Good talk last night by Irish Skeptics Society

[Brendan Burgess]

I went along to the talk last night by Professor Chris French.

His group researches into the belief in the paranormal and also researches paranormal events. As a skeptic, he is very open. He doesn't believe in the paranormal, but is prepared to believe in it if properly conducted research demonstrates its existence.

He demonstrated his own "telepathic" powers by asking the audience of 74 to think of an odd two digit number between 1 and 50 where the two digits were not the same e.g. 13, 15, 17 etc. He then suggested 37, and that was the number which around 30 people in the audience had chosen.

He had some good lines e.g. "Will all those who believe in telekinesis please raise my right hand?".

The next talk promises to be just as good. Prof Carroll is the author of The Skeptic's Dictionary which has been mentioned a few times on Askaboutmoney. In the ten days preceding the talk, Hodges Figgis have agreed to mount a display relating to the subject.


The Scientific Evidence for the Paranormal Speaker: Prof. Robert Todd Carroll
Davenport Hotel, Dublin 2
8pm, Thursday, June 24, 2004

This will be a critique of claimed evidence for paranormal phenomena with special reference to Dean Radin's book, The Conscious Universe. Professor Carroll will also present data on hoaxes perpetrated on paranormal investigators that expose the frailty of their methods. Professor Carroll is the author of The Skeptic's Dictionary which he will be signing on the night. PLEASE NOTE: This meeting takes place on a THURSDAY, rather than the usual Wednesday.

 

[Marie]

Irish Skeptics Society

Good to hear Chris French is still banging the drum of skepticism (he was one of my teachers when I read anthropology and psychology at University of London many moons ago!)

Perhaps things have changed in the argument which at that time used to be that EVEN apparently-paranormal events would EVENTUALLY be proven scientifically to have basis in "ordinary" physics and material fact.

However as a therapist working with "the mind" (my own and those of others) I am pretty convinced that mind affects matter. How we think (and more importantly, how we feel) on an unconscious level is immensely powerful, has a contagious quality on the minds of others and DOES affect events in the material world.

Yeah, I know Uri Geller and that lot use a great deal of sleight-of-hand and re-direction of attention (and downright confidence tricks) to produce some of their effects but I feel taking show-biz cons as "disproof" of the paranormal is not helpful in understanding these issues.

Are you a skeptic Brendan?

 

[ttraces]

query

Marie,

Care to comment on collective unconscious and other things jungian? I'm very interested with all this at the moment. Would you utilise his writings in your day to day work or have things progressed significantly? I realise he used (or twisted in some instances) his case studies for his own means.

thanks,

tom

 

[Marie]

Jung and the paranormal

Hello! No......Carl Jung certainly didn't "twist things" to fit his own preconceptions and I don't think even his most virulent detractors would doubt his sincere scholarship and ethics.

Jung researched (through his analytical psychological work with individuals with psychosis) on areas of the mind which had shared images and feelings. This differs from Freud,his teacher.....as you probably know Jung broke away from Freud on the issue of sexuality, which he considered Freud over-emphasised, whilst Jung was interested in the spiritual which he felt Freud downplayed.

Essentially it is SPIRITUALITY (as an integrated part of human need and experience) rather than the paranormal (a belief that the brand of cause-and-effect we know and which enables us to predict the world we live in, is not the "only" kind of causality) which Jung worked with and wrote about.

Jung's work on spirituality (not spiritualism!!!) connects very strongly with the notion of shared imagary (for example the universal presence of certain motifs such as crosses, spirals, braids) in all places and back into prehistory. One of his most accessible books and one you might be interested in having a look at (local library will have it!) is "Man and his Symbols". Though as a WOman artist I take issue with the limits of (**Man) in the title it's a good read with very interesting pictures.

Good luck with it!

 

[Brendan Burgess]

Re: Jung and the paranormal

Hi Marie

Yes I am a skeptic. I am not fully sure what you mean by the following:

However as a therapist working with "the mind" (my own and those of others) I am pretty convinced that mind affects matter. How we think (and more importantly, how we feel) on an unconscious level is immensely powerful, has a contagious quality on the minds of others and DOES affect events in the material world.

