Parapsychology

Definitions

History

Evidence for ESP

Variables associated with ESP

Psychokinesis (PK)

Telepathy

Clairvoyance

Precognition

Survival after death

“Modus operandi” of sensitives

Applications of parapsychology

Theories of parapsychology

bibliography

Parapsychology, or psychical research, is the area of science which studies such topics as telepathy and clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, and survival after death. Its data seem to show that in some circumstances it is possible for some persons to make direct responses to events not present to their senses as well as to future events, and probably also to influence directly the movement of objects by “willing.”

These abilities have no known physical correlates. The research from which the abilities are inferred must therefore be scrutinized with great care. If we accept the data, we will come to the radical conclusion that there are forces or relations which physics has not yet explored. We will also enlarge our concept of human potentiality (and presumably the potentiality of other animals) to include very broad contacts with other individuals and with the outer world, because information that apparently is not registering upon the normal sensory mechanisms is nevertheless influencing behavior.

Such concepts can be exciting. However, we all know that a high level of excitation does not always lead to adaptive behavior. Psychic research has probably excited more outraged protest than any scientific contention since Darwin’s, but it has also activated such constructive work as critical examination of its data and a search for further information. Perhaps each person’s choice between flat a priori denial (or acceptance) and critical interest reflects the balance between his need for simple, immediate certainty and his tolerance for ambiguity.

Definitions

Parapsychology has developed a distinctive vocabulary, in part because some of its research problems are unique. For an example of one semantic difficulty, let us compare the paradigm of parapsychological research to the paradigm of research in verbal learning.

To study verbal learning, the experimenter ordinarily designates certain test material as the “stimulus,” presents this material to the subject, records the subject’s responses, and scores these responses by comparing them with the original material. In parapsychology the experimenter similarly designates certain test material, does not present this material to the subject, records the subject’s responses or “calls,” and scores them by comparing them with the original material. If the scores are high, is it semantically correct to call the nonpresented, concealed material a “stimulus” for the subject? The question is debatable. To bypass this issue, the neutral word “target” is substituted for “stimulus”; and when the subject’s response corresponds to the target, this response is called a “hit.”

Some term is needed to designate an extrachance number of hits when subjects call concealed, random targets. ESP, standing for extrasensory perception, is the term most commonly used, and it designates both the putative effect (as, “We must ask whether this is evidence for ESP”) and the putative process which underlies the subject’s behavior (as, “She was showing strong ESP ability”). Some find the term ESP objectionable because it prejudges that the psychological process is perceptual. “Psi” or “psi gamma” is sometimes used instead of ESP.

The three conventional subclasses of ESP are defined by their experimental arrangements. When the target is someone’s thoughts, the ESP is called telepathy. When the target is an object or (nonsubjective) event, the ESP is called clairvoyance. When the target does not exist until after the subject calls it, the ESP is called precognition. There are also various combinations, subclasses, and ambiguous experimental arrangements. For example, an object which is known to someone could be either a clairvoyant or a telepathic target. Success at calling such a target is often designated GESP for (“general” ESP). An object known to no one at the time of the subject’s call, but later known to someone, could be either a target for clairvoyance or a target for precognitive telepathy.

A markedly different experimental arrangement requires the subject to hope or to “will” that a moving object (like a die or a coin) will come to rest in a certain position. The hypothesis examined by this arrangement is that the subject can influence the movement of the object without using any known physical means. The term most commonly used to identify this hypothesized event or ability is PK (“psychokinesis”); “psi kappa” is occasionally used as a more neutral designation.

History

Two events are landmarks in the history of parapsychology; each marks the onset of a period of increased rigor in investigations. The first occurred in 1882, when a group composed mainly of scholars from Cambridge University founded in London the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Its purpose, printed on the inside cover of its Journal, was “to examine without prejudice or prepossession and in a scientific spirit those faculties of man, real or supposed, which appear to be inexplicable on any generally recognized hypothesis.”

The SPR followed three major lines of investigation: collection and critical analysis of “spontaneous cases” of telepathy, hauntings, and so on; studies of “sensitives” or mediums to find if they gave veridical information, and if so, what theirmodus operandi was; and experimentation. Critical standards were high, and men distinguished in other areas have been active in the society. Its past presidents include Henry Sidgwick, the earl of Balfour, William James, Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, Charles Richet, Andrew Lang, Henri Bergson, F. C. S. Schiller, Gilbert Murray, Lord Rayleigh, Hans Driesch, C. D. Broad, and Gardner Murphy. It publishes a Journal and Proceedings,and occasional books and pamphlets. Similar groups have been formed in such countries as Holland, Sweden, France, and Greece. In the United States, for example, the American Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1885, with Simon Newcomb as its first president.

What was to prove a second major event occurred in 1927, when J. B. Rhine joined William McDougall at Duke University to work in this field. Rhine’s basic procedure required subjects to guess at the order of concealed, randomized cards; he then evaluated the hits statistically to find if they were extrachance. Rhine performed experiments, trained a cadre of research workers, published books and articles, and stimulated both scientific and popular interest. The parapsychology laboratory which he headed (as of August 1965, the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man) and the Journal of Parapsychology, where most of the laboratory’s research was published, changed the emphasis of research so that variants of the card-calling technique became the method used by most investigators. Rhine introduced a new vocabulary, including the terms parapsychology, extrasensory perception (ESP), psychokinesis (PK), and psi-missing (extrachance low scores). He also introduced the ESP cards: a deck of 25 cards marked with a circle, a cross, a square, a star, or a set of three parallel wavy lines. (For a summary of Rhine’s work, see Rhine & Pratt 1957.)

Evidence for ESP

Unsystematic evidence. Evidence on ESP breaks rather sharply into two categories. One is material that is unsystematically collected, as in a spontaneous case where a mother hears her son’s voice calling her at the time her son is in an accident, miles away. Investigation shows many such reports to be memory distortions or exaggerations but others to be veridical in that the event (e.g., the accident) happened as described and the “percipient” described it before information was available to him normally. Some descriptions include many unusual and accurate details. Any case may be dismissed as coincidence. An accumulation of many authenticated cases may or may not seem intuitively to be stronger than the single case (Tyrrell 1942).

Reports of apparent telepathy during psychoanalysis are frequently published and represent a subclass of the qualitative material. Analysts usually follow Freud (1922) in ascribing the telepathy to strong emotional needs or bonds, such as unconscious identification of percipient and “agent” and use of a repressed, archaic mode of communication, or follow Jung in considering ESP a normal function.

Laboratory evidence

The other category of evidence comes from controlled laboratory work in which evaluations are made through statistical analyses instead of intuition. Routine controls include randomized targets; the absence of sensory cues to guide the subject; a permanent record of the targets that is made without knowledge of the subject’s calls; and a permanent record of the calls that is made without knowledge of the targets. Only two examples will be cited in detail: one of research with a pretested individual, the other of research with groups of unselected fifth-grade and sixthgrade children.

