Reflections on being a parapsychologist

Journal of Parapsychology, The, Fall, 2003 by Carlos S. Alvarado

There is also a beginning of studies of the transformative effects of parapsychological experiences, a topic parapsychologists have been reticent to study. But we have made contributions to the study of personal transformations related to psychic experience, as seen in the work of Palmer (1979), Kennedy and Kanthamani (1995), and in my own work with OBEs (Alvarado & Zingrone, 2003), all of which have been published in parapsychological journals.

In recent times most of the studies on the relationship of out-of-body experiences to psychological processes or experiences such as dissociation (Irwin, 2000) and dreams (Alvarado & Zingrone, 1999), as well as studies of the features of the experience (Alvarado & Zingrone, 1998-99, 1999), have been published in parapsychology journals. There is no doubt that, as I have argued elsewhere, most of the contributions to our understanding of the psychology of OBEs have come from parapsychologists (Alvarado, 1992). In fact OBE work represents one of our most recent contributions to psychology and to the more specific area of altered states of consciousness. This is evident in Imants Baruss's (2003) recently published book Alterations of Consciousness. In fact, in this book, published by the American Psychological Association, the contributions of parapsychologists to the study of consciousness are presented in more detail than I have ever seen before in psychological publications.

Fourth: The results of parapsychological research have helped to combat superstition and to evaluate popular claims. There are many ideas and traditions about psychic phenomena that have been regarded as superstitions. One of them is the relationship between death and psychic phenomena, a relationship supported in the case of apparitions in such early studies as the Census of Hallucinations (e.g., Sidgwick et al., 1894). In addition, these associations have been reinforced, although by work that admittedly suffered from sampling problems. This includes case collections studies of death-related phenomena by Ernesto Bozzano (1923) and Camille Flammarion (1920-1921/1922-1923), and more recent work by Graziela Piccinini and Gian Marco Rinaldi (1990) and Sylvia Hart Wright (2001).

The claim that mediums can communicate with the dead has not been substantiated, but a variety of studies from the nineteenth century to our own time have produced evidence for the acquisition of veridical statements by mediums (for an overview see Gauld, 1982). In other instances, such as the investigations of the levitation claims of practitioners of Transcendental Meditation, there has been no supportive evidence to back the claims in question (Mishlove, 1983).

The evaluation of Transcendental Meditation claims brings us to the testing of psychic development claims. Two studies done in the 1970s did not support the claims of followers of Silva Mind Control (Brier, Schmeidler, & Savits, 1975; Vaughan, 1974). This is an important line of research in which parapsychologists may contribute useful information to consumers of development programs.