Some Reflections on Parapsychology, Stimulated by the Publication of a New Handbook of Parapsychology

Abstract

Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21^st Century edited by Etzel Cardeña, John Palmer, and David Marcusson-Clavertz. McFarland, 2015. 424 pp. $65 (paperback). ISBN 978-0786479160.

Handbook of Parapsychology edited Benjamin B. Wolman. Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1977. 967 pp. $25 (paperback). ISBN 978-0442295769.

As fields of science go, parapsychology is miniscule. Yet with more than a century of research behind it, it long ago needed a handbook to orient new researchers, and recently a new Handbook was published.

When I was asked to review the new Handbook, I regretfully said no, I didn’t (and still don’t) have the needed time to give a very important book like this the kind of thorough, chapter-by-chapter review it deserves. Asked again, I thought about it and said okay if I could , as someone who has devoted a major part of my career to parapsychology for half a century, instead give an overall impression of the field and its Handbook, and this was okay with the editor. To start, I envisioned holding the old Handbook (to which I had the honor of contributing a chapter on drug-induced, altered states of consciousness) in one hand, the new one (no chapter by me) in the other, and sharing some general reflections on what’s happened in the past three and a half decades. That’s the position I will take in this brief essay.