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Reflections on being a parapsychologist
Journal of Parapsychology, The, Fall, 2003 by Carlos S. Alvarado
Although there is an international community devoted to the study of psi phenomena, there are few discussions about aspects of parapsychology as a profession and about our experiences as parapsychologists. (1) In what follows I would like to offer some thoughts about some of these issues. The address is not meant to be a systematic or exhaustive discussion of the topic. Instead I present it as thoughts designed to raise issues, many of which may not have a clear cut answer. My comments will focus on such topics as the accomplishments of our profession, the variety of parapsychologists, education and training, how it feels to be in the field, why we are in the field, approaches and strategies of parapsychologists, and problematic behaviors of parapsychologists.
THE PARAPSYCHOLOGICAL COMMUNITY AND THEIR ACCOMPLISHMENTS
I would like to start with a positive message. Our efforts as parapsychologists have contributed to knowledge in significant ways. I argue that we can be proud of the following:
First: The findings of parapsychology serve as a reminder that there is much more to learn about human functioning than the behavioral sciences suggest. Over a hundred years ago Frederic W. H. Myers (1900) stated that the duty of psychical researchers was "the expansion of science herself" (p. 123). Much of our work suggests that the communication with the environment we refer to as ESP and PK requires at least an extension of current physics and psychology. In other words, there is more to human capabilities than official science teaches. Parapsychological research serves as a reminder of other possibilities, of challenges we only hope science at large will take on. Certainly official science has not accepted that we have established the reality of phenomena that require an expansion of physical and psychological principles. Nonetheless, I agree with Emily Kelly (2001) when she states: "If psychical research does nothing more than continually shake complacent assumptions about fundamental questions concerning mind, consciousness, volition, that alone is a significant contribution to science" (p. 86).
Second: In addition to extending the reach of human abilities, parapsychology has documented the frequency and complexity of the features of the phenomena it studies and has thus contributed to the overall knowledge of experiences studied by psychology and psychiatry. Our studies show that claims of psychic experiences are more common than previously realized. In addition these studies document the variety of human experience and thus expand the views of their range derived from the behavioral sciences. This includes such "new" experiences as waking and dream ESP, apparitions of the dead, deathbed visions, poltergeists, out-of-body experiences (OBEs), and near-death experiences (NDEs). When one gets into the study of the features of the experiences, the forms ESP takes, the complex patterns of features found in apparitions and in OBEs and NDEs, one realizes our field has contributed much to the cataloging and mapping of a variety of experiences and states of consciousness (Alvarado, 1996a; Irwin, 1994). Some of this work, including Sybo Schouten's (1979) analyses of ESP experiences and my own work with OBEs (Alvarado & Zingrone, 1998-99), shows the further complexity of the experiences by documenting the interaction of its features with other features and with external variables.
This view of complexity is further enhanced when we pay attention to our past history and study the investigations conducted around mental mediums. The detailed studies that Theodore Flournoy (1900) conducted with medium Holone Smith and Eleanor Sidgwick's (1915) analyses of work conducted with medium Leonora Piper have taught us much about psychological personation, stages and features of trances, and the imagery involved in the mentation.
Third: Parapsychology has contributed to the development of ideas in psychology. Some historians of psychology, such as Regine Plas (2000), have argued that interest and research in psychic phenomena were an important element in the development of psychology. In fact, Plas argues that interest in the subconscious mind in France was intimately related to interest in telepathy and the like, as seen in the work of Pierre Janet and Charles Richet, among others. The early work of members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in England contributed much to the development of ideas of the subconscious mind as well as to the study of dissociation. This was particularly true of the work of Edmund Gurney and Frederic W. H. Myers (Alvarado, 2002a).
Furthermore, parapsychology has contributed much to the development of ideas about the mind, particularly those which treat the mind-body problem and ideas of the nonphysical. Examples of this are the ideas Myers (1903) stated in his hundred-year-old classic Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death as well as the later speculations made by such figures as William McDougall (1911) J. B. Rhine (1947), Robert Thouless and B. P. Wiesner (1947), Charles Tart (1979), and John Beloff (1990).
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