Parapsychological studies Books

Book SynopsisThis is a work of systematic parapsychology. The book aims to construct a framework and system of parapsychology, taking a comprehensive approach to the field. The Outline of Parapsychology states that parapsychology has a different philosophical background from the existing science and religions, and posits that pantheism could be the theoretical basis of parapsychology. The book also integrates parapsychology with oriental philosophies and New Age movement thought.Trade ReviewAn impressive book that reflects the erudition and dedication of its author…It provides its readers with a philosophical as well as a historical perspective on the scientific attempt to understand reports of phenomena that appear to transcend mainstream science's understanding of time, space, and energy. In addition, it provides a masterful overview of serious research programs involving telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, and related topics. The Outline of Parapsychology demonstrates why this field of study is neither a superstition nor a pseudoscience, but a frontier science with profound implications for the understanding of Nature. -- Stanley Krippner Ph.DTable of ContentsChapter 1 Preface to English Version Chapter 2 Acknowledgments Chapter 3 Introduction: What is Parapsychology? Chapter 4 Chapter One: The Concise History of Parapsychology Chapter 5 Chapter Two: The Research Methods of Parapsychology Chapter 6 Chapter Three: Extrasensory Perception (ESP) Chapter 7 Chapter Four: Pshychkinesis (PK) Chapter 8 Chapter Five: Discarnate Entities (DE) Chapter 9 Chapter Six: Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) Chapter 10 Chapter Seven: Theoretical Researches on Parapsychology Chapter 11 Epilogue Chapter 12 Appendix: Main Organizations, Research Facilities, Education Institutes, and Media on Parapsychology Chapter 13 Notes Chapter 14 Bibliography Chapter 15 Subject Index Chapter 16 Name Index

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Book SynopsisCan mediums communicate with the dead? Do people really believe they've been abducted by aliens? Why do some people make life decisions based on their horoscope?The Psychology of the Paranormal explores some commonly held beliefs regarding experiences so strange they can defy an obvious scientific explanation. The book explains how psychologists have conducted experiments to provide insight into phenomena such as clairvoyance, astrology, and alien abduction, as well as teaching us fundamental truths about human belief systems.From debunking myths about Extra Sensory Perception, to considering whether our lives can truly be fated by the stars, The Psychology of the Paranormal shows us that however unlikely, belief in the paranormal will continue to be widespread. Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Astrology Chapter 3 Extra-sensory perception Chapter 4 Spirits and mediumsChapter 5 Alien encounters and abductionsChapter 6 Religious beliefs Chapter 7 Explaining paranormal beliefs

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Book SynopsisThis book divides into two parts. The first is a personal narrative of the impact of the death of the author''s son Ralph on him and his family and his efforts to see if there was any evidence for his continued existence (generated largely through visits to mediums) that a thinking person could take seriously. The second is an attempt to evaluate that evidence objectively (based on an extensive survey of current and past scientific research in the UK and the USA). The title reflects the inevitable tension between emotion and intellect in such an enquiry.

