Psychical research and parapsychology: a little history

Psychical research and parapsychology: a little history.

Scientific research into anomalous human experiences, including evidence for the survival of human personality after physical death, has been going on for nearly one hundred and fifty years. It has created a vast area of knowledge that is largely unfamiliar both to mainstream science and to the general public. The evidence is both experimental and observational, some of it supported in ways that meet all the standards of established scientific methodology (although, for obvious reasons, the question of whether there is life – consciousness – after death can only be explored through indirect observation).

The first learned society to undertake investigations into extraordinary human experiences on a regular basis was the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), founded in London in 1882 by a group of prominent scholars. Its purpose was to apply scientific methodology to investigating the phenomena now described as paranormal. The current definitions of the main areas of investigation, not necessarily accurate but in general use, include: Extrasensory Perception (ESP), an umbrella term for telepathy (direct mind-to-mind communication), clairvoyance (awareness of information unavailable through normal sensory channels) and precognition (foreseeing the future); interactions which affect the environment or other organisms physically are referred to as psychokinesis (PK). Large-scale physical disturbances (macro-PK), which occur spontaneously and are generally referred to as poltergeists (from the German meaning ‘mischievous spirit’), have also been described as RSPK (recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis), while micro-PK, involving minute effects, is and has been the subject of a number of experimental studies, including experiments in healing. Both ESP and PK are frequently subsumed under the more general term psi. Over the years we have gained a great deal of knowledge about many aspects of these phenomena, particularly those which can be investigated in experimental conditions.

One of the main initial goals of early researchers was to examine scientifically the evidence for the survival of human spirit beyond physical death.

The background to this research was the spread of the idea of evolution. With the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859, evolution came to be regarded with good reason as the true and scientific explanation of the origin of mankind. We are now capable of interpreting this idea in ways which accommodate all kinds of worldviews, but at the time it was often seen both by its proponents and enemies as a shocking assault on religion and man’s position in the universe. It demoted humanity from its unique position, as God’s special creation, to one of nature’s accidental productions among many other creatures, and it seemed that the triumph of science left the world bereft of spiritual depth.

But at the other, much less scientifically exalted end of human experience, and very much at the same time, there developed the new religion of Spiritualism. It was based on the idea that one could communicate with the spirits of the dead through specially gifted persons –mediums – and that spirits could produce messages by using physical movement of objects or through knocking on furniture, most commonly little tables. It is usual to date the beginnings of Spiritualism to 1848, when some strange raps produced by young girls (the Fox sisters) in America were interpreted as messages from the departed spirit of a murder victim. Spiritualism and its phenomena have a clear a link to the sspontaneous poltergeist reports (or macro-PK) that go back centuries and are still regularly reported today; they also have a long history of being attributed to spirits or demons. The same applies to reports of extraordinary phenomena produced by saints, healers, shamans and other individuals with special gifts. However, what was important for the development of the scientific approach to the question of survival was the new religion’s focus on the mediating being, the person with special gifts – the medium.

The craze for “raising spirits” through sittings with mediums or private “table-tipping” séances started in the USA and quickly spread throughout the Western world. There is a great deal of good evidence for anomalous physical phenomena being produced by people under certain conditions, regardless of how one interprets their meaning. However, the popularity of the new religion and the new pastime, and the material advantages which could be gained from them, inevitably attracted a great many fake mediums and bogus claims. Thus, much of the early work of the Society for Psychical Research was a learning curve of detecting and unmasking fraudulent claims. It was undoubtedly excellent apprenticeship in honing a methodology suited to the subject, but the result was that physical mediumship came to be viewed with suspicion. On the other hand, for mental mediumship, i.e., messages allegedly obtained from deceased persons by mediums in altered states of consciousness, produced, under conditions precluding fraud, there is much evidence that remains at least puzzling if not irrefutable.

It was the first collection of spontaneous cases that formed the pinnacle of the Society’s early activities. Phantasms of the Living, published in 1886, contained over 700 cases. The authors made every effort to corroborate the reports, which included spontaneous and experimental or semi-experimental telepathy, the special role of dreams, clairvoyance, premonitions and apparitions, particularly those relating to crisis, often at or near the moment of death. The thoroughness of the research and the authors’ awareness of the need to exclude natural explanations meant that this collection is still an extremely valuable resource for research.

