The Paranormal: A Guide To The Unexplained. - Review - book review

THE PARANORMAL: A GUIDE TO THE UNEXPLAINED by Anthony North. London: Blanford, 1997. Pp. 250. $16.95 (paper). ISBN 0-7137-2715 2.

The Paranormal is an interdisciplinary book that crosses the boundaries of psychology, philosophy, and physics. The author chooses many examples from the literature of perception and consciousness, as well as much of the experimental and experiential research in parapsychology The book is "densely" written in that considerable material is presented. The author does not develop many of the useful concepts of other researchers. The major point that each item contributes is tersely presented then the author quickly moves on to other, related material. Readers with a limited background in parapsychology or psychology will understand the author's premise but will not have the background to assess the statements. The author refers to a wealth of studies but often fails to provide the citation so that the interested reader may easily pursue a particular thread. On the other hand, the material presented is generally a fair statement of the findings of the research that is described.

The author makes the point that we inherently cannot understand objective reality. He realizes that understanding of reality is distorted by our physiology, our beliefs, our prior learning, and, perhaps, even by our connection to the Jungian collective unconscious. In effect, our understanding of reality is inherently flawed and, to some extent, is a subjective rather than an objective process. Some may dispute the position that "there is no way to objectively assess reality." Many psychologists with a background in perception and cognition will feel quite comfortable with such a view; the large body of research in perception and cognition support's North's position that individual and group perceptions of reality are subjective rather than objective.

The Paranormal is written in a circular (synthetic) style rather than in a linear (analytic) style. Some readers may find the sequence of the material in the book arbitrary or, perhaps, even random. People who feel most comfortable with a sequential approach to problem solving may feel quite uncomfortable with The Paranormal The author looks at a mass of complex issues and then seeks to create a lawful relationship between often disparate findings to establish a new gestalt.

There is disagreement among researchers concerning use of "true experimental" vs. quasi-experimental research techniques. Some experimenters prefer using Analysis of Variance with its precise treatment levels and conditions and avoid the uncertainties of techniques such as factor analysis or multiple regression analysis. They view the former as "the stuff of experiments" and the latter as some sort of variation on quasi-experimentation at best. The synthetic thinker, on the other hand, often likes the opportunities for the discovery of new "unplanned" relationships between factors. North would argue that both approaches are useful, but approaches that allow new information to be developed without the constriction of "prior belief' is superior for extending the limits of our current day knowledge.

The Paranormal has five major sections: "Life After Death," "Mind over Matter," "Information Talents," and "Time Anomaly." Each section has short "chapterlets" of about five pages in length and the short chapter concept fits in well with the nature of the book. The various chapters do have a tendency to introduce similar concepts so that, by the end of the book, one is inclined to agree with some rather speculative conclusions of the author.

Life After Death

The author takes a generally agnostic position on the issue of survival after death. The chapter "Reincarnation" points out that the evidence is so strong that "something is going on," but the nature of that "something" is yet to be established. The author's favorite explanation is the Jungian "collective unconscious" which he views as a "communal mind store." This appears to be a variation on the old superpsi hypothesis where we cannot be sure we are communicating with surviving entities because we may actually be using telepathy or clairvoyance. The "Gryptoamnesia" chapter goes on to point out that past-life regressions have nonpsychic explanations as well as the explanation that people are actually reliving their past lives. Some people retain fairly detailed information about material they have read or experienced in the past while forgetting their exposure to the material. They recall this material under hypnosis and sometime create a "story" around the material which manifests as a "past life." The auth or mentions the value of past-life regression as a means of accessing information in psychotherapy. He concludes that such cryptoamnesia evidence is not a satisfactory explanation for some of the phenomena observed by researchers.

The chapter "Possession" discusses some of the cases where a person perceives that they are a person who has lived in the past and recalls the events in great detail, as if they were the person from the past rather than the person from the present. The following chapter "Multiple personality" considers multiple personality disorder as an explanation for ostensible survival evidence. The author states that "[m]ost mainstream psychiatrists today deny its [multiple personality's] existence." However, Multiple Personality is an accepted category under personality disorders in DSM-IV.

The chapter "History of Spiritualism" presents the controversies and fraudulent behaviors of certain mediums. However, it does not provide the considerable evidence in favor of communication with spirits. The chapter even ascribes the experiences of mediums to accessing the collective unconscious or utilizing clairvoyance to achieve their sometimes accurate revelations about those who have died. A brief chapter titled "The Medium" refers to the possibility of multiple personality disorder being characteristic of mediums. The author concludes the chapter with the opinion that MPD accounts for the phenomena associated with Spiritualism and the cases of apparent reincarnation.

