2. The Parapsychological Community and their
Accomplishments
I
would like to start with a positive message. Our efforts as parapsychologists
have contributed to knowledge in significant ways. I argue that we can be proud
of the following:
First: The findings of parapsychology serve as a reminder that there is much
more to learn about human functioning than the behavioral sciences suggest. Over
a hundred years ago Frederic W. H. Myers (1900) stated that the duty of
psychical researchers was "the expansion of science herself" (p. 123). Much of
our work suggests that the communication with the environment we refer to as ESP
and PK requires at least an extension of current physics and psychology. In
other words, there is more to human capabilities than official science teaches.
Parapsychological research serves as a reminder of other possibilities, of
challenges we only hope science at large will take on. Certainly official
science has not accepted that we have established the reality of phenomena that
require an expansion of physical and psychological principles. Nonetheless, I
agree with
Emily Kelly (2001) when she states: "If psychical research does
nothing more than continually shake complacent assumptions about fundamental
questions concerning mind, consciousness, volition, that alone is a significant
contribution to science" (p. 86).
Second: In addition to extending the reach of human abilities, parapsychology
has documented the frequency and complexity of the features of the phenomena it
studies and has thus contributed to the overall knowledge of experiences studied
by psychology and psychiatry. Our studies show that claims of psychic
experiences are more common than previously realized. In addition these studies
document the variety of human experience and thus expand the views of their
range derived from the behavioral sciences. This includes such "new" experiences
as waking and dream ESP, apparitions of the dead, deathbed visions,
poltergeists, out-of-body experiences (OBEs), and near-death experiences (NDEs).
When one gets into the study of the features of the experiences, the forms ESP
takes, the complex patterns of features found in apparitions and in OBEs and
NDEs, one realizes our field has contributed much to the cataloging and mapping
of a variety of experiences and states of consciousness (Alvarado,
1996a; Irwin,
1994). Some of this work, including Sybo Schouten's (1979) analyses of ESP
experiences and my own work with OBEs (Alvarado &
Zingrone,
1998-99), shows the
further complexity of the experiences by documenting the interaction of its
features with other features and with external variables.
This view of complexity is further enhanced when we pay attention to our past
history and study the investigations conducted around mental mediums. The
detailed studies that Théodore Flournoy (1900) conducted with medium
Hélène
Smith and Eleanor
Sidgwick's (1915) analyses of work conducted with medium
Leonora Piper have taught us much about psychological personation, stages and
features of trances, and the imagery involved in the mentation.
Third: Parapsychology has contributed to the development of ideas in psychology.
Some historians of psychology, such as Régine Plas (2000), have argued that
interest and research in psychic phenomena were an important element in the
development of psychology. In fact, Plas argues that interest in the
subconscious mind in France was intimately related to interest in telepathy and
the like, as seen in the work of Pierre Janet and
Charles Richet, among others.
The early work of members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in England
contributed much to the development of ideas of the subconscious mind as well as
to the study of dissociation. This was particularly true of the work of
Edmund
Gurney and Frederic W. H. Myers (Alvarado,
2002a).
Furthermore, parapsychology has contributed much to the development of ideas
about the mind, particularly those which treat the mind-body problem and ideas
of the non-physical. Examples of this are the ideas Myers (1903) stated in his
hundred-year-old classic Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death as
well as the later speculations made by such figures as
William McDougall (1911)
J. B. Rhine (1947),
Robert Thouless and B. P. Wiesner (1947),
Charles Tart
(1979), and
John Beloff (1990).
There is also a beginning of studies of the transformative effects of
parapsychological experiences, a topic parapsychologists have been reticent to
study. But we have made contributions to the study of personal transformations
related to psychic experience, as seen in the work of
Palmer (1979), Kennedy and Kanthamani (1995), and in my own work with OBEs (Alvarado & Zingrone,
2003), all
of which have been published in parapsychological journals.
In recent times most of the studies on the relationship of out-of-body
experiences to psychological processes or experiences such as dissociation
(Irwin,
2000) and dreams (Alvarado & Zingrone, 1999), as well as studies of the
features of the experience (Alvarado & Zingrone,
1998-99, 1999), have been
published in parapsychology journals. There is no doubt that, as I have argued
elsewhere, most of the contributions to our understanding of the psychology of
OBEs have come from parapsychologists (Alvarado, 1992). In fact OBE work
represents one of our most recent contributions to psychology and to the more
specific area of altered states of consciousness. This is evident in Imants
Baruss's (2003) recently published book Alterations of Consciousness. In fact,
in this book, published by the American Psychological Association, the
contributions of parapsychologists to the study of consciousness are presented
in more detail than I have ever seen before in psychological publications.