Spontaneous cases are the real-life phenomena which scientific theories of psi seek to explain. Since the beginning of serious research into the paranormal, field investigations were and continue to be carried out and volumes of collections, analyses and surveys of spontaneous phenomena continue to be published. By now they come from different periods and cultures and demonstrate patterns, which are difficult to dismiss. But the challenge of spontaneous cases is that they are not repeatable and are susceptible to all kinds of errors of observation and reporting. For this reason, since the earliest days of research, efforts were made to devise controlled and quantifiable experiments, which could be applied to larger populations.

The “coming of age” of psychical research as a reputable branch of science seemed set to arrive with the establishment of the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University in North Carolina, USA, in the 1930s under the leadership of Dr Joseph Banks Rhine. The Laboratory was committed to the science of ‘parapsychology’, a strictly experimental approach using large numbers of ordinary people as subjects and simple standard protocols. Subjects were tested for ESP using a card-guessing procedure (Zener cards, invented by a colleague of Rhine, Karl Zener, consisted of five simple symbols in decks of 25 cards), while testing for PK employed dice, where the subjects tried to vary, through mental influence, the frequency of the designated target face. The experiments were transparent and quantifiable using statistical methods in general use; it was thus expected that, employed on a large scale, their results would lead to establishing psi as a universal property, and parapsychology as an academically respectable branch of science. However, in spite of achieving statistically significant results, with independent replications at different laboratories, there was no general acceptance of this new field of knowledge. Since then, many new kinds of experiments and methodologies have been devised, such as creating free response targets with rich content instead of repetitive card guessing, shielding the subjects of experiments from irrelevant stimuli (ganzfeld), and automating much of the experimental process which ensures randomness and eliminates the possibility of fraud. Many of the results are “methodologically sound and statistically significant”, and since 1969 the Parapsychology Association, the professional organisation of researchers in this field, has been a member of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Indeed, parapsychology has become an academic subject in some countries, with various projects carried out by eminent academics or as part of postgraduate research. However, it is still regarded with suspicion as “pseudoscience” by much of the mainstream. It is not just a question of ignorance of the body of evidence, although this is a problem. A much greater problem is that the evidence for psi, if accepted, challenges the established assumptions about how the world works. What makes this evidence particularly troublesome is that it is based on methods and techniques recognised as legitimately scientific. Any positive results thus represent a challenge, unlike the humanities where literature, religion or anything to do with the human spirit can safely be compartmentalised as belief systems and social constructs, with domains of their own. For example: when a highly regarded mainstream psychologist, Daryl Bem, obtained positive results in experiments in precognition using standard psychological methods in reverse and had his results published in a reputable journal, the response was vitriolic. Some questioned the validity of the standard methodology itself; the journal was severely criticised for publishing the paper even though it was methodologically flawless, and even unsuccessful, let alone successful, replications were refused publication. One article summed up the general judgment on Bem’s research as “both methodologically sound and logically insane”.

When research by eminent academics employing standard methodology under laboratory conditions is dismissed out of hand because it appears to challenge dogma, clearly a mainstream career in investigating “anomalous” aspects of human experience is difficult. One way of dealing with the problem has been to talk around the phenomenon, approaching it from a social and/or psychological perspective; another involves changing the subject’s name (such as anomalous cognition or extraordinary experience), or exploring the possible benefits of paranormal beliefs for mental healthcare. Such “respectable” approaches are undoubtedly of value, but they do not deal with the basic questions of the extent and function of psi. It seems that the evidence of parapsychology, some of it beyond methodological reproach, is an academic non-starter.

