Sunday 20 February 2022 marks the 140th anniversary of the founding of the Society for Psychical Research in 1882 (on a Monday). It’s not a satisfyingly round number, like a centenary or a sesquicentenary, but it seems worth marking nonetheless. I’m sure in ten years’ time there will be significant celebrations, as there were in 1982 when there was a big conference at Cambridge, a series of books published by Heinemann on various aspects of psychical research, a collection of essays edited by Ivor Grattan-Guinness, and a history of the SPR written by Renée Haynes.
Grattan-Guinness’s Psychical Research: A Guide to its History, Principles and Practices
provides a handy overview of its subject matter as it was viewed in 1982, containing
contributions from some eminent names in the field. One part discusses topics seen to constitute
the range of psychical phenomena – mediumship, out-of-body experiences,
apparitions, clairvoyance and telepathy, survival after death, poltergeists,
psychic healing, precognition, psychokinesis and photography (Kirlian
photography would nowadays be excluded) – and these could easily slot into a
contemporary book, albeit with developments in experimental methods and
theoretical models.
Similarly, a contemporary overview of the
relationship of psychical research to other disciplines would look much the
same, with changes of emphasis (the section on computers seems quaint when set
against their ubiquity now). This is not
to say psychical research has remained static over the last four decades. Thinking about the way the Society has
evolved since 1982, the title of the final chapter in Haynes’s book caught my
eye: ‘Achievements. What Next?’ Naturally
there is more on past achievements, of which there are many, than future
prospects, but while the chapter is rambling, it provides a useful benchmark for
measuring the subject’s evolution.
To begin with, Haynes detects an essential
continuity, despite swings in intellectual fashions, since the Society was
founded. That is reasonable, as its
objects are largely the same as they were in 1882, albeit the means of studying
them have evolved. However, she notes modifications
in attitude. Even by 1982, she felt ‘the
pendulum has jolted from an overwhelming interest in mediums and their
psychology to an overwhelming interest in the use of mass experiments evaluated
by statistical methods’; from scrutiny of environmental and emotional causes of
poltergeists to research on meditators and ‘psychokinetically-gifted people’
(the inclusion of emotional in relation to poltergeists is surprising, a
pendulum that has swung back); and with the continuing trend towards what
Haynes somewhat sniffily characterises as ‘the technology of psi.’
Her assessment of mediumship now seems
unduly pessimistic, with a great deal of research being carried out into this
and other aspects of the possible survival of consciousness after bodily
death. She does mention super-psi as a
view gaining traction, linking it to clairvoyance, the latter to her mind less
popular with SPR members in the UK than in other countries, particularly the US
and France. Super-psi is an idea that is
posited as an alternative to survival (Stephen Braude is a notable champion), but
it is doubtful there are national preferences for clairvoyance. Final answers on survival she believed were
beyond psychical research to determine, a familiar view today. Technology provides useful tools for the
exploration of possible psi processes.
Some elements of serious psychical
research she includes in her roundup have since fallen out of fashion, such as
metal bending and the Cox minilab. Others
have endured, though methods may have achieved a greater degree of sophistication
since 1982. There is still interest in
anthropology (having picked up the label of paranthropology to define its
intersection with the paranormal), folklore, biology and historical
studies. Considerable resources have
been devoted to precognition research, and much debate generated, over the
years. It is unlikely a modern book on
psychical research would devote nearly a page, as Haynes does, to Nostradamus. On the other hand, the philosophical
implications of the nature of time are as strongly debated.
As she was writing a history of the SPR
rather than psychical research there is much that is skimmed over, or missing
entirely. Some areas of neglect are
surprising – psychic archaeology for example – others less so, because the SPR
had little involvement, such as developments in the Soviet Union. Occult links and the vexed relationship with
Spiritualists are passed over probably because of Haynes’s own views. EVP, dismissed by her as a ‘vogue’, is widely
researched, having expanded its scope to encompass ITC. Out-of-body experiences are present, but not near-death
experiences, in 1982 a major omission. Healing, given a section in Grattan-Guinness’s book,
is ignored. She deals with
reincarnation, shortly to become a growth area, in a few lines. As an indication of the higher profile it now
has, and perhaps a degree of patrician disdain, she does not refer to the
campaign waged by pseudo-sceptics/counter-advocates, despite the Committee for
the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal having been formed in
1976.
Moving on to what psychical research has
achieved in a hundred years, she notes the formation of similar societies in
other countries and the occasional foreign SPR president. The number of organisations and university
departments concerned with psychical research has grown further since
then. Some areas, such as animal
migration, she considers to have largely been solved, though not that of
‘psi-trailing’, where an animal can find its way across long distances to
owners who may have moved. There has
been further work on anpsi, and the research of Rupert Sheldrake has looked extensively
at psychic connections between animals and humans.
Dowsing she feels may have a magnetite
component, which would supply a physical explanation, but would not apply, she
concedes, to map dowsing. Little
controlled dowsing research has been carried out in the field during the last
four decades, and much remains anecdotal, though Elizabeth Mayer’s claim to have recovered her daughter’s stolen harp with the help of map dowsing has been taken by some as evidence
for its validity. Thought transference
morphed into telepathy and is studied, unlike Reichenbach phenomena, present in
the 1882 Objects, which had vanished from serious consideration long before
1982. Haynes says she considers
psychokinesis proven, both experimentally and from spontaneous cases, and much
more work has been carried out subsequently, without universal acceptance of
the results.