A selected, pretested case. S. G. Soal, a mathematician at the University of London, tested many preliminary subjects in card calling. None scored above the chance level, but at a colleague’s insistent suggestion Soal re-examined the records to see if the calls corresponded to the cards preceding or following the designated target. Two subjects’ calls showed this pattern. Soal called back those two for a formal experimental series, and both made extraordinarily high scores in this later work (Soal & Bateman 1954). We shall describe one: a housewife, Mrs. Stewart. In her 130 formal sessions, over a period of four years, she called the order of 37,100 randomized cards. There was one chance in five of each call’s being right by accident. Mean chance expectation was 7,420 hits; her score was 9,410. The probability of obtaining this score or one more extreme by chance is approximately one in 10⁷⁰.

For this or any experiment it is proper to inquire how these statistically impressive results compare with similar published experiments with null results and other null data which presumably lie unpublished in file cases. Are the data still significant when corrected for selection? G. E. Hutchinson, a Yale biologist, has worked out an answer. He computed that if Soal’s experiment had been performed once a minute for the number of minutes in the history of the earth (estimated at about a thousand million years, or 1.57 x 10¹⁵ minutes) and had yielded chance results every other time, the results of Soal’s work would still be highly significant when pooled with the others.

Unequivocally, then, Mrs. Stewart’s results were extrachance. But can they be explained away as due to sensory cues or other poor experimental conditions? We must next examine the conduct of the experiment.

The targets which Mrs. Stewart tried to call were determined from random numbers, which by an elaborate but clearly stated procedure were translated into randomly ordered letters. Targets were exposed in one room; Mrs. Stewart wrote her calls in another. The room door was usually ajar, but invariably there was a screen between doorway and targets; an observer in Mrs. Stewart’s room watched her, and another person in the other room made sure that agent and target remained behind the screen. Details of procedure varied somewhat over the years. Perhaps the most striking subseries was the 108th through 113th sessions, when Mrs. Stewart was vacationing near Antwerp. Targets and experimenter were in London. At a predetermined time, targets were exposed in London, and Mrs. Stewart made her calls (200 per session) in Belgium. Instead of the 240 hits that represent mean chance expectation, she made 345 hits, an average of 28.75 per cent correct. The probability of at least so many hits being a chance event is one in 10¹¹. Since the average of the other 124 sessions was lower (22.92 per cent correct), the contrast implies that there had been no sensory leakage from room to room during the other sessions. Clearly, in this subseries no sensory cues were available; its extrachance results were obtained from what seems an impeccably controlled procedure.

Unselected subjects. We next turn to an example of work with subjects who had not been selected on the basis of previous testing. J. G. Van Busschbach (1956), an inspector of schools in Amsterdam, conducted a series of experiments on children in the fifth and sixth grades. Targets were randomized lists of five symbols or five colors or five words. Each class’s teacher sat at the back of the room behind a screen and looked at the targets; an observer watched the class and set the timing; the children wrote their guesses. Out of 20,190 calls there were 174 more hits than mean chance expectation. The probability (p) of obtaining this score or one more extreme by chance alone is 5 in 1,000. Van Busschbach subsequently replicated the procedure in Amsterdam and Utrecht, with substantially the same results. He then journeyed to the laboratory at Duke University and conducted a third series in North Carolina, where he again found similar scores for the fifth-grade and sixth-grade children. The grand total for these grades was 83,320 calls with a deviation of 579, significantly above mean chance expectation (p < .001).

Suggestive sidelights are cast on the data, indicating attitudinal factors that were crucial to the above-chance scores, by the consistently lower averages of seventh-grade and eighth-grade students (whose feelings toward their teachers are typically more detached than those of fifth graders and sixth graders); the lower scores when teachers were not adequately informed about the experiment and had less interest in it; and the higher scores on colors than on words.

A great many other experiments, in which targets are concealed from teachers or experimenters as well as from subjects, have yielded extrachance results under well-controlled conditions. The data seem to show that although ESP occurs, it usually operates at a low level; information obtained from ESP is scanty and undependable. Van Busschbach’s results are typical: 5 out of 25 calls would on average be correct by chance; and his obtained average was only 5.17. To examine an ability which is so inefficient, the experimenter must use extreme care in maintaining tightly controlled conditions and must also accumulate a large body of data.

Variables associated with ESP

Physical variables

There is no good evidence of any relation between physical variables and ESP. The following negative findings are of special interest.

Radiation. Vasiliev (1962), in a report of ESP research in several Soviet laboratories, wrote that his subjects responded to telepathic suggestions equally well under normal conditions and in a lead chamber. The chamber shielded them from electromagnetic waves in the range between X rays and waves of one kilometer, and attenuated both longer and shorter waves. [SeeRadiation.]

Distance. Mrs. Stewart’s results, no worse at two hundred miles than at a few feet from the target, are typical of what has been found in other comparisons, with distances varied up to about four thousand miles.

Target size. A corollary of the absence of distance effects (with terrestrial orders of magnitude) is that size of target should be unimportant; this was found by Pratt and Woodruff (1939), who tested the same subjects on targets which were large, medium, and very small. Scores were similar for all target sizes, and for all sizes the subjects made significantly higher scores on the first few calls than on later calls.

Time. No clear relation to time has been found: when random precognition targets were selected either a short or a relatively long time after subjects made their calls, extrachance scores were similar (Anderson 1959a).

Summary. It is of course impossible to prove a negative, but what evidence we have indicates that ESP success is independent of space-time and radiation variables.

Physiological variables

Several types of physiological variables have been investigated. Some of the interesting but fragmentary findings deserve discussion.

Age, sex, race. High ESP scores have been found in children, adolescents, and adults; in both sexes; and in different races. There have been no systematic comparisons, and comparative research would be difficult to perform, since it would be necessary to control attitudes. The incidence of ESP ability in the population is unknown, but inferences may be drawn from the many experiments with unselected subjects that have given extrachance results. Probably the best working hypothesis is that the incidence of ESP ability is like that of visual imagery. Some seems present in almost every normal person; it is markedly stronger in some persons than others; and there are a few (with eidetic imagery, or the special “sensitives”) whose ability is so strong that it seems qualitatively different from the usual one.