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Book SynopsisVampires and werewolves; phantoms and phantasms: looming out of the fog leaps the menacing spectre of the lycanthrope, ghoul or blood-crazed zombie. Intrigued by some of the most sinister, yet at the same time most compelling, legends of western civilization, Gregory L Reece dusts down his stake and crucifix, loads his silver bullets and takes off into the wilds in search of answers and fresh adventures. Rummaging around in crumbling tombs and cobwebbed sarcophagi, his latest quest leads him into the haunted realm of the dead and the undead: of those carnivorous, nocturnal hunters that might perhaps better be left undisturbed. Why, he asks, is our culture obsessed by the eerie and the macabre? Why, despite its horrors, does the 'dark side' of the supernatural - its seances and ghost-hunting, demonic possession and the occult - call to us with such dangerous allure? Whether tracking night-stalking werewolves, chanting black magic mantras with Satanists, or interviewing a funereal modern-day Count Dracula, Reece is determined to uncover the truth. A wry exploration of a secret and secretive subculture, "Creatures of the Night" is at the same time a bold and startling journey into a wraithlike world that has so often seemed to lie beyond the limits of rational comprehension - until now.Trade ReviewPraise for "UFO Religion: Inside Flying Saucer Cults and Culture" "Both insightful and humorous ... Reece travels to the Mojave Desert to join a group scanning the night sky for alien visitors, considers reports of the so-called Men in Black and Tall Whites identified by many ufologists, and visits the twin ground zeros of U.S. UFO culture, Area 51 in Nevada and Roswell, New Mexico ... Consider this book an excellent introduction to its genuinely spacey subject." -- "Booklist" 'In Creatures of the Night Gregory Reece takes us on a fascinating journey: into the dark forests of our imaginations and through the haunted castles of our deepest fears. Searching for the things that have terrified us for centuries, he peels back the pop culture skin of fantasy to reveal the flesh and bones of myth and history. Vampires, demons, and werewolves are just some of the creatures we encounter in his very entertaining book. More than them, though, he reveals how we meet ourselves, albeit in the oft-warped mirror of literature, film, and the everyday stage.' - Douglas E Cowan, Professor of Religious Studies, Renison University College/University of Waterloo; author of Sacred Terror: Religion and Horror on the Silver Screen and Sacred Space: The Quest for Transcendence in Science Fiction Film and Television

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Book SynopsisA useful manual for any magician, or for anyone who wonders why the tricks seem so real, this guide examines the psychological aspects of a magician''s work. Exploring the ways in which human psychology plays into the methods of conjuring, rather than focusing on the individual tricks themselves, the book explains general principles of magic. Chapters on the use of misdirection, sleight of hand, and reconstruction, provide a better understanding of this ancient art and a section on psychics warns of their deceptive magic skills.Trade Review""Magic in Theory" is charmingly clear, admirably erudite and highly readable. The chapters are gently authoritative without being numbingly complex, and sober while avoiding 'academic' sterility. Highly recommended." --"Fortean Times "

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Book SynopsisSéances, clairvoyance, and telepathy captivated public imagination in the United States from the 1850s well into the twentieth century. Though skeptics dismissed these experiences as delusions, a new kind of investigator emerged to seek the science behind such phenomena. With new technologies like the telegraph collapsing the boundaries of time and space, an explanation seemed within reach. As Americans took up psychical experiments in their homes, the boundaries of the mind began to waver. Common Phantoms brings these experiments back to life while modeling a new approach to the history of psychology and the mind sciences. Drawing on previously untapped archives of participant-reported data, Alicia Puglionesi recounts how an eclectic group of investigators tried to capture the most elusive dimensions of human consciousness. A vast though flawed experiment in democratic science, psychical research gave participants valuable tools with which to study their experiences on their own terms. Academic psychology would ultimately disown this effort as both a scientific failure and a remnant of magical thinking, but its challenge to the limits of science, the mind, and the soul still reverberates today.Trade Review"A fresh perspective on the goals and failures, friendships and rivalries, methods and dreams of those who investigated the interconnected powers of the human mind." -- Pamela Klassen * University of Toronto, author of The Story of Radio Mind: A Missionary's Journey on Indigenous Land *"Common Phantoms is sophisticated, engaging, and at times moving. This important book complements recent studies on psychical research but also breaks new ground on topics such as gender, mental illness, empiricism, and race." -- Christopher White * Vassar College, author of Other Worlds: Spirituality and the Search for Invisible Dimensions *"Common Phantoms offers an insightful, entertaining look at America's haunted history and Americans' hunger to understand the invisible forces that shape their lives. Alicia Puglionesi's artful examination of psychic science—its investigators and experiments, its skeptics and true believers—provides a fascinating view of the empirical study of spiritual pursuits." -- Peter Manseau * Smithsonian Curator of American Religious History and author of The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln's Ghost *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: At Home, with Ghosts chapter abstractProvides an overview of the book's contents. Broadly, the book tracks the séances, deathbed communions, flashes of clairvoyance, and telepathic experiments that bound together the lives of ordinary Americans from the 1860s well into the twentieth century. Or rather, it follows Americans as they chased these strange phenomena across boundaries of gender, race, and mental illness. Psychical research, a field of study that emerged specifically to make sense of experiences that defied explanation, relied on a far-flung network of participants to collect its "wild facts." Most were not trained scientists, but all believed that a scientific approach was the best way to discover the true nature of the mind and, perhaps, the soul. This book tells the story of their failure to produce an orthodox science and explores the often neglected relational phenomena that they did successfully generate. 