Psi journals

Then here is the latest issue of the Society for Scientific Exploration's magazine EdgeScience (Number 37, March 2019), which can be freely downloaded:
https://www.scientificexploration.org/edgescience/37

Contents:

THE OBSERVATORY

A More Direct Approach to Afterlife Research
By Michael Grosso

FEATURES

A Poltergeist in the Kindergarten
By Terje G. Simonsen

The Reception of Scientific Ideas from Alleged Supernatural Beings and Extraterrestrials:
A Chapter in the History of Unorthodox Science
By Diana Walsh Pasulka

From Psyche to Scarab:
The Emotional Resonance of Animals in Symbolism and Synchronicity
By Michael Jawer

And finally here is the latest issue of EXPLORE: The Journal of Science & Healing (Volume 15, Issue 2, March-April 2019), again downloadable:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/ex...15/issue/2

I'm just catching up with journals. Here's the contents list for the SPR's Paranormal Review magazine, number 88 (Autumn 2018). I haven't received this one, but I'm hoping it will come with the January 2019 issue of the Journal:
https://www.spr.ac.uk/sites/spr.ac.uk/fi...NTENTS.pdf

In case anyone else is wondering, I'm told that the Autumn 2018 Paranormal Review and the January 2019 journal are indeed now on their way to members.

In case anyone else is wondering, I'm told that the Autumn 2018 Paranormal Review and the January 2019 journal are indeed now on their way to members.

And they have just dropped through my letter-box, together with the issue of the Proceedings on Dr Soal: A Psychic Enigma - albeit a bit crumpled, as the package was "Found open or damaged and officially secured" by Royal Mail ...

Carlos S. Alvarado has a blog post on a special issue of the Journal of Parapsychology, marking the 80th anniversary of the journal in 2017:
https://carlossalvarado.wordpress.com/20...sychology/

It contains an editorial, two overview articles, and reprints of significant articles published between 1937 and 2008.

I'm not quite clear from the blog post when this issue appeared. It's described as a supplement to volume 82 (2018), but I hadn't heard of it before and it's not listed on the Rhine website, so it may be new.

Carlos S. Alvarado has a blog post on a special issue of the Journal of Parapsychology, marking the 80th anniversary of the journal in 2017:
https://carlossalvarado.wordpress.com/20...sychology/

It contains an editorial, two overview articles, and reprints of significant articles published between 1937 and 2008.

I'm not quite clear from the blog post when this issue appeared. It's described as a supplement to volume 82 (2018), but I hadn't heard of it before and it's not listed on the Rhine website, so it may be new.

It is indeed a new issue, and to celebrate the journal's 80th birthday, it's also a free issue, available here:
https://parapsych.org/uploaded_files/pdf...lement.pdf

Here is the list of contents, including the reprints of eight significant articles from the journal's history, one for each decade:

Editorial: Four Score (Plus) Years Ago
Etzel Cardeña

80 Years of the Journal of Parapsychology: An Historical Overview
John Palmer

Eight Decades of Psi Research: Highlights in the Journal of Parapsychology
Carlos S. Alvarado

Some Basic Experiments in Extra-sensory Perception: A Background
Joseph Banks Rhine

Spontaneous Telepathy and the Problem of Survival
Gardner Murphy

Subjective Forms of Spontaneous Psi Experiences
Louisa E. Rhine

Precognition of a Quantum Process
Helmut Schmidt

Studying Individual Psi Experiences
Gertrude R. Schmeidler

A Joint Communiqué: The Psi Ganzfeld Controversy
Ray Hyman and Charles Honorton

An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning
Jessica Utts

Mind Matters: A New Scientific Era
Roger D. Nelson

John Palmer's overview of the journal's 80 years ends with this:
In early 2017, I retired as editor of the JP and was replaced by Etzel Cardeña, who described the changes he envisions for the journal in an editorial in the Spring 2017 issue (Cardeña, 2017). The major substantive change will be an expansion in the scope and coverage of the journal. The most important of these changes is an increased emphasis on papers addressing anomalous experiences per se and states of consciousness, studied by non-experimental (presumably qualitative/phenomenological) methods. This adjustment is necessary if for no other reason than to reflect a rapidly evolving change in the primary research objectives (I would go so far as to call it a paradigm shift) within the field of parapsychology, a development I personally find disturbing.

Cardeña's 2017 editorial is available here:
https://www.rhine.org/images/jp/JPv81n1.pdf

Of Cardeña's seven aims for the journal, I think the ones Palmer has in mind are:
2) Expand the remit of the Journal of Parapsychology to include related areas such as anomalous experiences and states of consciousness in general, as the founders of the Society for Psychical Research had in mind for the then budding field.
3) Open the Journal even more to other research approaches than experimental, quantitative ones, since any method has particular strengths and weaknesses, which can be supplemented by other approaches.
4) Encourage contributions from various disciplines, including those not often represented in the Journal such as anthropology and the humanities.

But I must confess I'm not really sure what this means, and I hadn't been aware of the "paradigm shift" in parapsychology that Palmer talks about. From the mention of anthropology, I assume Palmer's concern is that there will be a shift towards simply investigating experiences and beliefs as subjects of interest regardless of whether they correspond to anything objective or (in some sense) real. Can anyone enlighten me?

But I must confess I'm not really sure what this means, and I hadn't been aware of the "paradigm shift" in parapsychology that Palmer talks about. From the mention of anthropology, I assume Palmer's concern is that there will be a shift towards simply investigating experiences and beliefs as subjects of interest regardless of whether they correspond to anything objective or (in some sense) real. Can anyone enlighten me?

I'm not sure why anthropology would indicate a shift away from objectivity. I don't know exactly what they're referring to either, but I would guess incorporating, for example, anthropological perspectives would be an effort to try and understand psi, and the study of psi, in the context of past and present societies and general, every-day behavior.

I'm not sure why anthropology would indicate a shift away from objectivity. I don't know exactly what they're referring to either, but I would guess incorporating, for example, anthropological perspectives would be an effort to try and understand psi, and the study of psi, in the context of past and present societies and general, every-day behavior.

I'm just guessing, but I think part of what Palmer is referring to may be the tendency among anthropologists to think that the objective reality of paranormal phenomena and beliefs is something outside their remit - that their job is to study belief as something meaningful in its own terms - and even that it would be incorrect for academic observers to make such judgments about other cultures because that would imply their own culture was somehow superior.

Palmer also mentions phenomenological methods which, as far as I understand it, deal with how people think and feel about their experiences rather than objective and quantifiable aspects.

Perhaps there are some points of contact there with the interests of some currently prominent parapsychologists, such as Jack Hunter, David Luke and Chris Roe, but in a small field individuals are bound to have more influence than they would in a large one, and I wonder if it's more of a random fluctuation than a "paradigm shift". Incidentally, those three are all British, and I thought it was interesting that Cardeña's 2017 editorial listed among the positive signs for parapsychology "the increasing academic recognition of parapsychology and related topics in the UK ... and perhaps in other places."

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - here is the Boletín Electrónico de Parapsicología, volume 14, Number 2 (May 2019) of the Instituto de Psicología Paranormal in Buenos Aires (in Spanish):
http://www.alipsi.com.ar/wp-content/uplo..._2019.html