Body changes. Research on body changes associated with differences in ESP scores is scanty. There is some evidence (Huby & Wilson 1961) that depressant drugs like sodium amytal lower the scoring rate, and also that scores change when there are differences in general body relaxation (measured by galvanic skin response). A single experiment testing subjects under abnormal conditions of oxygen and temperature showed significantly lower ESP scores than with the same subjects under normal conditions (Woodruff 1943). The abnormal conditions were experienced as disagreeable, and the difference in ESP scores may reflect mood rather than physiological change. A single experiment demonstrated that patients hospitalized for cerebral concussion had significantly higher ESP scores than did accident patients without concussion (see Schmeidler & McConnell 1958); but because interviews and a personality test showed the concussion patients with high scores to be more passively, uncritically acceptant of incoming impressions, it was tentatively concluded that the high scores might result from the mood induced by the concussion and hospitalization rather than from the injury itself.

Body changes as ESP responses. In five carefully conducted experiments with blind scoring, a finger plethysmograph was attached to the subject to compare changes in his vasoconstriction when an agent in another room quietly examined neutral material (such as an unfamiliar name) or material which, if the subject had contemplated it, would probably have markedly changed his vasoconstriction level (such as the name of a close relative or of a political enemy). In four of the experiments there was significant correspondence between vasoconstriction and exposure to the critical targets; in one there was not (see Dean 1966). One of these experiments also reports a significant correspondence between the target and certain electroencephalogram (EEG) changes; but there was none between the target and galvanic skin changes, and only a chance number of hits when the subject tried to call the target (Tart 1963).

Several earlier, less rigorous experiments have also reported ESP changes using plethysmographic or EEG techniques. Additional unreplicated experiments describe significant ESP (or PK) changes in the movement of paramecia, in plant growth, and in the healing of artificially produced wounds in caged mice handled by a man who claimed to be a “healer” (as compared with the wounds of mice in cages handled by nonhealers). These latter claims are so novel and striking that replications with very carefully controlled procedures are required before they can be absorbed into the body of parapsychological findings.

Summary. In short, several experiments report biological changes associated with ESP (or PK). The findings are provocative and seem to demand replication and further investigation.

Psychological variables

Only a few examples can be given here of the many well-conducted experiments showing significant relations between ESP scores and psychological variables. Findings seem to converge on the generalization that extrachance high ESP scores are likely to result from a mood of comfortable, relaxed, friendly interest, while extrachance low ESP scores (psi-missing) are likely to result from a mood of negativism, distrust, resentment, or reserve.

Three difficulties beset research on this topic. One is that moods are almost impossible to measure directly; they must be inferred. A second is that the operative “mood” for ESP seems to be a consequence of the attitude of the experimenter as well as of the subject. Traditionally, experimenters do not report their own feelings; thus, in much research some of the necessary information is lacking. The third is that there seem to be individual differences in optimal mood for psi-hitting: some subjects score higher when challenged, alert, on their mettle; others, when they feel accepted and approved. Experimental designs that are simple may be inadequate.

Teacher-pupil relations. Anderson and White (1957) report a series of classroom experiments. Targets were lists of randomized ESP symbols, each list separately determined from a table of random numbers and stapled into an opaque container with a response sheet on top. The classroom teachers who acted as experimenters never saw the targets. Teachers gave their own pupils instructions for taking the test, then distributed and later collected both the ESP material and a questionnaire assessing the pupil’s attitude toward the teacher. Teachers were not permitted to examine these questionnaires but were asked to state for each pupil whether he would be chosen as a member of an ideal class. In this series, because of the excellent introduction and indoctrination from Anderson and White, we can feel confident of the mood of the experimenter: teachers were cooperative, interested, and willing participants.

Anderson and White provide a summary of results obtained from 18 teachers, 546 students, and 65,275 ESP calls. Its most striking datum is the difference between ESP scores of students who liked their teachers and whom the teachers would include in an ideal class and scores of students who disliked their teachers and whom the teachers would exclude from an ideal class. The former had a mean of 5.31 (out of a possible 25); the latter had a mean of 4.54; and the difference between them was significant (p < .001). Later replications by these and other investigators were sometimes consistent and sometimes inconsistent with this pattern, and ad hoc interpretations are of course available for the inconsistent data.

Intelligence and school grades. A secondary, related finding of the Anderson-White research came from the division of the same ESP scores according to the marks received in schoolwork (Anderson 1959b). Students with grades of A or B had higher mean ESP scores than students with grades of D or E, and the difference between groups was significant (p < .001).

If we tentatively conclude that high classroom morale (inferred from questionnaire answers or from high grades) is associated with above-chance classroom ESP scores and that low morale is associated with below-chance ESP scores, we have a ready explanation for otherwise anomalous data on ESP and intelligence. Repeated studies have shown a low positive correlation between intelligence-test scores and ESP scores when the ESP tests are given in a school or college. This pattern is superficially contradicted by the high ESP scores reported for a class of retarded children. But if we infer that morale in a retarded class may, with the right teacher, in fact be high, the results appear consistent with each other and with the Anderson-White data.

Open-mindedness versus disbelief. Attitude toward the task at hand is one component of morale; and if the task is considered impossible, morale is likely to be low. This factor was examined in a prolonged series of experiments where subjects were categorized (without experimenters’ knowing their ESP scores) as either flatly rejecting all possibility of paranormal success under the conditions of the experiment or as not rejecting it (Schmeidler & McConnell 1958). Results of the 448,575 ESP calls showed that the rejecting group had a mean score of 4.92, while the other had a mean of 5.12. The difference is significant (p < .001). Results in certain subseries were sometimes inconsistent with the general tendency, as were some replications by other investigators; but the majority of replications have reported the same tendency.

Personality traits. Personality tests administered to ESP subjects by Nicol and Humphrey (1955) showed significant positive correlations(p ≤ .03) between ESP scores and happy-go-lucky disposition, emotional stability, calm trustfulness, low irritability level, and freedom from depression or nervous tension. Most investigations have indicated similar relationships. On the basis of administering Rorschach cards to 1,004 subjects (Schmeidler 1960), for example, significant interaction was shown between social adjustment and open-mindedness-disbelief (p < .001). Higher ESP scores were found for those subjects whose Rorschachs had many movement and color responses, i.e., those who (in Rorschach terminology) had a rich inner life and emotional responsiveness. In addition, the data indicated a low level of ESP success for subjects who were overintellectual, extremely reserved, or somewhat overimpulsive. This seems consistent with the general patterns found by Nicol and Humphrey, as does Shields’s finding (1962) of low mean ESP scores for the withdrawn children she tested and high mean ESP scores for the others. [SeeProjective Methods, article onthe rorschach test.]

Target and testing conditions. In many experiments the independent variable has been the nature of the target or such changes in test conditions as illumination versus darkness or knowledge of scores versus no information. Variables denoted objectively, “from the outside,” such as sex of experimenter or target content, have until now given inconsistent results from one research project to the next. It may, however, be premature to draw a negative conclusion about the ineffectiveness of “objective” conditions; recently reported research from Czechoslovakia points in the opposite direction. Ryzl (Ryzl & Pratt 1963) hypnotized a subject and found not only a high rate of ESP success (p < .001) but also (with Pratt, a careful, experienced American visitor, acting as coexperimenter) that the subject’s correct calls came on certain of the sealed cards but not on others (p < .001). There have as yet been no attempts at replication with other subjects and other experimenters.