Sometimes this attitude is attributed to the absence of theoretical framework, but this is not the only field where there is no “grand unified theory” yet research goes on unchallenged. In some ways parapsychology also falls between two stools: reports of people’s spontaneous experiences are dismissed as anecdotal, however universal and common they might be, and sometimes they are also latched onto by simplistic belief systems (not to mention crude representations in the media) which quite justifiably raise scientific eyebrows. On the other hand, the vehement refusal even to examine experimental evidence by mainstream science is probably a defensive posture that makes sense: once you accept the results of, for example, card-guessing experiments as valid, however mainstream their design, you open doors to the idea that “subjects can be aware in some sense of physical states of affairs ... whose sensory perception ordinarily requires being suitably situated in space”. In other words, there is no physical position from which one could “peer” at the card. And that “logically insane” idea undercuts the physicalist worldview at its foundations, using the tools of science to boot.

Properly carried out experiments should be acceptable as scientific evidence contributing to our knowledge. However, in experiments one only tests what can be tested and controlled, and mainstream experimentation sometimes means using methodologies that may be inappropriate in the context of something as elusive as psi but are acceptable to the academic establishment. With funding limited and the threat to institutional and individual academic reputations posed by simply being associated with the subject, research being carried out in this field is miniscule. While there have been some very promising lines of research, such as dream ESP, they are usually not followed on a larger scale, and the effects of small-scale experiments can often be erratic since what they test is variable even in the same humans under the same external conditions.

In spite of these limitations, a great deal has been achieved by the experimental approach to the subject. We have learned about the importance of altered states of consciousness in creating conditions conducive to psi (such as the ganzfeld technique aimed at reducing the subject’s sensory input), as well as the importance of belief in/expectation of success (the “sheep-goats effect” where the “sheep” score above chance on pitsaws while “goats” score below it). Of even greater importance has been a better if not full understanding of the possibility of experimenter effect, where one has to disentangle the possible psi coming from the researcher, the influence of the researcher’s attitude, and that on top of the variables pertaining to the participants. The experimenter effect has been noted in various areas of learning but is particularly relevant to parapsychology.

Perhaps progress in acceptance of the subject as a scientific endeavour is being made. Recently an article by Etzel Cardeña, who is Thorsen professor of psychology at Lund University in Sweden, was published in a mainstream psychology journal. The article makes the case for psi evidence, based on the changing worldviews in physics and purely experimental evidence, mainly produced during the recent decades. It quotes meta-analyses of various kinds of experiments with significant psi effects that could not be dismissed with claims of “sensory leakage, recording or intentional errors, selective reporting, multiple analyses of variables, failures in randomization or statistical errors, and independence of studies”. In fact, psi research was found in some respects to be more rigorous than psychology research in general. Cardeña makes the important point that the requirement to replicate performance “on demand” is also unrealistic in relation to ordinary psychology studies, which face the same problems, since dealing with human beings involves too many variables for which one cannot control.

The databases which showed most consistent statistically significant results included the ganzfeld experiments (where participants are put in a relaxed state with some degree of sensory deprivation), presentiment experiments (where participants’ physical responses are recorded and show arousal prior to being shown a stimulus), precognition, dream research into telepathy (particularly in the famous Maimonides Medical Center sleep laboratory, where participants selected for psychic ability were woken up every time after they had been in REM sleep and had their dreams recorded), remote viewing (clairvoyance experiments with strict protocols), and even forced choice (the boring Zener cards) experiments. On the PK side, significant results were obtained in influencing the fall of dice or skewing results produced by Random Event Generators, as well as various forms of healing (e.g., intention affecting biological tissue or whole living beings) and the staring experiments (people being aware of being stared at even though the “starer” is isolated from them) made famous by Rupert Sheldrake. Most of these effects were small but the methodology was sound, and it may be the case that adversity, in the form of general academic hostility to the subject, helped to hone research practice by the few determined individuals who never gave up. All that data tells us that the ability to be psychic is latent in at least a large proportion of the population, can be expected to be greater in certain types of personalities and can be encouraged by providing conditions conducive to psi success. It is reassuring that psi is not a totally “freaky”, unpredictable thing that science cannot cope with even if, like any human activity, it is not totally reliable.

