Many people who are interested in parapsychology lose their fascination with the puzzling anomalies after awhile and move on to other interests. Even some who conduct research and produce significant results sometimes fall away – sometimes so far that they become aggressive critics of the field.
Others stick with it. When these parapsychologists wonder about what happened to those who disappeared or turned into critics, they tend to think about how difficult the field is economically and how much easier it is to be rewarded for work in more sanctioned areas of science, or even how one can find a career niche by being a turncoat. I’m sure those things figure in, more or less, for different people.
I think it also has to do with the state of our understanding of the things we study. Many, many adolescents are fascinated with audacious mysteries, anomalies that seem to defy the expectations of science and society. They seem to break the rules, and this in itself is appealing to many young people. Then as people age and want to develop solid life paths, rule-breaking anomalies usually become less fascinating. Or they may even seem dangerous, something to fight, the way a sober alcoholic can become devoted to fighting the destructive delusions of alcoholism.
I have chosen another path in developing First Sight theory. I wondered if the anomalies studied by parapsychologists could be normalized by finding a way to understand them that could resolve the contradiction between their fitful, occasional occurrence with their general absence. There are some other anomalies that science has resolved very productively. Unpredictable lightning bolts became another expression of electromagnetic energy. Stone skeletons of fantastic creatures became an expression of the process of evolution. Bizarre conjunctions of plant and animal species in widely separated landmasses became a remnant of continental drift. Such example do not prove that the anomalies of parapsychology promise to be equally productive – many anomalies must be mere coincidence, or quirks of human psychology causing systematic misperceptions. But these examples show that parapsychological anomalies might be productive if understood more broadly.
I experienced an unusual excitement in the process of developing First Sight theory. This came from the sense I had that when I began to read new research reports examining the parapsychological effects of different variables on psi, I could correctly predict how the results would turn out. Often these outcomes were not the ones that the experimenters themselves had expected, and sometimes I had to request the data sets to carry out the kinds of analyses that would confirm my expectations. For example, in a couple of cases I thought a certain variable should influence the extremity of scoring rather than the direction, as the researchers had hoped. When I had the data and could do the analyses, I found significant results in the form I expected.
Over and over in reading of new research, I found I was able to anticipate how the results would fall out. I was using First Sight theory to make the predictions, which were often contrary to the expectations of the researchers, and generally I was right. This was exciting, because for the first time, after decades of studying this field, it was making a lot more sense.
I began my theory-building with two analogies between psi and unconscious psychological processes that are fairly well understood in mainstream psychology. Perhaps ESP acts in the same way that subliminal perception does, and serves the same function. Perhaps PK acts in the same way that motivated unconscious behavior does, and also serves the same function. I applied many of the patterns reported in these areas to the accumulated findings of parapsychologists and found a satisfying degree of congruence. I added some ideas about how the unconscious mind deals bi-directionally with unconscious information from any source, asserted that we need to assume that the unconscious part of the mind is in touch with virtually everything including a vast extra-somatic realm of reality, also asserted that these processes are always guided by personal considerations (primarily by unconscious intentions), and packed it all together into a set of ideas. These are two basic assumptions about the mind elaborated by thirteen corollaries that spell out what things can be counted on to structure unconscious cognitive processes, including psi, and in what ways they will structure those processes. This comprises a basic and testable theory that lets us know what to expect when we explore psi. So far I find that it tends to work.
Psi makes sense. It may still be anomalous in terms of the mind-body problem, but it is not psychologically anomalous. In fact, it is psychologically quite regular, normal and sensible. What a strange turn of events.
I did not clearly expect this when I began to try to articulate a theory. For a long time I had sensed a great deal of congruence between the methods and findings of parapsychologists and the methods and findings of mainstream psychology, and was weary of running into some kind of absolute wall of incomprehension when I would try to speak with psychologist colleagues about the fascinating observations of parapsychology. I thought perhaps a common set of terms could help take down that wall.
I still hope that it will help in this way. I also hope that parapsychologists will consciously try to exploit this theory, explore it, disprove it, modify and elaborate it. I hope it can be a scaffolding for constructing new research and reconstruing old research. My own experience using it makes me believe that psi makes sense, and that parapsychology is another way of adding to our understanding of our general psychological functioning. I’m heartened that some prominent parapsychological colleagues are telling me that they too are finding that the theory makes things make sense.
We no longer have to choose between fascination with anomaly and a sober focus on realistic concerns. For me at least, the adolescence of parapsychology is over.