Where variables are described “from the inside,” in terms of the subject’s feelings about them, higher ESP scores are usually found to be associated with lively, spontaneous interest and feelings of social warmth. Typical are the Pratt and Woodruff data (1939), in which highest ESP scores were obtained on the first calls of each new size of target, while the experimenter’s friendly challenge was still ringing in the subject’s ears. Another example is Scherer’s results (1948) with his “marble machine,” where subjects try to call the next color in a randomized series of marbles. When Scherer placed the machine in the meeting room of the Duke laboratory, instructed the staff and visitors to call only if they felt a strong hunch, and restricted them to a maximum of two calls a day, ESP scores were high. However, when Scherer required repeated calls in the same session, ESP scores were significantly lower (p < .001). High ESP scores apparently were related to the mood evoked by that machine in that situation but did not relate to the machine itself.

Where two types of targets or testing conditions that differ in preferability are used in a single experiment, subjects are likely to score above chance on one and below chance on the other. Rao (1965), summarizing his own research and that of others, cites more than a dozen experiments at a high level of significance in which this preferential effect appears. He follows Rhine in suggesting that dislike of one condition “drains off the psimissing” and focuses psi success on the other condition. As in other research, internal evidence indicates that preferences are determined by subtle motivational factors rather than by the objective nature of the target. In North Carolina, for example, young women scored higher on familiar English words than on synonyms in Telugu, an Indian language unfamiliar to them; but young men scored higher on the exotic Telugu words than on the English ones. This seems consistent with the findings of masculinity-femininity studies in the southeastern United States and with other research on attitudes in this area, which indicate marked conservatism and a shrinking from the unfamiliar as typical of women but a more adventurous attitude as more typical of men.

Summary. In general, it would seem that high ESP scores are associated with the kind of mood and personal interaction which make for high morale and good productivity in other tasks, while low ESP scores are associated with negativism and withdrawal.

Replicability of ESP experiments

There is no ESP experiment that has been replicated frequently and has shown similar results on all replications. This fact has received much attention. Interpretations fall into three main categories. (1) Any apparently significant finding is an accident of malobservation or of coincidence. (2) The subtle variables determining whether ESP ability will result in psi-hitting or psi-missing have been inadequately identified; thus, the key psychological conditions cannot yet be adequately controlled and results therefore vary from one project to the next. (3) The experimenter is an intrinsic part of the ESP situation; spontaneous, lively interest helps ESP success; no experimenter can maintain spontaneous interest indefinitely; therefore, replications eventually fail for the same experimenter (and would not be adequate as replications if a markedly different person substituted for him).

Psychokinesis (PK)

Modern research in PK, initiated by Rhine, examines whether a subject can influence how a moving object comes to rest. In a typical procedure subjects are required to release dice and to hope that a specified die face will turn up. Necessary precautions include a control for instrument bias: with dice, all six faces should be called equal numbers of times; or, with the placement technique introduced by Cox, an equal number of calls should be made for the right and left sides of the surface on which the moving objects fall. It is also necessary to control for motor skill and manipulations: a typical procedure with dice is to use a mechanical release and to arrange that the dice fall through a series of baffles which make them bounce repeatedly.

As in ESP experiments, the pattern of success and failure (i.e., the difference between conditions) rather than the total number of successes is sometimes specified as the dependent variable. In PK it is frequently found that when a subject knows he is to hope for a certain die face 24 times in succession, he will have more success on the first six tries than on the last six (“decline effect”).

Evidence for PK

Although a routine control in ESP research requires that data be recorded by someone who does not know the target (and of course that the target be recorded by someone who does not know the subject’s response to it), in most PK experiments the records are made by the experimenter, who knows what the subject had hoped for. Repeated extrachance data from such experiments can be explained away as recording errors caused by experimenter bias; however, the accuracy of these results can be defended when independent records are made by two individuals. Many such experiments report significant PK effects with p levels ranging to .00005.

In four experiments, data were recorded by a person who did not know the targets (i.e., did not know which position of the die would be scored correct). Two of these studies used the ingenious procedure of randomizing and recording target order but concealing this order from the subject. The subject was instructed to hope while throwing the die that the uppermost face would correspond to the (unknown) targets and to record for each throw which face was up. Records were returned to the experimenter for scoring (see Fisk & West 1958). Results were highly significant (p < .001) and perhaps can best be interpreted as evidence for PK. A strained alternative explanation is that the subject learned clairvoyantly which faces would be correct and made autistic scoring errors. One experiment with photographic recording showed chance results and another showed total successes near chance but a significant predicted decline effect, p = .002 (see McConnell et al. 1955).

Relation to physical variables

No clear relation has been observed between PK success and distance or weight of moving objects. The most recent work on distance was an experiment by Fahler (1959) with nine subjects, each of whom made sixty throws (each throw with six cubes) for a left-right placement test, i.e., subjects were instructed in half the throws to hope that the cubes would roll to the left of the medial line of a table, and in the other half to hope that the cubes would roll to the right. Subject and experimenter were in a room 27 yards from the cubes and the placement table; throws were made by electromagnetic release. Independent records of the cubes were made by Fahler and a coexperimenter, both of whom knew the target; discrepancies were checked by re-examination of the cubes. Results were significantly high (p < .001) and were substantially higher than in another series when the same subjects were in the room with the cubes and table. Various other experiments have compared light with heavy dice and a single die with many dice. Scores are usually lower with a single die, and experimenters usually conclude that conditions which interest the subject are likely to be associated with higher scores.

Relation to psychological variables

Experimenters often comment that excitement and challenge are conducive to PK success and that boredom militates against success. A single exploratory experiment by Van de Castle (1958) suggested that “expansive” subjects scored higher than “compressive” ones (p = .02) and that when these same subjects were separated by Rorschach scores into a spontaneous group and an inhibited group, the spontaneous subjects showed above-chance PK success and the inhibited ones scored below chance. These indications are consistent with the other experimenters’ casual observations. No major research has been performed on psychological variables in PK.