I certainly don't believe that there is any evidence that mind affects matter. As Chris French would say, a good skeptic should be open about it. If you can prove that mind affects matter, then I would have to change my opinion.

But that is completely different from saying "How we think...on an unconscious level ...affects others". If I am in a good mood, presumably it buoys up people around me. That doesn't need any mind over matter explanation. That's like saying that I can move matter with my mind by asking someone else to move it for me.

If I am in a good mood, I don't think it has any effect on people who cannot physically see or hear me.

But maybe I am reading you wrong?

Brendan

 

[Guest]

Re: Jung and the paranormal

> If I am in a good mood, I don't think it has any effect on people who cannot physically see or hear me.

Does that include posting happy sentiments on AAM?

 

[ttraces]

jung

Hello marie,

By coincidence (or is it really!) I began "Man and his Symbols" yesterday before reading your post.
While there can be little doubt Jung's professional integrity was never compromised intentionally did take a few loose translations of dreams and they conveniently were shaped to conform to his theories. He wrote himself..."through his identifcation with the collective psyche he (presumably Jung) will infallibly try to force the demands of his unconscious upon others"
His studies in mythology and philosophy, while offering fascinating reading are hardly what could be termed empirical, he tried to bridge between noumeon and the phenomenon by using "ess in anima" by citing works of Kant. He held the notion of God as psychological fact.Had he been around at the same time as Jung, Kant would not have wanted his name to be associated with the phrase psychological fact and the theory of treating fantasies, visions and dreams as if they were empirically real.
His "split" with Freud certainly left him open to explore a much wider area of psychoanalysis than would have been possible had they not differed over the libido issue.

While I very much enjoy readings on this issue I can't help questioning the REAL value of psychoanalysis in general?

 

[Guest]

> While I very much enjoy readings on this issue I can't help questioning the REAL value of psychoanalysis in general?

The following article might be of interest to you in this context:

www.arachnoid.com/psychology/index.html

I would have similar reservations about the limitations of such practices but I do believe that certain related therapies (e.g. counselling talk therapies for certain mental health problems - e.g. cognitive/behavioural therapy etc.) DO yield benefits in many cases even if we don't always know precisely why. I guess that it's less a case of mind over matter than mind over body?

 

[Bridget]

contagiousness of emotions

-------------------
If I am in a good mood, I don't think it has any effect on people who cannot physically see or hear me.
----------------------

I seem to remember (who's collecting unsubstantiated statements?!) an experiment in psychology where 2 people were put in a waiting room. One of them was a 'stooge' and would either appear to be happy or downcast. The other would then have their mental state examined, as guess what? If you'd been with a happy person, your mood improved and vv.

Think of situations where "you could cut the atmosphere with a knife".

I expect it's body language. We are a social animal afterall.

But..... there are a lot of loony psychologists, psychotherapists, and counsellors out there. Didn't Aine Tubridy (PhD in psychology) and Dr Michael eh, eh, I've forgotten (Consultant Psychiatrist) bring out a book about mental health with heavy reliance on 'Chakras'? Those scientifically proven - not! - centres of something or other used as a basis of Eastern medicine?

(Declaration of interest: I am a Skeptic too.)

 

[Observer]

Re: contagiousness of emotions

OK, if all those who believe in "mind over matter" (whatever way its described, essentially the ability to effect material consequences through non-material actions) would just concentrate and let us know the winner of the Derby tomorrow (and the other 6 races while you're at it)..............

THEN, and only then, I might give it some credibility

 

[Brendan Burgess]

Re: contagiousness of emotions

Bridget said, quoting me:

-------------------
If I am in a good mood, I don't think it has any effect on people who cannot physically see or hear me.
----------------------

I seem to remember (who's collecting unsubstantiated statements?!) an experiment in psychology where 2 people were put in a waiting room. One of them was a 'stooge' and would either appear to be happy or downcast. The other would then have their mental state examined, as guess what? If you'd been with a happy person, your mood improved and vv.

I am not sure of your point - are you agreeing with me or disagreeing with me? I believe that a good mood is contagious. But that can be explained by rational science. In your experiment, the two "subjects" met. I would be surprised if someone whom I didn't meet could influence my mood?

Brendan

 

[slaphappy]

oops

I for one am sold on coming along to one of these meetings. Do you ever have guest performers trying to move things with their minds etc?

