Frontiers of Psychology
1998/99
Rationale
Modern academic Psychology has achieved a level of methodological refinement that makes it an example both of the way scientific data are collected and of ways to approach and discuss the essence of Reality. This methodological refinement pertains to both qualitative and quantitative data. Anomalies in Psychology can now be studied with these refined methods, for example, sinestesia, lucid dreaming, near-death experiences, parapsychological phenomena. Cumulative data gathered by parapsychologists during a century of scientific tradition became extremely solid and impossible to simply ignore – although sometimes they seems to frontally defy the assumptions of several well-established sciences: we know that a "Psi Function" does exist and is responsible, at least, for "anomalous communication phenomena" that elude the explanations given by generally accepted and well-spread scientific theories. On the other hand, the nature of Parapsychological research itself has led the researchers to abandon any naiveté in data collection as well as to beware of fraud, superstition, methodological flaws and hasty interpretation. This has made Parapsychology specially fit to enlighten and criticize, in a healthy way, a whole world of poorly grounded affirmations and conclusions about an issue that interests us so deeply: what moves human beings, what we do and do not know about Reality. It is, then, extremely important to meet public interest and curiosity on the "paranormal" with an open scientific approach, that must be also reflexive and epistemologically grounded. Our proposal is a program of theoretical and practical study that aims to elucidate the concerned public about what is known and what is ignored in Parapsychology. It is also intended to train students in critical scientific thinking and in methods of research on Psi phenomena.
Purposes
Program
1. Introduction to the study of "psi" phenomena.
1.1 Introductory session: discussion of students’ motivations and objectives of the course.
1.2 How do we know that we’re not being deceived by others or ourselves? A very short introduction to the considerations of the Epistemology of Science and to scientists’ concerns. Examples from Parapsychology research.
1.3 Conscious and unconscious fraud: how, when and why. Fraud and illusion. Psychopathology and pseudo-paranormal.
2. Mapping Parapsychology: psi and pseudo-paranormal phenomena .
2.1 Brief History of Parapsychology: from "Tipping Tables" to our days.
2.2 Classification of psi phenomena: Psi-gamma.
2.3 Classification of psi phenomena: Psi-kappa.
2.4 Classification of psi phenomena: Psi-theta?
2.5 Contemporary examples: the Ganzfeld paradigm and laboratorial research on remote viewing and telepathy. Animal Parapsychology. Micro-psychokinesis and macro-psychokinesis. The "Evil-eye" in the lab.
3. Altered states of consciousness and psi phenomena.
3.1 Dreams.
3.2 Mediumship and trance.
3.3 Hypnosis.
3.4 Meditation and concentration.
3.5 Prayer and spiritual healing.
3.6 Self-inflicted bodily damage, trance and invulnerability.
4. Survival hypothesis – suggestive evidence
4.1 Mediumship and "cross-correspondences".
4.2 "Reincarnation-type" cases.
4.3 Therapeutic regressions.
4.4 Out-of-body experiences and Near-Death experiences.
4.5 Apparitions and haunted houses.
4.6 Psi-gamma and Psi-kappa phenomena revisited: preconditions.
4.7 Psychography and graphoscopy.
4.8 Instrumental transcommunication.
5. Psi function
5.1 Psychological functions and Psi function: a comparison.
5.2 The usefulness of the psi function and Darwin’s theory.
5.3 Consciousness as a central issue: the eventually anomalous character of simple existence and experiential consciousness.
6. Parapsychology and the nature of Reality: psi phenomena as a source of perplexity and critic of the conceptions of Reality. Some contributions of Parapsychology to a theory of human psyche.
Vítor Rodrigues Universidade Internacional, Lisboa, Portugal