Telepathy

When a percipient tries to call randomized, prerecorded targets which an agent is trying to “send,” extrachance scores may be interpreted as responses either to the agent’s thoughts (telepathy) or to the physical targets (clairvoyance). Several experiments with successful results have examined “pure telepathy.” McMahan (1946), for example, used a private code that was never written or spoken to translate the digits of a random-number table into ESP symbols. Subjects called the symbols with results significantly better than chance (p - .003). Data were checked by an associate to whom Mc-Mahan conveyed the code by allusion (e.g., “The number of us who went swimming last Saturday stands for ’star’”). Even with this procedure, however, the metaphysical criticism was made that clairvoyance could not be excluded; subjects might have been responding “clairvoyantly” to the experimenter’s brain changes rather than “telepathically” to her thoughts. At this level it is clear that pure telepathy is not demonstrable; indeed, by the canons of operationism the distinction between telepathy and clairvoyance is scientifically meaningless.

At a less rigorous level, there is substantial evidence for telepathic interaction. Mrs. Stewart, for example, showed consistently high ESP scores with some agents and chance scores with others, although she had no normal knowledge of who the agent was. Stuart (see Rice & Townsend 1962) found significantly higher GESP scores in twins and in engaged couples than in control pairs; Rice and Townsend discovered significantly higher scores in married couples than in control pairs; Schmeidler (1961) found significantly higher scores in subjects who were predicted (from examination of their paired Rorschachs) to be friendly if they knew each other than in subjects predicted to be hostile or reserved if they knew each other (these latter giving significantly low GESP scores). Such data fit well into the conceptual framework of telepathy; they support the hypothesis although they do not prove it.

Current research on dreams, using quantitative methods, may soon provide a means of manipulating the variables and testing the interpretations of telepathy or GESP, as illustrated by an ongoing series of experiments by Ullman and his co-workers (1966). Targets in these experiments are reproductions of pictures; each reproduction is put into an opaque envelope by someone not otherwise connected with the experiment. The subject is prepared for sleep with apparatus for recording rapid eye movement (REM) and EEG. The agent then retires to a distant room, where he randomly selects from the pile of envelopes the one that will contain the target for the night. The agent opens the envelope and studies the picture; he has no normal means of communicating with the experimenter or subject until the next morning, after all data have been recorded. The experimenter in the meantime wakes the subject when REM and EEG give evidence of dreaming, asks the subject to report his dream, and makes a tape recording of all statements. Further reports and associations are recorded the following morning. A typical experiment consists of 12 such sessions, each with a different picture and a different subject. Judging is blind, and consists of both ranking and rating the correspondence between coded pictures and the coded record of the entire night’s dreams and the subject’s responses in the morning. Each experiment thus serves as its own control.

Data have shown significantly higher scores with an agent who was so interested in the research that he continued with the project than with an agent who resigned as soon as the experiment was completed; and they have demonstrated that an outstandingly successful subject, when called back for an experiment of seven nights’ dreaming, continued to provide significantly high correspondence. Interesting qualitative data, and indications that color reports may be particularly good indicators of telepathy, provide leads which can be pursued further.

Dean (1964) developed a clever technique using REM as the dependent variable in a telepathy or GESP experiment. When REM and EEG records indicated that the subject was beginning to dream, the experimenter looked either at a picture with a horizontal composition or at a blank picture (target order had of course been randomized and predetermined). Subjects’ eye movements were scored blind. Significantly more horizontal eye movements occurred when the experimenter looked at the horizontal pictures than when he looked at the blanks. This tidy procedure has not yet been replicated. [SeeDreams; Nervous System, article onElectroencephalography.]

There are also some scraps of evidence about the dynamics of telepathy. Warcollier (1948) and others, in qualitative research with drawings, describe “contamination”: several individuals tried to draw a target selected by a stranger but instead apparently responded to each other’s ideas. Soal similarly reports that when Mrs. Stewart was consciously trying to respond to an agent with whom she usually failed, the accuracy of her responses was at a chance level; at the same time, she showed extrachance correspondence to the simultaneous messages of a different agent with whom she usually succeeded. Among Schmeidler’s subjects there was a low but significant negative correlation between GESP scores and scores when the agent, ignorant of target content, hoped the percipient would fail. These data imply that the percipient is often unable to shield out telepathic messages. Similar indications come from spontaneous cases, as when leading men in a Dutch town tried to hold a seance where they would receive messages from the dead. A schoolboy across the street yearned to be one of their group but instead occupied himself with an English poem from a school assignment. The planchette under the hands of the leading citizens wrote an excerpt from the boy’s poem (see Murphy 1961, pp. 190 f.).

Clairvoyance

Extrachance results when a subject calls targets known to no one may be considered evidence for clairvoyance; but if someone later knows the targets, the results can be interpreted as (precognitive) telepathy and, although it seems farfetched, any clairvoyance results can perhaps be interpreted as evidence of PK. One recent experiment which could preclude precognitive telepathy (Schmeidler 1964) required a computer to select random digits as targets, then to record the subjects’ calls, to score the hits, and to print out the total hits but not the targets. With this procedure, no one knew what the targets were, and if the digits had been truly random, no one could ever have known what they were. The digits in fact were part of a pseudorandom series, and the possibility now exists that the series could be reconstituted from the computer tapes. If Schmeidler destroys the tapes and other records before the series is reconstituted, precognitive telepathy is ruled out, but Schmeidler will open herself to allegations of fraud (Price 1955; Hansel 1966). Subjects were college undergraduates. Hits were significantly above chance (p = .001) for those runs where the computer’s program was correct. In a second series where conditions were slightly altered, the total scores were insignificantly below chance, but subjects who had no confidence that any of their calls were correct scored significantly below chance (p = .003), and subjects who thought that a few of their calls were correct scored significantly higher (p = .002). Thus there is some indication that “pure clairvoyance” occurs (if we disregard the counterhypothesis that the computer’s choice of random digits was influenced by PK), but the results have not been replicated.

Precognition

Extrachance results when subjects call random targets not yet selected may be considered evidence for precognition; but an alternative explanation is that the selection of the targets is influenced by PK. We must therefore examine how precognition targets are chosen. Let us consider nine precognition experiments published in 1959-1964 (seeJournal of Parapsychology). In two of them, targets were selected by a computer programmed to select random (presumably pseudo-random) numbers; in six, by the experimenter’s throwing dice or coins as the directive for entering the random-number table which would designate targets; in one, by using Dow-Jones averages of a specified future date as the directive for entering the random-number table. All experiments yielded significant results (p ranged from .02 to .0001). The most common procedure involved throwing ten-sided dice, performing complicated prespecified computations on the results of the throw, and using the outcome of the computations as the directive for page, column, and row of entering the random number table. For PK to be effective here, it would have to have a pinpoint accuracy far greater than any PK research has indicated. Although in theory PK cannot be ruled out, the more conservative interpretation of the results seems to be that they demonstrate precognition.

Comparisons of psychological variables in precognitive and in simultaneous ESP have been scanty. Experimental evidence gives some indication that similar mood and attitudinal factors affect both (Schmeidler 1964). However, several independent compilations of spontaneous cases indicate that more precognitive impressions come in dreams than while awake, and more telepathic and clairvoyant impressions come while awake than in dreams.

