Academic literature on the topic 'Parapsychologists'

AbstractShortly after the death of Albert von Schrenck-Notzing (1862–1929), the doyen of early twentieth century German para psychology, his former colleague in hypnotism and sexology Albert Moll (1862–1939) published a treatise on the psychology and pathology of parapsychologists, with Schrenck-Notzing serving as a prototype of a scientist suffering from an ‘occult complex’. Moll’s analysis concluded that parapsychologists vouching for the reality of supernormal phenomena, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, telekinesis and materialisations, suffered from a morbid will to believe, which paralysed their critical faculties and made them cover obvious mediumistic fraud. Using Moll’s treatment of Schrenck-Notzing as an historical case study of boundary disputes in science and medicine, this essay traces the career of Schrenck-Notzing as a researcher in hypnotism, sexology and parapsychology; discusses the relationship between Moll and Schrenck-Notzing; and problematises the pathologisation and defamation strategies of deviant epistemologies by authors such as Moll.

AbstractIn July 1925, the psychiatrist Albert Moll appeared before the district court in Berlin-Schöneberg charged with having defamed the medium Maria Vollhardt (alias Rudloff) in his 1924 book Der Spiritismus [Spiritism]. Supported by some of Berlin’s most prominent occultists, the plaintiff – the medium’s husband – argued that Moll’s use of terms such as ‘trick’, ‘manipulation’ and ‘farce’ in reference to Vollhardt’s phenomena had been libellous. In the three-part trial that followed, however, Moll’s putative affront to the medium – of which he was eventually acquitted – was overshadowed, on the one hand, by a debate over the scientific status of parapsychology, and on the other, by the question of who – parapsychologists, occultists, psychiatrists or jurists – was entitled to claim epistemic authority over the occult. This paper will use the Rudloff–Moll trial as a means of examining Moll’s critique of occultism, not only as it stood in the mid-1920s, but also as it had developed since the 1880s. It will also provide insight into the views of Germany’s occultists and parapsychologists, who argued that their legitimate bid for scientific credibility was hindered by Dunkelmänner [obscurantists] such as Albert Moll.

Peter King asks whether parapsychologists take too much for granted when they talk of ‘pre-cognition’ and indeed ‘para-psychology’. Even if there are measurable paranormal phenomena to be explained, it is unclear whether they have much to do with either cognition or psychology. Isn't it also about time, asks King, that investigators of the paranormal started coming up with theories to explain what they observe?

It is argued that psi-critics Reber and Alcock have lifted the debate from the impasse concerning the evidence for the existence of psi phenomena, toward focusing on understanding the nature of the phenomena. This focus concerns the demand to show that statistical findings are not anomalies but reflect real cause and effect relationships and to find a common theoretical framework for what otherwise appear to be heterogeneous rogue phenomena. It is maintained here that the demand for showing causal relationships is already met by a methodology using real-time recordings of changing target imagery along with receiver mentation. The demand by critics for a theoretical understanding linking all or most of the rogue phenomena, led to the proposition advanced here concerning thought-forms and co-conscious states. According to this, the many “rogue phenomena” both in psychology and parapsychology (such as automatic writing, lucid dream characters, spirit possessions, and entity experiences in psychedelic states) are to be understood as representing dissociated thought-forms with varying degrees of co-consciousness and in some cases the development of a genuine degree of autonomy and identity. Keywords: altered states, thought-forms, consciousness, psi, skepticism, automatic writing, co-consciousness, possession

The popularity of ‘survival-related’ research over recent years has been accompanied by critical discussions by parapsychologists (e.g., Cunningham, 2012; Roll, 2006; Sudduth, 2009), as well as intense debates between advocates and skeptics (see e.g., Journal of Parapsychology, 80, pp. 169-264). Of course, these are not unexpected trends with highly controversial topics that can also challenge the belief systems of investigators and commentators. The correspondence below thus underscores the importance of methodology and rules of evidence relative to reincarnation-type cases.

Responding to Kalat and Kohn (this issue), I note that new methodologies in parapsychology have produced well controlled, theory-derived, process-oriented experiments with replicability rates comparable to those in psychology. Parapsychologists are not in agreement as to whether psi anomalies constitute instances of perception without sensation. In addition, these anomalies are weak and unstable; consequently, it is not yet clear whether they violare the second law of thermodynamics. As scientists and teachers, we have a professional responsibility to be objective and to allow for discussion of data obtained by rigorous applications of the scientific method.

