonid Vasiliev ("hypnosis," "automatic responses," "long distance (1700 km)," then "open publications" and a "new lab, Leningrad Univ." in 1959-1965) to Genady Sergeyev (1965-1970, "Vasil'yev's lab," "communication (EEG code)," "remote action," Ninel Kulagina) and I. M. Kogan (1965 to about 1975, "communication, symbols, digits," "long distance (3,000 km)," "screening for talented people," "hypnosis not used," a "low frequency electromagnetic hypothesis"); a 1972 slide had Zinchenko, Leontiev, Lomov and Luria recommending "controlled research" in "Questions of Philosophy" with a "revised definition of 'parapsychology'"; one slide reproduced the entry from the Moscow "Filosofskiy Slovar" of 1980, which ends: "The materialistic approach to research on parapsychological phenomena, which are difficult to explore by experimental means, assists its demystification, and unmasks idealistic speculations about them"; and one quoted Yuri Kobzarev, "radar pioneer, member USSR Academy of Science," that Kulagina's psychokinesis and L. Korabelnikova's extrasensory perception "are by no means tricks," and Vladimir Kotelnikov, vice president of the Academy, that "psychokinetic abilities of N. Kulagina are real." Three pages of the deck remain exempt from release.⁹

DIA Psychoenergetics Program

In 1981, Jack Vorona, the Assistant Director for Scientific and Technical Intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency, contacted Dale Graff and brought him to Washington to help run a classified DIA program formally designated Psychoenergetics. The program had two stated goals: "to evaluate the threat that foreign psychoenergetics achievements might pose to U.S. national security, and to explore the potential of psychoenergetics for use in U.S. intelligence collection."³ The March 1982 report that Vorona signed stated that "very recently, new psychoenergetics research data was acquired from the USSR, China, and other foreign countries" and described the field as one in which the DIA "considers investigation in this area to have breakthrough potential."⁴

Vorona believed that with DIA resources, genuine scientific progress could be made toward understanding Extrasensory Perception and psychokinesis. The DIA Psychoenergetics program oversaw and funded the Stargate Project and later Sun Streak remote viewing operations at Fort Meade, and the SRI research program directed by Hal Puthoff continued to receive DIA-channeled funding.³ The program's framework was explicitly competitive: American intelligence officials saw Soviet and Chinese psychoenergetics research as a potential asymmetric threat requiring a response, and if U.S. researchers could develop comparable capabilities, they provided a potential intelligence collection tool operating outside normal technical surveillance channels.³

Chinese Extraordinary Human Body Function

A significant driver of DIA Psychoenergetics investment was intelligence on Chinese research programs. Puthoff's 1982 classified report, "Psychoenergetics Research in the People's Republic of China," documented research by Chinese physicist Qian Xuesen and others into what Chinese researchers called Extraordinary Human Body Function (EHBF), a term covering clairvoyance, psychokinesis and related claimed abilities. Tsien, a leading figure in Chinese aerospace engineering who had been expelled from the United States during the McCarthy period, reportedly endorsed the scientific investigation of EHBF as consistent with materialist science. The report confirmed an active military-adjacent research program with potential intelligence applications, strengthening DIA's case for continued U.S. investment.³

Transition to STARGATE

The DIA Psychoenergetics program provided organizational continuity for U.S. remote viewing research from 1981 through the successive program designations Grill Flame (1978-1983), Center Lane (1983-1985), Sun Streak (1985-1991), and finally STARGATE (1991-1995). When the program was declassified and transferred to CIA control in 1995, and subsequently evaluated by the American Institutes for Research in a study that resulted in the program's termination, the full history of Psychoenergetics/STARGATE became available for review.¹⁰

Footnotes

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1. Defense Intelligence Agency, "Controlled Offensive Behavior - USSR (U)," ST-CS-01-169-72, July 1972, "Parapsychology in the Soviet Union," Section I paras. 1-2 and summary, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300010001-7. https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP96-00788R001300010001-7 ↩︎

2. Defense Intelligence Agency, "Paraphysics R&D - Warsaw Pact (U)," DST-1810S-202-78, March 30, 1978 (prepared by the Foreign Technology Division, Air Force Systems Command), introduction. https://archive.org/details/ParaphysicsRDWarsawPact_201609 ↩︎

3. Annie Jacobsen, Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis (Little, Brown and Company, 2017), pp. 197-226; Jim Schnabel, Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies (Dell, 1997). ↩︎

4. Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Technical Intelligence Report DST-1810D-948-82-RPT-4, "The Soviet Psychoenergetics Research Program (U)," March 22, 1982 (information cutoff January 15, 1982), foreword, sections I-III, appendices I-II, declassified in part 2011, NSA-RDP96X00790R000100020003-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-nsa-rdp96x00790r000100020003-3 ↩︎

5. Defense Intelligence Agency, "Soviet and Czechoslovakian Parapsychology Research (U)," DST-1810S-387-75, September 1975, prepared by U.S. Army Medical Intelligence and Information Agency, Part I, CIA-RDP96-00787R000500420001-2. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00787r000500420001-2 ↩︎

6. Lev Kolodny, "Biofield Researchers' Equipment, Support from Country's Leaders Noted," Moskovskaya Pravda, October 10, 1990, no. 232, p. 3, as abstracted in the Daily SNAP (item SNAP 901023), CIA-RDP96-00792R000500470003-9. https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP96-00792R000500470003-9 ↩︎

7. Alexander Taratorin, "Nevydumannaya istoriya ekstrasensov v Rossii" (1997), lib.ru. http://lib.ru/ZHURNAL/istoria.txt_with-big-pictures.html The article was written by a member of the laboratory. ↩︎

8. Serge Kernbach, "Unconventional research in USSR and Russia: short overview," arXiv:1312.1148 (2013), a secondary survey of Russian open sources. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.1148 ↩︎

9. Henry E. Shinol, Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff, Studies and Analyses, Headquarters USAF, to the Defense Intelligence Agency, "Soviet Parapsychology Research Briefing," June 12, 1987, and cover note of July 14, 1987, with paper briefing slides "Soviet Activities in Psychoenergetics," CIA-RDP96-00789R002600320001-8 to -004-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP96-00789R002600320004-5 ↩︎

10. American Institutes for Research, An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications, September 29, 1995 (declassified). ↩︎