1The Weather Map at the Bottom of the Mind chapter abstractThe American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) looked to the iconic field sciences of the nineteenth century for both methods and metaphors, organizational strategies, and epistemological foundations. This chapter considers the influence of meteorology and astronomy on psychical research. All three sciences faced a similar challenge: how to identify and fix fleeting phenomena encountered only in their indirect emanations. They all grappled with the problem of the "personal equation," a certain degree of inevitable perceptual variability among observers. By self-consciously adopting meteorology and astronomy as models, ASPR leaders not only asserted the feasibility of capturing the invisible, they also sought to counter the materialist orthodoxy of the lab. William James, especially, saw individual mental events as inextricable from the context in which they occurred—a context impossible to reproduce under artificially controlled conditions. It was no more realistic to study the mind in a laboratory than to study a tornado in a test tube. 2Machines That Dream Together chapter abstractThe scientific study of dreams offers a window into nineteenth-century views about the unconscious and the nature of the mind. Competing models of mind proposed by psychologists and psychical researchers had serious implications for human relations, politics, and commerce. New communication channels like the telegraph facilitated the spread of ideas and impressions with unprecedented speed. Psychical research suggested that ideas could spread of their own accord, along mysterious wavelengths that eluded human control. This would badly undermine the notion of intellectual property, not to mention the "marketplace of ideas" where rational consumers deliberate over their commitments. Radical utopians saw a path to progress and uplift, while conservatives saw a volatile threat to the social order. Though some dismissed thought-transference and telepathy as preposterous, the strength of the anecdotal tradition around such events led serious psychologists and philosophers to speculate on their meaning. 3Drawings from the Other Side chapter abstractPsychical researchers did not merely imitate the techniques of objectivity emerging in academic psychology, they helped to articulate new experimental practices for accessing the unconscious mind. This chapter explores the influence of psychical research on the development of drawing tasks as a psychometric and clinical tool. While psychical researchers used drawing to test the permeability of the mind, it was embraced in mainstream psychology as a way to bypass the patient's subjectivity and access the brain's inner workings. The widespread use of drawing in psychometrics, neuropsychology, and psychotherapy takes on a new significance when we understand its roots in psychical research: an experiment meant to join two minds in communion became a routine tool for examining solitary brains. 4Psychic Domesticity chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on the role of intimacy in the psychical research career of Mary Craig Sinclair and her husband, the novelist Upton Sinclair. Mary Craig Sinclair's story encapsulates issues of gender, witnessing, and subjectivity. She began with studies of a stage medium, Count Ostoja, which reversed the Gothic script of Svengali-like psychic invasion by placing Sinclair in the position of superior mental power. After this scandalous episode, Sinclair retreated to the home and to the dyad of the married couple, where she began a long-running experiment as a recipient of her husband's telepathic messages. Returning to the normative gender dynamic that her initial research had disrupted, she was able to win the acceptance of leading psychical researchers and psychologists. 5The Wilderness of Insanity chapter abstractPsychical research was constantly negotiating the boundaries of sanity—sometimes in a communal and democratic way, sometimes in a clinical and authoritarian way. To pursue the real into a wilderness where perceptions could deceive, it had to standardize its sources within a certain range of reliability. The concept of neurasthenia allowed investigators to distinguish between subjects with compromised mental faculties and those with physiological troubles that did not negate their ability to testify. However, this differentiation had no fixed or clearly articulated criteria. Widespread anxiety over neurasthenia was chipping away at the very notion of mental normalcy, and radical experiments in Spiritualism, psychical research, and parapsychology further blurred the "vague boundary" between the well and the sick, scientists and subjects. Conclusion: To Keep Alive and Heap Up Data chapter abstractHistories of psychology have long framed psychical research as a necessary failure, a last gasp of magical thinking that had to be purified out in order for the mind sciences to become truly scientific. The book's conclusion reevaluates the failure narrative, arguing that psychical research gave participants valuable tools with which to probe their experiences on their own terms. In its successes as well as its struggles for legitimacy, psychical research illustrates the contextual nature of science and the permeability of the self. James and his many correspondents tried to stabilize a normative understanding of what it means to be an experiencer, an observer, and a citizen. At the same time, their intimate exposures transgressed the boundaries of the individual and called into question the unity of reality itself.

