Psi Text Resources Thread

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - Michael Prescott recommends a recent book by Richard Reichbart, entitled "The Paranormal Surrounds Us: Psychic Phenomena in Literature, Culture and Psychoanalysis":
https://michaelprescott.typepad.com/mich...-book.html

Here's the publisher's blurb from Amazon:
Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Joyce, E.M. Forster and Ingmar Bergman all made the paranormal essential to their depiction of humanity. Freud recognized telepathy as an everyday phenomenon. Observations on parapsychological aspects of psychoanalysis also include the findings of the Mesmerists, Jung, Ferenczi and Eisenbud.
Many academicians attribute such psychic discoveries to "poetic license" rather than to accurate understanding of our parapsychological capacities. The author--a practicing psychoanalyst and parapsychologist, and a lawyer familiar with Navajo culture--argues for a fresh appraisal of psi phenomena and their integration into psychoanalytic theory and clinical work, literary studies and anthropology.

Here's a review of the book by Nemo C. Mörck for the SPR:
https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/parano...is-richard

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - a Lancaster University Ph.D. thesis by Robert Radaković, entitled "Beyond Faith and Reason: The Genesis of Psychical Research and the Search for the Paranormal Domain (1850-1914)" (2019), is now freely available online:
https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/13...vicphd.pdf

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - David Halperin discusses an edition of the correspondence of Marcello Truzzi and Martin Gardner, and concludes that responding to unconventional claims with ridicule rather than reason is not only inappropriate but morally wrong:
https://www.davidhalperin.net/arguments-...lo-truzzi/

Courtesy of the Daily Grail, I thought this Psychology Today blog article by Ralph Lewis, entitled "What Is the Allure of the Paranormal in Our Scientific Age?" was interesting because its sceptical claims were so extreme:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...ntific-age

He gives a couple of examples, one of someone paying for coaching from a mind-over-matter guru, and the other of an esteemed academic colleague pursuing psi research in his spare time. (It's a bit difficult to know how much of what he says is true, because although no names are mentioned a footnote says "Details have been altered to protect anonymity.")

Then he asks "How can people hold such weird beliefs in phenomena that have repeatedly been thoroughly debunked by mainstream science? Especially the scientist — how can he be unaware of the mountains of research invalidating the claims for the existence of such phenomena?" He adds that the existence of psi phenomena is "utterly incompatible with all the known laws of physics."

Further on he says "Demonstrating that none of these phenomena is real is no longer interesting to most serious scientists, who have generally come to ignore the field and move on. This is because the complete lack of substance and the methodological errors of parapsychological claims have already been demonstrated countless times over the last few decades."

By the time we get to a quotation from James Alcock saying that research has failed to demonstrate the existence of psi phenomena and that no progress has been made since the 1880s, it sounds moderate and cautious by comparison!

Courtesy of David Metcalfe - Jack Hunter has a short blog item on why he is interested in paranormal research. He reveals that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a strong influence, and links to a Podcast in which he and other Buffy "superfans" discuss the show:
http://jack-hunter.webstarts.com/blog/po...l-research
http://www.othersidepodcast.com/blog/201...spiration/

I suppose Buffy is a more contemporary role model than Eleanor Sidgwick and Louisa Rhine ...

The SPR has a review by Robert McLuhan of a recent book by Bob Gebelein entitled "Dirty Science: How Unscientific Methods Are Blocking Our Cultural Advancement":
https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/dirty-...cement-bob

The review is positive on the whole, but it does characterise the book as "a deeply personal view by someone who has had it up to here with scientific prejudice: a sort of articulate venting – passionate, but also often rambling and repetitive, like someone musing out loud."

I have to say that from a glance at the preview on Amazon, to my mind Gebelein comes across as a hysterical conspiracy theorist.

The SPR has a new review by Steve Hume of Paul H. Smith's book, "The Essential Guide to Remote Viewing: The Secret Military Remote Perception Skill Anyone Can Learn," published in 2015:
https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/essent...-can-learn

The review is detailed and on the whole positive (apart from some criticism of the author's choice of definition for RV, and of a reference to Edwin May as a supporter of a quantum explanation). It concludes:
"At the end of the day, though, this relatively short book is clearly not intended to be the ultimate source reference about the subject. As an ‘essential’ compendium to the pertinent facts about RV, however; from the perspective of someone who was closely involved with operational aspects of the military project, it succeeds amply in its objective to give advice to those who wish to try RV themselves. There is enough information contained within the main text, and the notes, for the book to be used as a good first base for further enquiry. It is a valuable addition to the literature."

It may be relatively short, but at 309 pages I wouldn't describe it as absolutely short. Indeed, the review gives the impression that it's relatively comprehensive.

Mysterious Universe has an article on Brian Josephson and some other academic scientists with an interest in the paranormal:
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/10/a...aranormal/

I thought it was quite interesting, but was puzzled by the reference to psi experiments having been done in Josephson's own group in the Cavendish Lab at Cambridge. Looking at the source of the quotation, it's obvious that the MU article is essentially a copy-and-paste job based on this article published in Physics World as long ago as 2002 (and Josephson was evidently referring to other people's experiments - presumably the Ganzfeld ones - and not his own):
https://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/mm/...ofile.html

Still, I thought I'd post the link, if only to save other people being puzzled.

Incidentally, I was interested to see this in the Wikipedia article on Josephson: "Antony Valentini of Imperial College London withdrew Josephson's invitation to a 2010 conference on the de Broglie-Bohm theory because of his work on the paranormal, although it was reinstated after complaints."

That seems strange, because unless I'm mistaken (and I don't think I am) Valentini was an organiser of the Cambridge University Society for Psychical Research in the mid-1980s.

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - here's a post on a blog entitled "Incoherent Ramblings of a Sometimes-Bearded Man," discussing a claim made by Derren Brown that clairvoyance doesn't exist, based on the inability of members of his audience to demonstrate clairvoyance:
https://tacoseasoning.blogspot.com/2019/10/

The post cites half a dozen published works that Brown is encouraged to read, and points out the illogicality of his reasoning, in view of the possibility that psi is a skill, which may not manifest itself in unfavourable conditions.