Identify a book about an underground psi research facility

Question

This is a book I remember reading when I was a teen, so late 70's or early 80's.

Children and young adults are press-ganged (I remember it was involuntary, anyway) into an underground research facility where research into psi powers is going on. Eventually one of the research subjects becomes meta-powered and breaks out.

What stands out in my mind is the memory of a test. Imagine a bell jar, with a pedestal in it, with a ball standing on it. A powered individual is supposed to be able to knock the ball off the post, then put it back onto the post. There is a scene where some official-in-charge who isn't supposed to be powered actually accomplishes the test, levitating the gently glowing ball back onto its perch.

Answer 1

The ball on the pedestal inside a bell jar is an exact description of a scene near the end of Pstalemate (Lester del Rey, 1971) in which the protagonist discovers telepathic powers in himself and takes massive doses of hallucinogens, trying to induce "bad trips" to harden himself against the otherwise inevitable madness that he sees via reading his own future mind.