Psychical researchers took mesmerism and,
as hypnosis, cleared away its occult accretions and misinterpretations, and put
it on a sound footing, meaning it has largely disappeared from psychical
research outside amateur regression sessions.
Apparitions, and haunted places, have shown longevity, being investigated
now as they were in 1882 and 1982. Unfortunately,
while there are greater numbers doing the investigating, many take their cue
from television rather than the scholarly literature, and despite much ink and
ingenious speculation being devoted to the topic, little real progress has been
made.
Of hard science, Haynes mentions physics
mainly in connection with the observer effect, the strangeness of some of
physics’ findings acting as a gateway for strangeness in psychical
research. Awareness of the potential implications
has increased enormously, with SPR vice-president Bernard Carr arguing that
physics can provide the foundation for an expanded science bringing together
matter, mind and spirit into a fuller understanding of the universe and our
place within it. There has been an
increased interest in consciousness studies and their philosophical
implications since 1982.
Haynes is out of sympathy with laboratory
work, questionnaires, and the use of statistics, claiming, in her colourful
way, that ‘The processes involved seem to resemble those of plucking, cleaning,
and boiling a chicken down for stock.
The end product may be wholesome and nourishing; but nothing
characteristic of the original remains, life, colour, shape are gone, regarded
as irrelevant.’ (p. 165) The resulting
generalisations and abstractions, in her view, remove the researcher from the
raw experiences of individuals.
Doubtless many ploughing laboriously through number-heavy papers in
parapsychological journals would agree with her.
Haynes’s greatest fear was that the use of
arcane, overtechnical language (‘gobbledygook’ as she terms it) within
specialisms might inhibit cross-disciplinary research and lead to ghettoisation
of specialists who failed to talk to each other. Fortunately, it can be said with confidence
this danger was averted, with psychical research benefiting from debate that
crosses boundaries in the search for answers.
Qualitative methods exploring lived experience are thriving too, which
no doubt she would have welcomed, while rolling her eyes at laboratory testing
on groups rather than individuals, allowing potential ‘stars’ to slip through
the net.
As a means of assessing the current
situation, a useful overview has recently been provided by Terje G. Simonsen’s A Short History of (Nearly) Everything
Paranormal. Much would have been
familiar to Haynes, including his central idea of the Mental Internet. Crucially, though, he outlines three main
approaches to our relationship to psi, focusing on laboratory, nature and
spirituality, the last of the three seeking to comprehend ways in which our
everyday existence, including psi, is part of a greater whole. This issue was not addressed by Haynes, but it
has become much more prominent since the publication of her book, as is
evidenced by the foundation of organisations like the Scientific and Medical
Network and IONS, specifically incorporating a spiritual element into their
programmes, and the overlap of psychical research with transpersonal
psychology.
It can be said that psychical research has
progressed significantly since 1982, but with much still to do. As for the future, the growth of computing,
and specifically the Internet, in the last couple of decades has made an
enormous difference to the way the SPR now operates. With electronic
communication has come a greater ability to reach out and fulfil a core
principle of the SPR’s charitable status, that of education. Rather than talking mainly to a small group
of like-minded individuals, it is now possible to disseminate the data of the
SPR, and psychical research generally, in a way not foreseen in 1982. This has opened up opportunities for cross-fertilisation
of ideas that can only be helpful. Grattan-Guinness’s
geographical breakdown has four sections: Britain, Europe, Russia and the
Soviet Union, and the United States, as if there was nothing to be said about
other regions. Thanks to the Internet,
the conversation can now be global.
Haynes famously coined the term ‘boggle
threshold’, and in the introduction to her centenary history (p. ix) defines it
as ‘the level above which the mind boggles when faced by some new fact or
report or idea.’ Phenomena are judged on
a case-by-case basis, and her threshold was fairly high for some, much lower
for others. Evidence will become
stronger or weaker, and boggle thresholds rise and fall, as psychical research evolves. In the process, topics leave the field, as
the Reichenbach phenomena did, while others enter it, as methods increase in
sophistication even if underfunding remains constant. In 1982 Haynes concluded with the words,
‘here’s to the next hundred years,’ and to that sentiment one can happily raise
a glass.
References
Grattan-Guinness, Ivor (ed.). Psychical
Research: A Guide to its History, Principles and Practices. In Celebration of 100
Years of the Society for Psychical Research. Wellingborough: The Aquarian
Press, 1982.
Haynes, Renée. The Society for
Psychical Research 188201982: A History. London: Macdonald, 1982.
Mayer, Elizabeth. Extraordinary
Knowing: Science, Skepticism and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind. New York: Bantam, 2007.
Simonsen, Terje G.. A Short History of (Nearly) Everything Paranormal: Our Secret Powers – Telepathy, Clairvoyance & Precognition. London: Watkins, 2020.