In his chapter the "Split Brain," North maintains that automatic writing is a function of the unconscious and gives evidence of unconscious thought processes rather than providing information about survival. The author should have made a clear distinction between MPD and the differences between right and left brain function: the latter is a physiological characteristic, whereas the former is apparently due to prior learned behaviors. Later on in the book, the author takes the position that survival after death may or may not exist and that it is really a matter of belief rather than being subject to experimental verification.

Mind Over Matter

The section on "Mind Over Matter" travels over a wide range of topics. Some of the chapters, such as "Stigmata," "Hysteria," and "Psychological Evolution" seem only remotely connected to the issue of mind over matter. The author also has chapters which clearly relate to the topic, such as "Psychokinesis," "Entities," the "Poltergeist," and "Quantum Theory."

In the chapter on entities, the author states that man's mind is more than his brain. If one considers some of the physiological evidence for peripheral processing of some motor activities, and the visual processing ability of the eye, one should not be surprised to find even some neuroscientists who would say that mind is more than brain. Thus, perhaps the author has made a straw man argument. His actual aim, however, is to head toward the notion of a collective memory (collective unconscious) that he considers to be a likely candidate for many paranormal phenomena. At the end of the chapter on hypnosis, the author briefly mentions the possibility that "mind invasion" may be occurring during hypnosis and a similar mind invasion may be occurring in the presence of poltergeist phenomena. North cites the work of W. G. Roll on poltergeist phenomena to make this argument, making the observation from Roll's work that poltergeist phenomena are associated with psychological dysfunction. However, as I read Roll's wo rk, Roll does not imply that poltergeist activity is due to "mind invasion." Rather, the phenomena are generally related to psychological stress within the home and it seems likely that the poltergeist phenomena have nothing to do with any kind of "mind invasion." The author briefly mentions microPK research and does not seem to question the reality of the research, but, he seems to dismiss its importance due to the small effects obtained. He is much more enthusiastic about macroPK work and mentions Nina Kulagina, Neihardt's SORRAT medium phenomena, and Owen's Philip Experiment. He expresses the belief that the SORRAT research and the Philip Experiment allow slight PK abilities of individuals to be enhanced through group effort. At this point, the author missed an opportunity to mention other studies which have specifically focused on the effect of individual effort versus group effort.

Information Talents

The section on "Information Talents" reviews people's experiences with telepathy, dowsing, astral travel, Near Death Experiences, etc., and relates them to the underlying theme of some form of collective unconscious being involved in the process associated with the various "information talents." Readers of the general literature of psychical phenomena and the literature of parapsychology are unlikely to find new material in this section. The reader who is not familiar with the general research of the field may find the section interesting even though it is lacking in depth of coverage. In the chapter "Dowsing," the author maintains that dowsing "is nothing more than a variation of clairvoyance." However, there is considerable anecdotal evidence that dowsing has a macroPK component in some instances. The chapter "Mass Hysteria" takes the position that mass hysteria phenomena may be due to "...something similar to a collective racial unconscious." The author points to mass panics and people's perception of bei ng poisoned due to belief that others were poisoned. However, one might dismiss this particular speculation on the part of the author by looking at the psychological literature on mass behavior and then invoking the principle of parsimony. In the chapter "Astral Travel," the author concludes that the evidence supports the position that people do not actually leave their bodies even though there is the perception that this has happened. Rather, he proposes, there is an inner mental representation of the world the astral traveler visits.

Time Anomaly

The final section of the book deals with the issue of time anomalies and also sums up his main theme of the existence of some form of collective unconscious. The "Precognition" chapter provides several famous anecdotal precognitive experiences, but there is no discussion of controlled studies of precognition. The "Theories of Time" chapter briefly discusses Paul Davies' views on the alternate universes hypothesis and J. W. Dunne's view of the flow of time; however, the author dismisses these approaches. In the following chapter "Unconscious Perception" North proposes that in the vast majority of cases the mechanism is not paranormal at all. Rather, people make unconscious assessments of the future which they perceive to be foretelling of events. He used the chapter "Collective Psyche" to account for the other cases and once again brings up the notion of a collective unconscious which is the source of the precognitive information.

Conclusion

The Paranormal does not bring forth new information for enlightenment of researchers. This book is, rather, an excursion into the world of the nature of consciousness. There is a reliance on an anecdotal approach and some of the best scientific research is not presented. The concept of some form of collective unconscious is familiar to students of personality theory, but is not an adequate scientific explanation. On the other hand, we may eventually find strong evidence for some form of collective unconscious.

The lack of depth in the coverage of the various topics causes the impartial, scientifically trained reader to remain unconvinced. I do not recommend The Paranormal for an academic course in parapsychology. However, the book is worth reading because it brings into focus the underlying relationships of a large body of paranormal information. The basic theme causes the reviewer to feel some renewed hope that psychologists rather than physicists will be the first to find the underlying mechanism of psi phenomena.

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