 

[XXXAnother PersonXXX]

Re: oops

I've met with the skeptics society people and had an interesting conversation with them.

There is still one thing which I'm wondering. Which is the 'approved skeptics line'? Which set of stuff do the skeptics believe in as a default? Before the hypothesis that the Earth was round was widely regarded as false, would the skeptics of the time believed the earth was flat?

You cannot really prove anything (solipsism, I think), so how can the skeptics believe anything?

Do they believe in the theory of evolution, for example?

 

[Brendan Burgess]

Re: oops

I am not sure that there is an approved skeptics line.

Skeptics develop beliefs based on rational thought and scientific data. If further data is produced which change our beliefs, then we must be open to change.

The article referred to above is very good. We can never be 100% sure of anything. There is no such thing as a scientific fact. Everything is a theory. Some theories can be disproved, but it's not really possible to prove anything.

But above all, it's a practical approach. Take psychoanalysis for example. There is simply no evidence that it works. If you are a schizoprhenic, do you talk about it to a Freudian psychoanalyst or do you go to a psychiatrist and receive a pharmaceutical therapy. One works, the other doesn't.

Brendan

 

[heinbloed]

analyses/treatment

An analysis is not a treatment.Giving a (psychotic)patient
pharmaceuticals without (psycho)analysis is a crime.The doctor doing so would -at least-been struck off the register.A psychoanalyst is not a psychotherapist.
Just for the records.

 

[Marie]

analyses/treatment

Concentrate! Here's the "science" bit!

Heinebloed's point is important. In the paradigm I work within, the psychiatrist "putting" toxic chemicals (with associated debilitating side effects) into the patient is "talion" for the unconscious experience the psychiatrist has of the malignant patient "putting" her fragmentation and chaos into the psychiatrist (i.e. causing difficult feelings). Incidentally anti-psychotic drugs mitigate schizophrenic symptoms for only 2 out of every 10 persons who take them as a life-long chemical cosh and most patients experience the side-effects to be as debilitating as the illness!!) Pharmaceutical companies don't broadcast this (e.g. GlaxoSmithKline have just lost a case in the US courts over side-effects of their antidepressant Paxil. Ruling is that GSK perpetrated repeated and persistent fraud in concealing and failing to disclose to physicians information about raised risk of suicide in users (prescribed to over 2 million children and teenagers in the US last year).

That's the "science", the "medicine", the "evidence-based research" OK. Objective, isn't it?

Now here's the spooky para-normal bit. Placebo effect. The extent of the belief in what we do/take to alleviate our physical or mental suffering (the shaman, the psychotherapist, the GP, the clairvoyant, the medicine) is directly proportional to the recorded beneficial effect.

It is an example of mind over matter but perhaps a bit more complicated. What do you think?

 

[Marie]

poltergeist

Slaphappy I think your name must be "Thomas" (the apostle Doubting Thomas, who needed to "see" everything).

Have you ever been "uptight" in some situation and "accidentally" cause something to happen (e.g. you dine out, the service is slow, the food is cold, the ambiance is not to your liking, the bill is large). Nevertheless you're a nice chap/ess so you glide gracefully towards the exit at the end of the evening and WHOOOPS......there's the restaurant's 8' high banana-plant lying on the floor amidst the shards of the Ming vase. Your cloak merely "brushed" it as you passed and there you are! Unconscious anger will out. Both Freud and Jung wrote miles of text on how deeper less acceptable feelings "will out" regardless of our veneer of civilisation.

Thinking about people who come to work with me in therapy, over the years some have manifested practically "poltergeist" propensity, objects at the far end of the room getting damaged or tangled or going wrong at their very approach. Some people exude powerful force-fields and I've always wondered (straying over into the paranormal) if these "force-fields" are what some sensitive people experience as "ghosts"......the lingering alteration of the molecular world which continues to "hold" the trauma, for example, of a violent death. 20 I lived in a house in London with friends. At night I always took a long time to "settle" and had an odd prickly cold sensation at the back of my neck. The house always seemed cold. Also, I didn't like being "in" alone, so when my friends and partner were out, I usually found something to do "out". We lived there a year, and a few weeks before we moved out we learned the house had a history and a teenager had died violently there.