Fanny Moser was a Swiss natural scientist who devoted the second half of her life to the study of occult phenomena, especially hauntings, and wrote two influential and extensive monographs on the subject. As one of the early female sponsors of the Freiburg Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, she also provided the necessary support for the research institute and, in this respect, contributed to the establishment of a parapsychological research scene in Germany. The article first reconstructs Moser’s research biography, which is already remarkable because she was one of the very first female students and doctoral candidates in the German Empire. In a second step, it will be shown at which point and how exactly Moser was confronted with parapsychological topics and what role and function they had in her life. It will be shown that Moser’s engagement with parapsychology was situated in a dynamic field between subjective experiences of evidence, a personal crisis, and scientific self-empowerment, and that gender-specific factors also played a role. In this context it will be asked whether the publication of one’s own paranormal experiences and the introspection as a form of presentation represents a "typical female" aspect, since comparable statements by male parapsychologists are mostly absent in the scientific publications.

Feminist theory today is now more relevant than ever. Reactionary cultural and political shifts have taken away long held rights of women and those that remain are under threat. Far from being divorced from scientific practice, the implications of this trend have a bearing on research, communities, and institutions. By returning to some key insights from feminist thinkers in parapsychology, most important herein is Rhea White (1990, 1994a, 1994b, 2002) but also Carl Williams (1996) and Beverly Rubik (1994), we can more reflectively consider such cultural changes as necesssarily implicated in parapsychological science. In this essay and opinion piece, I interface some of these insights gathered from the Women in Parapsychology conference (Coly & White, 1994) with selected feminist scholarship outside of parapsychology to argue for a revived feminist objectivity that counters the traditional androcentric view of science. In turn, I draw a connection between feminine embodiment and the paranormal that aids in disentangling both from political co-option. Finally, I suggest one critical strategy taken from the work of Félix Guattari (2015) called transversality that pushes interdisciplinary research further by demonstrating the political potential such collaboration entails. Critical approaches to exceptional experiences remain largely untapped by parapsychologists when their various concepts, interventive strategies, and reading tools could be put in the service of challenging unfair ideologies while also shifting psi studies toward a more transdisciplinary paradigm.

In this paper the author provides a personal perspective on the theme of women in parapsychology. She reflects on her journey in academia, from being the first in her farming family to go to university, to joining the University of Edinburgh in 1986 as Research Assistant to the first Koestler Professor Robert Morris, to her current position as the second holder of the Koestler Chair of Parapsychology. Equality of opportunity is complex, and the author has benefitted greatly from the privileges of being white and middle-class, and of having an open-minded boss (indeed, she speculates that parapsychologists may be particularly open-minded). At the same time, she has experienced gender-related obstacles in her career, including periods of maternity leave, and disproportionate responsibility for dependants and housekeeping. The latter challenges have mostly been managed with part-time working. Perhaps as a consequence, progression to more senior academic positions (notably being promoted to the Koestler Chair in 2016 aged almost 54) has been slow relative to male colleagues. Studies of the profile of UK academics indicate that this is a typical experience for many female researchers. But the same data also show that other less privileged groups are even more poorly represented in academia, most notably black people. In 1994 Rhea White memorably highlighted the advantages of taking a feminist approach to parapsychology. This paper concludes by suggesting that parapsychological research – the questions that we ask, the methods that we employ, and what we learn as a result – will benefit from an even more inclusive academy.

This thesis analyses the discourse of researchers associated with the field of parapsychology - a field of contested knowledge and controversial academic standing. The thesis is positioned as an update and extension of the discourse analysis methodology and analytical framework implemented by Gilbert and Mulkay (1984). Ties to the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge are also delineated within the literature background. Core aims of the thesis include; analysing the discourse of researchers connected to a field of controversial positioning and revealing the social action(s) behind this discourse as points of construction. Uncovering interpretative repertoires was the primary focus of analysis. The thesis also expands upon previous discourse studies by actively exploring the connections between the potential repertoires - presenting an overarching theoretical binding that is noticeably absent from prior analysis within the literature. Researchers with current or previous career ties to parapsychology and UK academic institutions were interviewed in semi-structured phone interviews - discussing their careers, connections, and perspectives of parapsychology. From this interview data, three interpretative repertoires were identified. The ‘categorisation and stake’ repertoire revealed how the researchers managed presentations of identity and stake towards category constructions. The ‘outsider repertoire’ demonstrated how the researchers’ discourse constructs identity borders that differentiate between concepts of ‘insiders’ / ‘outsiders’ and how this is a key tool for ideological positioning. Finally, the ‘reflection of contingency’ repertoire illustrated discursive reflective informal formulations of personal biographies that were used to construct presentations of contingency for scientific and academic practice. Whilst each repertoire is distinctive the social actions between them are connected, including; field boundary work, group border identity construction and personal identity construction. The thesis presents an overarching theoretical concept that binds these actions together: the ‘Positioning Construction Device’. It is proposed that this discursive device incorporates the three identified repertoires as multiple layers of a single device where the main function is positioning within the communicative context.

