Thanks to NomadMaker identifying the author as Poul Anderson, I believe that a strong candidate for an answer is the novella "[The Sensitive Man][1]", first published in 1954 in *Fantastic Universe*. The story takes place in the far-future year of 2009(!), and is set in Poul's "[Psychotechnic League][2]" future history. A summary at [wikipedia][3] describes the plot well: > Michael Tighe of the Psychotechnic Institute has been kidnapped by > Thomas Bancroft, a politician with ties to an authoritarian movement > called the Actionists. Tighe's adopted son, Simon Delgatty, sets out > to find him, but is himself captured by Bancroft and taken to his base > on an island off the coast of Mexico. In the course of raising > Delgatty, Tighe has trained him to exert conscious control over what > are normally subconscious and autonomic brain functions. This allows > Delgatty to speed up or slow down his metabolism at will, and also > allows him to tell what other people are thinking by listening to them > subvocalize their thoughts. As the question noted, the protagonist, Delgatty,was trained to take advantage of "the relationship between the conscious, subconscious and involuntary minds" to have a perfect memory, have superhuman physical abilities, and to apparently read people's minds. In fact, however this is due to: > Most people sub-vocalize their surface thoughts. With a little > practice a person who can hear those vibrations can learn to interpret > them. His abilities take a toll on his body though. > "There are sound biological reasons why man's mind is so divided and > plenty of penalties attached to a case like mine. It'll take me a > couple of months to get back in shape after this bout. I'm due for a > good old-fashioned nervous breakdown and while it won't last long it > won't be much fun while it does last." The complete story is available at [Project Gutenberg][4]. [1]: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?58315 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychotechnic_League [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sensitive_Man [4]: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/31501/31501-h/31501-h.htm