 

[Marie]

collective unconscious

Tom - the psycho-historian take on "collective unconscious" suggests that all kinds of aberration in human evants (e.g. the rise of Hitler) are eased through by the unacknowledged known of the social group, organisation or nation.

The contemporary example I like best is the case of the purported weapons of mass destruction which were universally "believed" (without scientific evidence) to exist in Iraq. These imagined demonic entities (a small phial of which could wipe out whole civilisations!!) turned out to be a few thousand teenage shephards with obsolete hand-weapons but "nobody noticed" and the imagined demonic entities "caused" the oldest and arguably brightest civilisation in the world (Mesopotamia) to be ravaged by the newest, brashest and least creative (America) and the world doesn't notice......well, not really! Magic stuff, propaganda. :\

 

[Guest]

poltergeist

I think Slaphappy and anybody else would be justified in being doubtful when asked to believe that the sort of incidents you describe in your last post actually happened without further evidence. Placebo effects, suggestion and talk therapy or pharmaceutical treatments which affect the individual's mood or mental health are one thing. Poltergeist style events in which people exert "mind over matter" in the way described above are another and something that I personally reckon could easily be explained by more rational means if the events actually happened in the first place.

 

[Marie]

Huh?

I'm not with you, Unregistered! Which events "never happened in the first place"?

If you are talking about "mind over matter" and material being affected by mental states, I'm pretty clear myself where I stand after a lifetime of interested observation and experience. When I was in my early 20's I worked in an organisation where a colleague who was happily engaged to be married and enthusiastic about her (drop-dead georgeous!) fellah had a series of personal calamities which included being knocked down by a car (she was clear she hadn't noticed it when she stepped off the pavement) losing a large amount of money (intended as downpayment for their house), falling off a child's swing and breaking several long bones etc., etc.

This was before I had trained as a therapist so I wasn't reading events through theory such as "collective unconscious" or even personal unconscious. Just observing curiously.

I knew this woman well and was his confidante. It emerged she had huge unvoiced reservations about marrying and the commitment had triggered all kinds of stuff including early childhood traumatic relations. After 6 months of her "accidents" the man was also feeling insecure. They broke off the engagement for quite a long period and her "accidents" stopped. They got together again and the marriage went ahead as planned.

That was about 35 years ago in Dublin. Eight years ago in London a female colleague got engaged to a surgeon in our team, blissfully happy, well-matched, etc.,, etc., walked off the kerb under a car, fell and broke arm, lost........you've got it!

In at least one psychoanalytic paradigm these are situations where intolerable individual anxiety is "projected" into the environment, manifesting "the mind" in real events and engagements so they can be seen, understood, thought about and dealt with.

However taking psychoanalytic ideas seriously IS a matter of belief. Either you believe it or you don't. There is no scientific objective proof. In my experience these theories have explanatory power. However sceptics habitually make two assumptions which go unchallenged. The first is that only the strict experimental evidence need be taken seriously (and I've suggested in a previous post that such strict experimental evidence is a myth; most research is subjective and commercially-fuelled). The second assumption is that given the antecedent improbability of the phenomena, nothing short of their becoming commonplace (effectively, that they can be produced on demand) could justify acceptance of these phenomena at face value.

If there were presently some unequivocally repeatable psi effect (e.g. engaged women becoming prone to accidents) the experimental evidence would satisfy the criteria for objective fact. However, if that were the case, parapsychology would not be what it IS (a controversial science) but predictable everyday cause-and-effect. The very basis of parapsychology is that its phenomena are too unstable and elusive to permit of regular cause-and-effect validation.

In addition to focus exclusively on the experimental evidence (which the sceptics appear to still hold dear) is to misunderstand science. Scientific paradigms build on "what-if" hypotheses and science moves forward by a process of disproving most hypotheses and moving forward by process of elimination. Then as Kuhn realised, the scientific paradigm itself becomes too rigid to flexibly incorporate new insights and connections and there is a revolution of ideas. Newton would not recognise today's physics......but Newton's ideas were not "wrong".

Anyway Unregistered, I look forward to hearing your ideas on the "more rational means" through which poltergeist-type phenomena can be explained/made sense of.