This thesis is concerned with parapsychology as a field of experimental science. It is based on the discourse analysis of interviews with experimental parapsychologists, in which they provide accounts of their field, their own research practices and experimental outcomes. Drawing on literature from the fields of parapsychology and social studies of science, experimental parapsychologists are characterised as having an asymmetrical standing within science. Whilst they share with other experimental scientists (e.g. psychologists) many of their core assumptions and investigative methods, they differ significantly in how their phenomena, basic propositions and empirical expertise are actively disputed both outwith and within parapsychology. It is this asymmetrical standing, the disputed nature of the reality of their object and of the scientific justification of its existence that makes parapsychologists' accounts of their work particularly interesting to the exploration of discursive practices involved in the construction of what they do a doing science. Drawing both on literature relating to the "linguistic turn" in social studies of science, and on recent methodological developments in discourse analysis, this thesis puts forward that the analysis of parapsychologists' accounts provides a particularly rich insight into how scientific knowledge and practice are discursively accomplished. It thus focuses on how these parapsychologists produce meaningfully variable factual versions of what they do as 'doing science', and of their disputed object as a real phenomenon. The aims of the study were the following: a) to examine parapsychologists' own accounts of their field, research practices and experimental outcomes; b) to analyse how these accounts attend to normative versions of what 'counts' as science; and c) to analyse the discursive resources they use to achieve factual accounts of 'doing science'. The analysis of the data obtained from 20 interviews with experimental parapsychologists begins with the examination of how they constructed their field as a community, as a body of evidence, and as a field with a particular relationship to a standard view of science. The analysis was inspired by the thread of discourse analytic research which focuses on 'fact construction'. It shows how they orient to ideas of demarcation and constitute parapsychology as a field with characteristics that compromise the scientificity of their own knowledge and practice. It also shows how these parapsychologists attend to and manage the relationship between what they do and these compromising characteristics, by building them up as essential properties of the evidence for the phenomena (as essentially ambiguous), and even of psi itself (as essentially elusive). The construction of parapsychology as inherently problematic (i.e. a 'less than perfect' scientific field), allows these parapsychologists to constitute their research work as an almost heroic achievement. Regarding the participants' versions of their research practices, the analysis shows that they make these scientifically safe (e.g., by appealing to, and by presenting them as, in line with, ordinary versions of empirical research). The analysis further explores these parapsychologists' constructions of their practices as doing strict and extreme empiricism, with no assumptions, expectations, theoretical uderpinnings or objectives. Their appeal to the primacy of facts, the doing of methodology, neutrality and the dispensability of theory and models, constitute versions of scientific inquiry that are bearably in line with a version of science as 'doing strict empiricism'. The analysis argues that the variety and extremity of these formulations constitute the extent to which the empirical quality of their research is oriented to by them as something that is not taken for granted (and thus needs to be accounted for). Paradoxically, this same extremity rhetorically breaches normative accounts of doing science, through the intense problematization of theory or expectations of any sort. The final focus of the analysis is the exploration of these parapsychologists' constructions of the outcomes of their own research, specifically their categories of psi and of anomaly. The analysis shows that, though both of these concern the central object and claim of parapsychology, the participants present radically different categories of each, which are functionally meaningful in relation to their versions of doing science. Overall, the thesis argues that these parapsychologists constitute a paradoxical discursive position in relation to normative accounts of doing science. On the one hand, they actively appeal to the primacy of evidence and empiricism On the other hand, they construct a set of characteristics for their research object and evidence that compromise the rhetorical achievements of empiricism; also, the extremity of these accounts is such that this constructed empiricism is made into a remarkable rhetorically brittle account of scientific practice in parapsychology. Finally, the thesis discusses the implications of these arguments for parapsychology, namely, for the development of a reflexive and discursive thread of research within the field. It also examines the limitations of this approach and possible future research.

Henry Sidgwick was a Cambridge philosopher, parapsychologist, political economist, and educational reformer, whose works in ethical and political philosophy, especially The Methods of Ethics (1874), brought classical utilitarianism to its peak of theoretical sophistication and drew out the deep conflicts within that tradition, perhaps within the age of British imperialism itself. Sidgwick was profoundly influenced by J.S. Mill, but his version of utilitarianism – the view that those social or individual actions are right that maximise aggregate happiness – also revived certain Benthamite doctrines, though with more cogent accounts of the ultimate good as pleasure, of total versus average utility, and of the analytical or deductive method. Yet Sidgwick was a cognitivist in ethics who sought both to ground utilitarianism on fundamental intuitions and to encompass within it the principles of common-sense morality (truthfulness, fidelity, justice, etc.); his highly eclectic practical philosophy assimilated much of the rationalism, social conservatism, and historical method of rival views, reflecting such influences as Butler, Clarke, Plato, Aristotle, Seeley, Green, Whewell, and Kant. Ultimately, Sidgwick’s careful academic inquiries failed to demonstrate that one ought always to promote the happiness of all rather than one’s own happiness, and this dualism of practical reason, along with his doubts about the viability of religion, led him to view his results as largely destructive and potentially deleterious in their influence.