Fourth: The results of parapsychological research have helped to combat
superstition and to evaluate popular claims. There are many ideas and traditions
about psychic phenomena that have been regarded as superstitions. One of them is
the relationship between death and psychic phenomena, a relationship supported
in the case of apparitions in such early studies as the Census of Hallucinations
(e.g., Sidgwick et al., 1894). In addition, these associations have been
reinforced, although by work that admittedly suffered from sampling problems.
This includes case collections studies of death-related phenomena by
Ernesto Bozzano (1923) and
Camille Flammarion (1920-1921/1922-1923), and more recent
work by Graziela Piccinini and Gian Marco Rinaldi (1990) and Sylvia Hart Wright
(2001).
The claim that mediums can communicate with the dead has not been substantiated,
but a variety of studies from the nineteenth century to our own time have
produced evidence for the acquisition of veridical statements by mediums (for an
overview see Gauld, 1982). In other instances, such as the investigations of the
levitation claims of practitioners of Transcendental Meditation, there has been
no supportive evidence to back the claims in question (Mishlove, 1983).
The evaluation of Transcendental Meditation claims brings us to the testing of
psychic development claims. Two studies done in the 1970s did not support the
claims of followers of Silva Mind Control (Brier, Schmeidler, & Savits, 1975;
Vaughan, 1974). This is an important line of research in which parapsychologists
may contribute useful information to consumers of development programs.
In addition, many of the early discussions in which automatic writing was seen
as the production of the subconscious mind were published in psychical research
journals by Frederic W. H. Myers (1884) and
William James (1889). This
contributed to the idea that not everything that appears to come from discarnate
spirits is necessarily so. Our contributions to demystify all kind of claims are
particularly important in terms of public education.
Fifth: Our researchers have used and pioneered statistical techniques to study
phenomena. Philosopher and skeptic Ian Hacking (1988) has argued that early use
of randomization and probability calculations took place in the context of
nineteenth-century studies of telepathy. A particularly influential paper was
that published by Charles Richet (1884) in the Revue Philosophique which
inaugurated the use of probability theory in psychical research at a time when
psychologists were using statistical methods only infrequently. Following this,
British researchers continued the use of statistical calculations in such
classic works dealing with spontaneous experiences as Phantasms of the Living
(Gurney, Myers, & Podmore, 1886) and the Census of Hallucinations (Sidgwick, et
al., 1894), not to mention experimental work. Later parapsychologists, from H.
F. Saltmarsh and S. G. Soal (1930), J. Gaither Pratt (1936), and Charles Stuart
(1942), and later contributions (summarized by Burdick and Kelly, 1977),
developed methods by which to evaluate experimental free-response material
quantitatively. It may be argued that the best of our current techniques may be
adapted to aspects of the study of subliminal perception, unconscious learning,
and dream and waking imagery.
Sixth: Parapsychology has also contributed to the study of fraud and
self-deception. Instructive cases have been reported since the nineteenth
century. This includes a mediumship case with no apparent motivation of fraud
reported by Henry Sidgwick (1894) and the efforts taken by several members of a
community to convince one individual of poltergeist manifestations discussed by
Hereward Carrington (n.d., pp. 2-19). More recently we could mention the
writings of Ejvegaard and Johnson (1981) on an apparition case, Delanoy (1987)
on metal bending, and Stevenson and colleagues (Stevenson, Pasricha &
Samararatne, 1988) on cases of the reincarnation-type.
It is important to recognize that the above-mentioned contributions have been
made under extremely difficult conditions. Individuals coming from other
disciplines such as medicine, physics, psychology, or biology are often unaware
of how easy they have it in their fields, enjoying all kinds of resources
supportive of their work. Regardless of the usual problems with resources
everywhere, I do not think anyone tan dispute that, in a large measure, they
enjoy much higher levels of funding than we do. Furthermore, except in small or
developing research specialties, mainstream scientists have never faced the
serious personnel problems we face in parapsychology. We have never had enough
people working in the field, especially full-time workers.
Next part: 3. Personnel in
Parapsychology
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