But there are also now relatively new areas of psi research, and some of them have implications for renewing scientific research even into the possibility of survival of bodily death. We owe progress in these areas to science: one area is the medical sciences, where modern resuscitation methods allow people to be saved from death and recount their experiences while they were clinically dead (at the same time raising questions about the definition of clinical death).Such near-death accounts go back to antiquity, but it is only in the last three decades that a sizeable volume of such accounts has been produced, many of them taking place in hospital settings and verified by medical staff. From another perspective, research into mediumship, while not new, is now benefitting from new technologies that allow one to eliminate some of the difficulties which beleaguered it in previous times, such as leakage of information through physical means. Also, reports of past life recall indicating reincarnation have been with us for centuries and come from virtually all cultures, but the volume of cases and the quality of background research would not have been achievable without modern technologies.

Thus, on the one hand we have consistent, small-scale statistically significant experiments, limited by having to test that which is testable and fits into the researchers’ methodological framework; on the other we have reports of amazing feats which involve apparitions, premonitions, visions, unworldly interventions, and are limited by their one-off, uncorroborated and often private nature. Cardeña rightly observed that, „As compared with real-life circumstances, psi experiments involve impersonal stimuli of little or no consequence, in contrast with reputed psi phenomena observed in everyday life”, such as immediate knowledge of the unexpected death of a close person at a distant location. At the same time, individuals with the gift of spectacular psi are few.

Louisa Rhine, wife of J.B. Rhine, thought that collecting spontaneous cases would help to define the boundaries of psi as a complement to experimental research. However, what has happened is that if anything, the gap between experimental and spontaneous evidence has grown bigger. Part of the problem is the very nature of testing. While throughout history there have been a number of gifted psychics, when they are tested they have to fit into the framework of the test. For example, one of the famous star subjects of J.B. Rhine card tests, Pavel Stepanek, could make correct guesses about thousands of coloured cards, but we do not know what else he was capable of achieving. This applies to a number of “psi virtuosi”, such as Matthew Manning, a British healer whose childhood involved well-attested poltergeist phenomena and haunting. He participated in numerous successful experiments but stopped because he became bored with having to repeat the same “trick”, like influencing compass needles, and not having his gift tested to its limits.

Something like 70% of documented experiments with Stefan Ossowiecki, famous Polish clairvoyant, involved deciphering concealed writing or drawing through sealed envelopes, and the actual number of such experiments, formal and informal, must have been in the hundreds. We would never know what feats of clairvoyance he was capable of in other ways if it were not for corroborated reports where his skills were employed to solve real-life problems, such as locating missing persons. And we would perhaps be more likely to look askance at these reports were it not for the very similar amazing feats of the remote viewers employed by the US military under impeccable conditions. Such feats should not lead us to devalue the significance of card guessing, reading messages in sealed envelopes or indeed skewing the fall of dice in PK experiments and other repetitive efforts. They may not capture the imagination – they are poorer in individual features – but they are aspects of the same mysterious phenomenon. Once you eliminate fraud, leakage and other “usual suspects” (Stephen Braude’s oft-used phrase), you come up against the impossibility of identifying the target through decks of cards or sealed packages using any of the familiar senses.

There is, thus, a continuum between experimental and spontaneous, as well as experimental and volitional evidence, perhaps greater than statistical data can reveal. According to an in-depth analysis by Ed Kelly, Research Professor at the University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies, “the gifted subject BD [Bill Delmore] produced in one week of formal testing at the Rhine lab, results that are statistically more or less equivalent to that entire thirty-year history of ganzfeld research”. So, it makes sense to focus on gifted subjects, but observing them in situations where the results of their efforts are not dissolved in general data, and where real life provides the motivation. If we want to explore the extent of psi we need evidence that combines the impressive quality of spontaneous cases and the reliability of experimental evidence. One way of approaching this task is to examine corroborated, competent reports that form consistent repeating patterns in real life situations.

In this context, reports of clairvoyance are of particular interest; many of them have a practical aim, and, for that reason, tend to be well-attested and trustworthy (you cannot have leakage of information if nobody involved or even living has that information). Psychic detection is one aspect of this practical application of clairvoyance. Clearly, clairvoyance itself implies that consciousness can extend beyond the reach of physical senses; however, in some cases, psychic detection seems to involve obtaining information from those no longer living. If claims like this turn out to be based on sound evidence, we live in a world that is very different from what we assume it to be.