Survival after death

In a recent symposium on survival research (Roll et al. 1965/1966) participants agreed that there is no adequate research design to test the hypothesis of survival after death, but they proposed several research methods which should yield data that could tend to confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis. None of these novel methods has yet been tried. Information which bears on the survival hypothesis comes from five major lines of investigation. Brief summaries and examples follow.

Spontaneous cases

Apparitions of the dead sometimes give information known to no living person which, when checked, is found to be correct (e.g., Tyrrell [1942] 1.953). Many cases have been carefully studied. An example is that of the Chaffin will. Chaffin, a farmer, died in 1921, and his will left the bulk of his property to the third of his four sons. In 1925 one of the disinherited sons dreamed that his father, wearing an old coat, pulled the coat back and said, “You will find my will in my overcoat pocket.” A search located the coat, and stitched into its lining at the pocket was a slip of paper specifying a verse in the Bible. Folded into the family Bible at the designated page was a later will, verified as being in the father’s handwriting and legally valid.

Although there seems no doubt that these events occurred, at least three interpretations of them are available: that the surviving spirit of the father gave a belated message to his son; that the son had repressed memories of the stitching of the will into the coat, which he dramatized in his dream; and that the information came through clairvoyance.

Counterhypotheses of repressed memories or of ESP or PK can similarly be formulated to “explain away” any case which superficially looks as if a surviving spirit had evidenced itself. It is sometimes stated that until we find limits for ESP and PK abilities, no data can preclude ESP or PK as an alternative explanation to messages from the dead.

Mediumistic sittings

Mediums (i.e., “sensitives” who claim to receive messages from the dead) ordinarily hold “sittings” for a person who asks for messages, and it is impossible to estimate what feedback from the sitter guides the medium to give accurate information. “Proxy sittings” are a research technique in which the person who will receive the messages (the “absent sitter”) is in touch with an experimenter. The experimenter transmits minimal information about the absent sitter (e.g., only the given name) to still another person, the “proxy sitter.” Only the proxy sitter sees the medium, asks for a message for the absent sitter, and records the messages. In modern research, the proxy sitter holds successive sittings for several absent sitters. All messages are coded and are scored blind by all absent sitters. It is then easy to evaluate the accuracy of the messages statistically, using the absent sitters’ scores of messages not intended for themselves as a control.

Earlier work with proxy sitters did not employ such elaborate precautions, but some is still impressive. Thomas (1935), for example, received a letter from a stranger, asking that Thomas make contact with the spirit of a grandson, Bobbie, who had recently died. Thomas acted as proxy sitter and held 11 sittings with a medium. Many messages described toys, activities, etc., which the grandfather confirmed. It must be noted that after the first reply from the grandfather, the strict conditions of a true proxy sitting had been violated.

One feature of the case remains interesting, since it gives information known to no living person. In reply to the grandfather’s question of why Bobbie had died, there were frequent references to a hill with pipes where Bobbie had taken poison that caused his death. The grandfather searched in the region indicated by the messages (past a crossroad and bridge, to the right, with cattle, etc.), found a hill which fit the description, and inquired of Bobbie’s friends, who confirmed that Bobbie had played there. Two springs where water issued from pipes were on the hill. At the grandfather’s request a sanitary inspector examined the piped water and found it so contaminated that it was likely to cause infection in a child who drank it. Thus, the information from the sittings was in part known by the grandfather (the absent sitter), in part unknown by him but known by Bobbie’s playmates, and in part unknown by anyone until after the inspector’s examination. The results can be interpreted as telepathic and clairvoyant, or as coincidence. In these and earlier sittings, Thomas’ interpretation is that the surviving spirits of his dead father and sister purportedly spoke to him or to the medium, and drew accurate inferences from information conveyed to them by Bobbie’s spirit, then communicated the inferences to him through the medium.

Cross correspondences

Cross correspondences are considered by many to be the strongest evidence for survival. Shortly after the death of distinguished early members of the SPR, messages purporting to come from them were written or spoken (in trance) by sensitives in India, the United States, and Great Britain. The messages were collated in England, and it was found that classical allusions or similar odd items in one often overlapped with items in another (hence the designation “cross correspondences”). Put together, the fragments conveyed a more complete version of some obscure story or reference than did the messages from a single sensitive. Some messages indicated that two of the deceased scholars were collaborating in the intricate interweaving of the information (see Murphy 1961, chapter 7). Fraud seems ruled out as a counterhypothesis to survival, but coincidence, optimistic scoring, telepathy, and clairvoyance are possibilities.

Modern methods of content analysis have never been applied to this mass of material, so it is impossible to evaluate whether the apparent correspondences were extrachance. [SeeContentanalysis.]

Similarity of apparitions

An ingenious statistic to support the survival hypothesis was adduced by Hart (1956), a sociologist. Apparitions which convey veridical information that is new to the persons who see them are frequently reported, as in the Chaffin will case. Sometimes these are apparitions of living people (who often, when later questioned, say that they had not been thinking of the person who “saw” them); sometimes of the dead. Hart listed 165 cases which seemed “good” on the basis of five criteria: oral or written statement of evidential details before confirmation; later confirmation; investigation by a competent research worker; fully documented record; and short time between the event and its report. From these 165 cases he made a frequency count of 22 characteristics of apparitions (luminosity, attempt to speak, etc.). Frequencies of these characteristics were correlated for apparitions of the living and the dead, and the correlation was significant. Hart takes this to imply that the living and the dead are similar, and therefore that the dead still live. The obvious counterhypothesis is that cultural or personal similarities among those who see apparitions account for similarities among the apparitions that they see.

Reincarnation

Evidence is being collected, notably by Stevenson (1966), which shows that a living person, usually a child, has information which would not normally be known to him but which was part of the intimate, daily knowledge of some dead person. The living person sometimes also has special abilities, tastes, habits, or even physical stigmata characteristic of the dead person. This type of material is cautiously interpreted as consistent with a hypothesis of reincarnation. Since the careful research is very recent, there has not yet been time for the legalistic, hypercautious sifting of evidence, the attack and rebuttal, that is characteristic of the authenticated spontaneous cases. All we can do now is to note that for the first time an able investigator is making a serious, continued effort to collect what evidence there is on reincarnation and that on the face of it the evidence looks good enough to deserve critical study rather than casual a priori dismissal.

An earlier claim for reincarnation should perhaps be cited here, since it received wide publicity (see Ducasse 1960). An amateur hypnotist attempted hypnotic regression and suggested to his subject that she would remember details of an earlier life. She accepted the suggestions, and claimed to have lived as Bridey Murphy in Ireland two or three generations ago. She described many details of the Ireland of that period. The later discovery that as a child she had spent many hours in the company of an old Irish woman destroyed general interest in the case. Stevenson’s more sophisticated investigations examine all data carefully for such contamination.

