The Psychology of the Psychic
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| The Psychology of the Psychic | |
| Author | David Marks (1980 edition with Richard Kammann) |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Prometheus Books |
| Publication date | 1980 and December 2000 |
| Media type | Hardcover/Paperback |
| Pages | 336 pages |
| ISBN | ISBN 1573927988 |
The Psychology of the Psychic is a work by David Marks and Dr Richard Kammann, written while both were lecturers in psychology at New Zealand's University of Otago.
The original edition published in 1980 was co-authored with the late Richard Kammann. The second edition was published in 2000. Each edition contains a Foreword written by Martin Gardner. The second edition is dedicated to Richard Kammann (1934-1984). Kammann died of a heart attack in 1984. Both of Kammann's brothers and one of his sisters also passed away due to heart attacks.
"The Psychology of the Psychic" is a skeptical analysis of claims of the paranormal. The book critiques a few notable studies within parapsychology from the period 1970-2000. The book contains a critical analysis of the remote viewing experiments carried out in the 1970s at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) by two physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff. These studies formed part of the highly publicized STARGATE studies funded by the Defense Intelligence Agency and CIA. Marks describes flaws in the experimental protocols of the original SRI that enabled the statistical significance of the results to become inflated. Marks reached the conclusion: "Remote viewing is nothing more than a self-fulfilling subjective delusion" (p. 92).
Marks is equally skeptical about claims made on behalf of other allegedly paranormal claims such as the ganzfeld, psychic staring and psychic pets, as described by Rupert Sheldrake, and self-proclaimed psychic Uri Geller. Regarding the latter, Marks concludes: "As far as I am aware, from my observation, Geller has no psychic ability whatsoever. However, he's a very clever, well-practiced magician" (p. 224).
In the final section of the book, some principles that Marks believes are helpful to the analysis of paranormal claims are described. Four different meanings of the term coincidence are described. Skeptical analyses of the research of Alister Hardy and Arthur Koestler lead Marks to define "Koestler's Fallacy" as the assumption that odd matches of random events cannot arise by chance. Marks illustrates the fact that such odd matches do regularly occur with examples from his own experience. The Psychology of the Psychic describes research evidence concerning self-perpetuating beliefs and superstitious thinking.
Finally the book advocates what Marks and Kammann call "The Art of Doubt", the application of alternative skeptical thinking about the conventional beliefs and assumptions of our time.
In the Foreword to the first edition, Martin Gardner appeals to his readers, opining:
- "For every person who reads this valuable book there are hundreds of naïve souls who would prefer to have their spines tingled by a sensational but worthless potboiler by some hack journalist of the paranormal. You who now read these sentences join a small but wiser minority".
[edit] External links
- The Psychology of the Psychic description on Prometheus Books
