Parapsychology

Parapsychology is the study into psychic phenomena. Parapsychology is the experimental study of "psychic" abilities, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, psycho-kinesis and precognition through scientific method. The term parapsychology originated Germany. It found its way into English in the 1930s. The older term "psychical research" was used in America and to some degree in Great Britain.

Organized psychical research began in the United States in 1885. This was a time where there was a height of popular interest in spiritualism and the American Society for Psychical Research was founded. The most prominent American supporter of psychical research was William James. Most American psychologists were and still are hostile to the subject. Many famous mediums were studied. The three main leaders of American psychical research in its early years were Richard Hodgson, James Hervey Hyslop and Walter Franklin Prince.

Funds and fellowships for psychical research were set up in three American universities. These were Harvard, Stanford and Clark. These were run in the first twenty years of the twentieth century. The work undertaken was greatly overshadowed by the work done in the early 1930s by Joseph Banks Rhine with associates in the Psychology Department of Duke University. Rhine carried out many tests with Duke students. Some of them achieved striking results in card guessing. The results were published in 1934. The methods described soon became standard experimental procedure. Rhine's term ESP (extrasensory perception) has become a common word used for psychic abilities. Rhine established the Journal of Parapsychology in 1937. In the 1940’s he carried out investigations in his laboratory at Duke into psychokinesis and precognition.

Parapsychology was seen as controversial. There was hostility from scientific and academic quarters. Objections were made to its experimental, statistical methods and philosophical implications. Fifty years after university studies began, the subject was still poorly established academically. It had not developed a clear professional structure and status. Scientific clarity appeared to be a distant goal in the 1970’s and 1980’s, as parapsychology merged with curiosity in UFO and alien abduction, witchcraft, New Age alternative religions and concepts of holistic health. The revival of interest in occultism created a wide information network. During the 1970’ and 1980’s, research in parapsychology was being undertaken by various academic centres in many parts of America. This later experimental work was very diverse. Researchers attempted to bring physiology, psychiatry and studies of animal behaviour to link with parapsychology.

While the so-called movements of occultism and the “New Age” focus on personal experiences and different forms of revelation, parapsychologists focus their research on the collection of empirical data through scientific procedures.

Parapsychologists study many different phenomena. It includes information about the thoughts and emotional states of persons, objects or events and future events (precognition). PK refers to actions exerted on our environment. This is what has commonly referred to as the effect of “mind over matter.” As well as studying the phenomena of moving objects, the effects on electronic and computer technology, photographic film and organic matter are also studied. The study of the use of organic matter includes healing and affecting the growth of plants.

There are many phenomena that may involve different processes. These include: Apparitions Auras Communication through mediums Haunted houses Healing Near death experiences Out-of-body experiences Poltergeists Recollections of past lives

There is a lot of literature on these topics and these can be seen in samples presented in the Parapsychology Foundation’s Bibliographies. There are many unexplained phenomena that have been recorded through time. The world is full of anomalies. Parapsychologists do not study everything that is unexplained. The media often imply that parapsychology is the study of bizarre and weird phenomena. Despite these implications parapsychology is nothing of the sort. Parapsychology is not concerned with astrology, UFO’s, paganism, vampires, alchemy or witchcraft.

Many scientists have suspicious views of parapsychology because it has become associated with a huge variety of mysterious phenomena, fringe topics and pseudoscience. Parapsychology is often linked with a broad range of "psychic" entertainers, magicians when it actually has no concern with these topics. Some self proclaimed "psychic practitioners" call themselves parapsychologists when actually they are nothing of the sort Parapsychologists do not usually study a variety of misunderstood psychological phenomena such as dreams, hypnosis, hallucinations and multiple personality disorder. While these phenomena may include ESP or other parapsychological experiences, they are normally left to psychologists and psychiatrists to study.

A good way to limit the subject matter covered by parapsychology is to emphasise phenomena that suggest new or currently misunderstood ways to interact with our environment. Phenomena such as ESP and PK can be seen as examples because of the interaction in terms of the information acquired and action on the physical world. Other phenomena like apparitions, healing, mediumistic communications, poltergeists and NDE’s may be conceptualized in these ways even if we do not understand the detail of the processes underlying their manifestation. We must avoid definitions of the subjects studied under parapsychology based on theoretical statements such as those that presuppose the non physical nature of the mind, the action of particular physical processes or discarnate agency.

Educational Opportunities
There are few places where people can find out where they can learn parapsychology from those who know what they are talking about.

Formal Training Opportunities
Formal parapsychology training is difficult to find but not impossible. If you want to get a post-graduate degree in parapsychology the highly respected establishment of the Koestler Parapsychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland is a good place to go. If you can move to Edinburgh it would give you first rate training in the field.

Parapsychologist Adrian Parker offers doctoral supervision in the areas of altered states and parapsychology at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. In Europe, the doctoral program is based mainly on a dissertation. There is course work but this is in the area of methodology, research design and statistics. A few additional courses are chosen in areas reflecting your area of interest. Placements are dependent on the student having financial support in order to gain entry to doctoral education.

The Rhine Research Centre offers a six week summer course on parapsychology. The course allows you to meet with and learn from, trained parapsychologists. The location of the classes may vary. Parapsychologist William Everist teaches a beginning parapsychology course at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona. This is close to a very haunted Tombstone where investigations have been carried out before.

Online Parapsychology Courses
In recent years online parapsychology courses have been developed. You must ensure that these are run by true parapsychologists and not just anyone throwing material together.

The Australian Institute of Parapsychological Research, Inc. (with parapsychologists Michael Thalbourne and Lance Storm, editors of the Australian Journal of Parapsychology) has two online courses that are available to the public. The courses are a certificate course and an advance certificate course in parapsychology.

Parapsychologist Loyd Auerbach offers a certificate distance learning program in parapsychology in association with the HCH Institute. It’s a 60 hour course with telephone classes and mp3 lectures. Some lectures are also available on CD-ROM. Loyd also has classes including: Introduction to Parapsychology, Parapsychology: The Cross Over Science, The Search for Life after Death and Ghost Hunting. Loyd is an acknowledged expert on hauntings and spontaneous case field investigation work. He also has vast media experience.

Books
If you want to learn parapsychology on your own there are a number of books that are very useful. There are books on general parapsychology, ESP research, theory of psi, PK research, the exploration of miracles, Channelling investigations and mediumship, life after death, reincarnation, cases studies of paranormal investigations and poltergeists.

Internet Resources
There are many internet resources on the topic of parapsychology. The most trusted ones are listed on the parapsychology association website.

Parapsychology Journals
One way of keeping up to date with the latest research is through reading journals. The main ones are Journal of Parapsychology, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, European Journal of Parapsychology, Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research and Journal of Scientific Exploration.

What does it mean to study psychic phenomena? A long held assumption is that the worlds of the subjective and objective are completely distinct with no overlap. Parapsychology is the study of phenomena suggesting that there is a strict separation between subjective and objective may be wrong. Human experience suggests that some phenomena occasionally are not purely subjective nor is it purely objective. From a scientific perspective, these types of phenomena are called anomalous because they are hard to explain within classical physics models. They do begin to make sense based on modern physical models.