“Modus operandi” of sensitives

Many sensitives produce their messages in a normal state, but more commonly the messages come during dissociation, as in trance or automatic writing. Messages are typically attributed to two sources: “communicators,” i.e., spirits of the dead, who drop in briefly, as it were; and “controls” usually Indian princesses, Arabian physicians, etc., who visit frequently and often act as masters of ceremonies, introducing or transmitting messages from the communicators. Communicators are frequently identifiable from factual details or speech characteristics. No controls have ever been identified, and some research indicates that they represent secondary personalities of the sensitives. Messages not attributed to communicators or controls are usually given as direct telepathic or clairvoyant knowledge, but occasionally a sensitive claims to have traveled “out of the body” to some distant place and to have made observations there. Sometimes the sensitive holds a token object and gives messages about its present owner or its past owners. Such “object reading” is called “psychometry,” a word unfortunately similar to “psychometrics,” which of course has a completely different meaning.

Physical phenomena

Such manifestations as table lifting and the production of ectoplasm were frequently reported in the past. Since the invention of infrared photography, reports have been markedly less frequent, and none have been authenticated with modern research methods. This naturally casts strong, but perhaps unfair, suspicions on the earlier accounts.

Spontaneous cases. Spontaneous physical phenomena, such as the stopping of a clock or the fall of an apparently stable object when a distant person undergoes a crisis or dies, are often reported and seem well substantiated. Physical effects are also often reported at periods of strong emotions, as in Jung’s account of the loud noises he produced psychically in Freud’s office (see Fodor 1963). As with other spontaneous cases, there is no guide except one’s own judgment as to whether the accumulated number of verified cases is or is not too large to dismiss as random coincidences.

Poltergeists. Recurrent spontaneous physical phenomena that occur in the same general location or are associated with one individual are called poltergeists. The effects are various, but most frequently they involve the dropping, breaking, or movement of objects; raps; odors; violent disturbances of beds or bedding. They are often associated with a child or an adolescent. An outbreak usually ceases in a particular house when the occupants leave, although occasionally the disturbances accompany a person to another location. Many reports are clearly fraudulent. Others can be traced to shifts in the underground water level which cause movement of a house. There is a sizable residue of cases which some critics attribute to undetected fraud but which others think are spontaneous phenomena resulting from unconscious hostility (Owen 1964).

Applications of parapsychology

Claims are often made that sensitives have helped police track criminals, or have located lost objects, or have identified underground water or minerals (dowsing). Adequately controlled research on these claims is difficult to perform.

Rose’s investigation (1955) of psychic healing indicates high rates of success for diseases which are often diagnosed incorrectly or for symptoms likely to be psychogenic, but only the rate expected in spontaneous recovery for other diseases. West has come to similar conclusions in an analysis of healing at Lourdes (1957). [See Psychosomaticillness.]

Taetzsch (1962) points out that if ESP gives some information, the techniques of quality control can sort the chaff from the wheat and can produce enough information to be usable. Repeated calls of the same target can be pooled until eventually there is near certainty about the target. The method requires segregating the psi-missing calls from the psi-hitting calls; thus, if a subject shows other evidence of psi-missing and avoids a given target, this would be used to confirm data from another subject who shows evidence of psi-hitting and who calls the same target that the first avoids. At present our identification of the variables which correlate with psi-hitting versus psi-missing is so uncertain that the method seems too risky to use without careful pretesting.

Theories of parapsychology

In general, even “miniature” theories of ESP and PK have not been stated rigorously enough for decisive testing. A notable exception is Scott’s list of several models of how information can be conveyed by psi (1961). Examples are the models “Psi occurs only occasionally, but when it occurs it gives complete information” and “Psi occurs all the time and consists of a multiplication of the percipient’s chance of success by a constant factor.” Scott has developed the mathematical implications of his numerous models and has described experimental methods for testing them. Although the descriptions are clear and the problems important, no research was published dealing with them in the three years after Scott’s article appeared—presumably because parapsychology has more enticing problems than it has experimenters.

The simplest theory to explain parapsychological findings has been put forth by Price (1955) and Hansel (1966), who claim that all extrachance results in well-controlled research are fraudulent: the experimenters either lied about their data or were psychotic and hallucinated the data. As Price and Hansel develop this thesis, both argue that further controls could refute it. Price suggests that a jury of reputable men should certify that the data are correct, but he does not face the possibility of a new critic who could claim that the jury which Price considered reputable was composed of liars or psychotics. Hansel suggests that a computer be programmed to select the targets and to record and score the data, but disregards the possibility that the computer could be programmed to give false results. This theory of parapsychology seems untestable. The contention that a single man was dishonest can perhaps be disconfirmed if he is witnessed by others; the contention that those others were mistaken or dishonest (a contention made by both Price and Hansel in referring to collaborative or witnessed research) would lead to an infinite regress.

The argument is interesting historically, since in 1882 Henry Sidgwick, the philosopher who was first president of the SPR, wrote, “We have done all that we can when the critic has nothing left to allege except that the investigator is in the trick. … We must drive the objector into the position of being forced [to accept the data] or to accuse the investigators of lying or cheating or of a blindness or forgetfulness incompatible with any intellectual condition except absolute idiocy” (1882, p. 12). Sidgwick’s goal has apparently been achieved.

No single theoretical approach is widely accepted. In general, the ones which accept the data may be summarized as (1) those which call for new topological or other mathematical concepts of space-time relations, so that targets which seem distant in a three-dimensional or four-dimensional system may be conceptualized as adjacent; and (2) those which call for laws of psychic events which are separable from laws of physical events. The latter is not necessarily a dualism, since the two sets of laws may eventually be reconciled, but it lends itself most readily to an interactionism. Eccles (1953), among others, has argued that when we “will” to move a part of the body, the mind affects the body by PK. The parallel argument is that we become conscious of our own brain processes by ESP. Interactionism fits easily into a survival hypothesis, because autonomous psychic events could continue after the death of that body with which they have chiefly been interacting.

Theories of survival range from a denial of it, through C. D. Broad’s thesis (1958) that stray memories or similar fragmentary psychic processes continue for at least a short time after bodily death, to concepts held by F. W. H. Myers (1903) and William James (see Murphy & Ballou 1960) of a surviving personality so little altered as still to be recognizable, and to theories of reincarnation.

Theories of precognition are numerous and diverse. They have been characterized as falling into two classes: those which are unbelievable and those which are incomprehensible. None is stated in clearly testable form. This may be remedied by a new approach as yet stated only in general outline (Zink 1965) or circulated in unpublished memoranda. It is based on Feynman’s equations showing that a positron is an electron traveling backward in time. Mathematically trained “paraphysicists” are developing further equations to find if they can both account for previous data and formulate hypotheses to put to experimental test.