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Book SynopsisSéances, clairvoyance, and telepathy captivated public imagination in the United States from the 1850s well into the twentieth century. Though skeptics dismissed these experiences as delusions, a new kind of investigator emerged to seek the science behind such phenomena. With new technologies like the telegraph collapsing the boundaries of time and space, an explanation seemed within reach. As Americans took up psychical experiments in their homes, the boundaries of the mind began to waver. Common Phantoms brings these experiments back to life while modeling a new approach to the history of psychology and the mind sciences. Drawing on previously untapped archives of participant-reported data, Alicia Puglionesi recounts how an eclectic group of investigators tried to capture the most elusive dimensions of human consciousness. A vast though flawed experiment in democratic science, psychical research gave participants valuable tools with which to study their experiences on their own terms. Academic psychology would ultimately disown this effort as both a scientific failure and a remnant of magical thinking, but its challenge to the limits of science, the mind, and the soul still reverberates today.Trade Review"A fresh perspective on the goals and failures, friendships and rivalries, methods and dreams of those who investigated the interconnected powers of the human mind." -- Pamela Klassen * University of Toronto, author of The Story of Radio Mind: A Missionary's Journey on Indigenous Land *"Common Phantoms is sophisticated, engaging, and at times moving. This important book complements recent studies on psychical research but also breaks new ground on topics such as gender, mental illness, empiricism, and race." -- Christopher White * Vassar College, author of Other Worlds: Spirituality and the Search for Invisible Dimensions *"Common Phantoms offers an insightful, entertaining look at America's haunted history and Americans' hunger to understand the invisible forces that shape their lives. Alicia Puglionesi's artful examination of psychic science—its investigators and experiments, its skeptics and true believers—provides a fascinating view of the empirical study of spiritual pursuits." -- Peter Manseau * Smithsonian Curator of American Religious History and author of The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln's Ghost *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: At Home, with Ghosts chapter abstractProvides an overview of the book's contents. Broadly, the book tracks the séances, deathbed communions, flashes of clairvoyance, and telepathic experiments that bound together the lives of ordinary Americans from the 1860s well into the twentieth century. Or rather, it follows Americans as they chased these strange phenomena across boundaries of gender, race, and mental illness. Psychical research, a field of study that emerged specifically to make sense of experiences that defied explanation, relied on a far-flung network of participants to collect its "wild facts." Most were not trained scientists, but all believed that a scientific approach was the best way to discover the true nature of the mind and, perhaps, the soul. This book tells the story of their failure to produce an orthodox science and explores the often neglected relational phenomena that they did successfully generate. 1The Weather Map at the Bottom of the Mind chapter abstractThe American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) looked to the iconic field sciences of the nineteenth century for both methods and metaphors, organizational strategies, and epistemological foundations. This chapter considers the influence of meteorology and astronomy on psychical research. All three sciences faced a similar challenge: how to identify and fix fleeting phenomena encountered only in their indirect emanations. They all grappled with the problem of the "personal equation," a certain degree of inevitable perceptual variability among observers. By self-consciously adopting meteorology and astronomy as models, ASPR leaders not only asserted the feasibility of capturing the invisible, they also sought to counter the materialist orthodoxy of the lab. William James, especially, saw individual mental events as inextricable from the context in which they occurred—a context impossible to reproduce under artificially controlled conditions. It was no more realistic to study the mind in a laboratory than to study a tornado in a test tube. 2Machines That Dream Together