Rigorously controlled research shows extrachance relations between random, concealed targets and responses. These relations, designated as ESP, are as yet unexplained by physical theory. Evidence for either telepathy or clairvoyance is excellent; evidence for PK is less strong; evidence for precognition is good unless PK is accepted as a counterhypothesis; evidence for survival after death is inconclusive because it can be “explained away” as due only to ESP.

Gertrude R. Schmeidler

bibliography

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PARAPSYCHOLOGY

PARAPSYCHOLOGY, a term denoting the organized experimental study of purported "psychic" abilities, such as telepathy (the knowledge of human thoughts without sensory communication), clairvoyance (the knowledge of physical objects without sensory aid), psycho-kinesis (the ability to influence an object physically without contact with it), and precognition (the knowledge of future events). The term, originally German, found its way into English in the 1930s and has supplanted the older term "psychical research" in America and to a degree in Great Britain.

Organized psychical research came into being in the United States in 1885, at the height of popular interest in spiritualism, with the founding of the American Society for Psychical Research. The most prominent American supporter of psychical research at this time was William James, although most American psychologists were, and are, hostile to the subject. Many famous mediums were studied, the most noteworthy being Leonora E. Piper, extensively investigated by James himself. The three principal leaders of American psychical research in its early years were Richard Hodgson, James Hervey Hyslop, and Walter Franklin Prince.

Funds and fellowships for the conduct of psychical research were established in three American universities—Harvard, Stanford, and Clark—in the first two decades of the twentieth century, but the work done there 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 ran thousands of tests with Duke students, some of whom achieved striking extra-chance results in card guessing. The results were published in 1934 in Extra-Sensory Perception; the methods described there soon became standard experimental procedure, and Rhine's term ESP (extrasensory perception) has become a common label for psychic abilities. Rhine established the Journal of Parapsychology in 1937, and in the 1940s he carried his investigations at his laboratory at Duke into the fields of psychokinesis and precognition.

Parapsychology aroused controversy and hostility in scientific and academic quarters; objections were made both to its experimental and statistical methods and to its philosophical implications. Fifty years after university studies began, the subject was still not yet well established academically and had not yet developed a clear professional structure and status. In the popular mind, and to some degree in the field, the connections with spiritualism and the occult remained close. Scientific clarity seemed an especially distant goal in the 1970s and 1980s, as parapsychology merged with popular curiosity in UFO and alien abduction lore, witchcraft, and New Age alternative religions and concepts of holistic health. But the revival of interest in occultism created a wide information network, and during these decades, research in parapsychology was being pursued at various academic centers, including the University of Virginia, the City University of New York, and Maimonides Hospital in New York City, as well as at the American Society for Psychical Research and at private foundations in Durham, North Carolina, and elsewhere. This later experimental work was broadly diversified, with researchers attempting to bring physiology, psychiatry, and studies of animal behavior to bear on parapsychology.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beloff, John. Parapsychology: A Concise History. London: Athlone Press, 1993.

Griffin, David R. Parapsychology, Philosophy, and Spirituality: A Postmodern Exploration. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997.

Seymour H.Mauskopf

Michael R.McVaugh/a. r.

See alsoMysticism ; New Age Movement .

Parapsychology Laboratory (Duke University)

In 1927 J. B. Rhine and his wife, Louisa Rhine, moved to College Station, North Carolina, where they had found the support of William McDougall, chairman of the psychology department, in pursuing parapsychology. By the time McDougall died in 1931 they were settled in and working on the experiments that would lead to J. B. Rhine's early important work, Extra-Sensory Perception (1934). The next year, with the cooperation of McDougall's successor, a separate division of parapsychology was established in the psychology department and designated the Parapsychology Laboratory. Rhine was placed in charge. For the next 30 years, the Parapsychology Laboratory was the primary scene of major experiments in parapsychology. Among them were those of the well-known medium, Eileen J. Garrett. She conducted a series of experiments there, known as the Zner Card Experiements, studying the phenomenon of ESP.

The laboratory's controversial work made ESP a household word. It also met with mixed reactions from the faculty at the university, mostly critical. In 1950 it was made an autonomous unit, and in 1962, when Rhine formerly retired, the laboratory was discontinued altogether and support of this field by Duke came to an end. That same year Rhine created the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man to continue the work of the laboratory and established the Institute for Parapsychology as a new laboratory.

Sources:

Garrett, Eileen J. Adventures in the Supernormal. New York: Creative Age Press, Inc., 1949.

——. Many Voices, The Autobiography of a Medium. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1968.

Rhine, J. B. New World of the Mind. New York: William Sloane, 1953.

Rhine, Louisa E. ESP in Life and Lab: Tracing Hidden Channels. New York: Macmillan, 1967.

Parapsychology. Literally the scientific study of what lies beyond (Gk., para) those properties of the mind which are accepted by current scientific research. However, since there is very considerable debate as to whether or not paranormal (or ‘psi’) phenomena actually exist, it is better defined as the scientific investigation of a possibility. The main psi candidates which have been advanced for research purposes can be classed under two headings: ESP (extrasensory perception) which covers paranormal cognition, as with telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition, and PK (psychokinesis) which covers paranormal action, such as influencing electronic and atomic randomizers.

Parapsychology Laboratory (Netherlands)

A former Dutch institute founded by W. H. C. Tenhaeff in 1933. The institute was supported by state funds, conducted experimental programs, and published books, periodicals, and reports on parapsychological research. It published the European Journal of Parapsychology, which is now distributed through the Koestler Chair of Parapsychology at the University of Edinburgh, 7, George Sq., Edinburg EH8 9JZ, Scotland, UK. Web-site:http://moebius.psy.ed.ac.uk/.

par·a·psy·chol·o·gy / ˌparəsīˈkäləjē/ • n. the study of mental phenomena that are excluded from or inexplicable by orthodox scientific psychology (such as hypnosis, telepathy, etc.). DERIVATIVES: par·a·psy·cho·log·i·cal / -ˌsīkəˈläjikəl/ adj. par·a·psy·chol·o·gist / -jist/ n.

parapsychology Branch of psychology concerned with research into phenomena that appear inexplicable by traditional science. It involves research into extrasensory perception (ESP), such as telepathy, and precognition (perceiving future events).

Parapsychology (Newsletter)

Quarterly journal in Chinese language that was published in Taiwan. Last known address: Society for Parapsychological Studies, 6 Lane 4, Huang Puh Village 7, Genshan, Taiwan.

parapsychology (pa-ră-sy-kol-ŏji) n. the study of mental abilities that appear to defy natural law.

psychical research see parapsychology .