chapter abstractThe scientific study of dreams offers a window into nineteenth-century views about the unconscious and the nature of the mind. Competing models of mind proposed by psychologists and psychical researchers had serious implications for human relations, politics, and commerce. New communication channels like the telegraph facilitated the spread of ideas and impressions with unprecedented speed. Psychical research suggested that ideas could spread of their own accord, along mysterious wavelengths that eluded human control. This would badly undermine the notion of intellectual property, not to mention the "marketplace of ideas" where rational consumers deliberate over their commitments. Radical utopians saw a path to progress and uplift, while conservatives saw a volatile threat to the social order. Though some dismissed thought-transference and telepathy as preposterous, the strength of the anecdotal tradition around such events led serious psychologists and philosophers to speculate on their meaning. 3Drawings from the Other Side chapter abstractPsychical researchers did not merely imitate the techniques of objectivity emerging in academic psychology, they helped to articulate new experimental practices for accessing the unconscious mind. This chapter explores the influence of psychical research on the development of drawing tasks as a psychometric and clinical tool. While psychical researchers used drawing to test the permeability of the mind, it was embraced in mainstream psychology as a way to bypass the patient's subjectivity and access the brain's inner workings. The widespread use of drawing in psychometrics, neuropsychology, and psychotherapy takes on a new significance when we understand its roots in psychical research: an experiment meant to join two minds in communion became a routine tool for examining solitary brains. 4Psychic Domesticity chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on the role of intimacy in the psychical research career of Mary Craig Sinclair and her husband, the novelist Upton Sinclair. Mary Craig Sinclair's story encapsulates issues of gender, witnessing, and subjectivity. She began with studies of a stage medium, Count Ostoja, which reversed the Gothic script of Svengali-like psychic invasion by placing Sinclair in the position of superior mental power. After this scandalous episode, Sinclair retreated to the home and to the dyad of the married couple, where she began a long-running experiment as a recipient of her husband's telepathic messages. Returning to the normative gender dynamic that her initial research had disrupted, she was able to win the acceptance of leading psychical researchers and psychologists. 5The Wilderness of Insanity chapter abstractPsychical research was constantly negotiating the boundaries of sanity—sometimes in a communal and democratic way, sometimes in a clinical and authoritarian way. To pursue the real into a wilderness where perceptions could deceive, it had to standardize its sources within a certain range of reliability. The concept of neurasthenia allowed investigators to distinguish between subjects with compromised mental faculties and those with physiological troubles that did not negate their ability to testify. However, this differentiation had no fixed or clearly articulated criteria. Widespread anxiety over neurasthenia was chipping away at the very notion of mental normalcy, and radical experiments in Spiritualism, psychical research, and parapsychology further blurred the "vague boundary" between the well and the sick, scientists and subjects. Conclusion: To Keep Alive and Heap Up Data chapter abstractHistories of psychology have long framed psychical research as a necessary failure, a last gasp of magical thinking that had to be purified out in order for the mind sciences to become truly scientific. The book's conclusion reevaluates the failure narrative, arguing that psychical research gave participants valuable tools with which to probe their experiences on their own terms. In its successes as well as its struggles for legitimacy, psychical research illustrates the contextual nature of science and the permeability of the self. James and his many correspondents tried to stabilize a normative understanding of what it means to be an experiencer, an observer, and a citizen. At the same time, their intimate exposures transgressed the boundaries of the individual and called into question the unity of reality itself.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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