Anomalistic Psychology

A Study of Magical Thinking

Leonard Zusne, Warren H. Jones

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317784333
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Updating and expanding the materials from the first edition, Anomalistic Psychology, Second Edition integrates and systematically treats phenomena of human consciousness and behaviors that appear to violate the laws of nature. The authors present and detail a new explanatory concept they developed that provides a naturalistic interpretation for these phenomena -- Magical Thinking. For undergraduate and graduate students and professionals in cognitive psychology, research methods, thinking, and parapsychology.

1

Introduction to Anomalistic Psychology

TERMINOLOGY

Our ancestors of not so many centuries ago regarded any psychological anomaly with awe, attributing its origins to supernatural agencies. Among such anomalies were not only precognitive dreams, cases of miraculous healing, sleepwalking, and automatic behaviors, but all cases of severe psychopathology. The psychotic individual was said to be possessed by an evil spirit, an explanation that was also applied to the neurotic individual suffering from hysteria. Eventually, demons and spirits were given up as explanations of psychopathology. Behavior that in some way deviated from the statistical norm, or what most people regarded as normal behavior, was designated as abnormal and treatable by physical and psychological means.

There remained the other phenomena that were also deviations from the norm, but these were abnormal in a different sense. They were not unusual because they did not occur very frequently, the way the absence of pain sensitivity or color blindness in one eye only are unusual (anomalous) phenomena because they are rare. These phenomena violated certain “basic limiting principles” (Broad, 1953), which are general principles that describe how nature works. They are not laws of nature but, like the principles of logical reasoning, “are commonly accepted either as self-evident or as established by overwhelming and uniformly favorable empirical evidence” (Broad, 1953, p. 9), at least as far as most everyday events are concerned. Broad divided the basic limiting principles into four categories. One concerns general principles of causation (e.g., an effect cannot precede its cause), another the dependence of mind upon brain (e.g., no mental event is possible without a corresponding brain event), and the remaining two deal with limitations, one with limitations on the action of mind on matter (e.g., objects cannot be moved simply by willing them to move or be transformed into other objects in the same way), the other with limitations on ways of acquiring knowledge (e.g., it is impossible to know about objects and events, the mental activities of another person, or events that have not yet taken place, except by means of direct sensations, information based on sensations, or inferences based on sensory data). It is significant that, with the exception of the first category, examples of violations of principles in the other three categories require the belief that mind, instead of being a process, has thinglike properties and is separable from its substrate, the brain. In chapter 2 we discuss the proposition that reification of the subjective is one of the roots of magical thinking which, in turn, underlies many of the phenomena that we have called anomalistic.

We refer to all behaviors and experiential phenomena that traditionally have seemed to constitute violations of the basic limiting principles as anomalistic. The term anomalistic psychology suggested itself to us upon coming across a proposal, made by the anthropologist Roger Wescott (1977), to prefix the term anomalistic to the name of any discipline that dealt with what are often called paranormal phenomena. The meaning of the term paranormal is not very clear. Among parapsychologists, two views prevail concerning the nature of extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, and other so-called psi phenomena. Some parapsychologists hold that such phenomena are not outside the natural order, only that they are not yet understood. Others hold that psi phenomena are not fully explicable in naturalistic terms, and that extraordinary mind-matter interactions are involved that do not obey known laws of physics and chemistry. The term paranormal, as used by parapsychologists, therefore, may include either one of these conceptualizations. In the following, we avoid this term except where its use has been well established by custom.

In speaking of paranormal or anomalistic phenomena we do not mean that the phenomena themselves are extraordinary. The only sense in which an event itself may be extraordinary is in the sense of the degree to which its frequency deviates from a theoretically expected frequency. Science deals with both ordinary (frequent) and extraordinary (infrequent) phenomena, but there is no idea of the paranormal associated with the latter. That notion arises only in connection with the explanations offered for phenomena, be they ordinary or extraordinary. It is the terms of the explanation that may violate the basic limiting principles and not the phenomenon itself. Anomalistic psychology therefore deals with phenomena of behavior and experience that have been explained in paranormal, supernatural, occult, in short, magical terms. We must also point out that in deciding which phenomena should or should not be included in this text, our criteria did not include such factors as the credibility or reputation of the source of the paranormal explanation or the plausibility of the reports of the phenomena. What we did consider was (a) whether a behavioral or experiential phenomenon had been in fact observed, (b) whether it had been given a magical explanation, and (c) whether such an explanation had been offered with sufficient frequency, that is, we left out of consideration extraordinary but idiosyncratic explanations of phenomena offered and adhered to, in the extreme case, by a single individual, however vociferously.

Although these criteria do help to distinguish between phenomena in psychology that are anomalistic and phenomena that are only anomalous, they do not provide a clear line of demarcation between the former and anomalistic phenomena of other types. Anomalistic phenomena of any type are observed phenomena and, therefore, involve not only the nature of that which is being observed but also the characteristics of the observer, such as the observer’s biases and preconceptions, beliefs, and current misperceptions, at least to some extent. The UFO is a case in point. It is a fact that there are objects or various origins in the sky and that sometimes these objects cannot be identified. If the behavior of such an unidentified flying object is perceived as unusual, the phenomenon may be classified as an anomaly. The hypothesis that some UFOs have an extraterrestrial origin does not necessarily place its originator among pseudoscientific or magical thinkers, because life in other solar systems is a distinct possibility. The UFOs acquire psychological interest when misperception of objects under difficult viewing conditions is involved or when beliefs and expectations affect that which is perceived. They also acquire interest for the psychologist when people experience fantasies or hallucinations of being abducted by UFOs, examined or raped by their occupants. This still does not make these fantasies and hallucinations different from others. The link between UFOs and magical thinking is largely an indirect one in that UFOs usually form part of larger belief systems that include other anomalies and phenomena whose explanations do include magical thinking, such as the belief in reincarnation, extrasensory perception, astrology, and the like. The preferred mode of communication between UFO occupants and terrestrials, for instance, may be asserted to be telepathy.

In addition, what is anomalistic and what is not are also functions of the passage of time. Although the concept of hypnosis has evolved through the clearly magical stages of magnetic fluids and mysterious influences over distance to the present-day scientific concepts of altered state of consciousness or role-playing, it retains its magical connotations through association with hypnotic age regression, reincarnation research, various automatisms, and the like. In more recent times, parapsychologists speculated that psychic ability was involved in bats’ aerial navigation and the skill displayed by some individuals in reading and identifying color with their skins (“dermal vision”). When bat sonar was discovered and some of the skin readers were identified as frauds or other cases were shown to be instances of trainable differential sensitivity of the skin to thermal radiation, parapsychological interest returned to its former concerns. In some quarters, however, a magical explanation of these phenomena is still preferred.

The labeling of anything as supernatural implies that the cause of the phenomenon is known, that it is some supernatural entity—a god, a devil, or a spirit—and that no further enquiry concerning the nature of the phenomenon is necessary. Rich as it may be in emotional meaning to many people, the term supernatural has no standing with science. A scientist who decides to investigate a phenomenon that seems to defy natural explanation will first attempt to explain it by establishing a relationship between its antecedent causes, physical or psychological, and their consequent effects. If the phenomenon defies subordination to the natural order of things at first, observing it repeatedly may lead to the establishment of a reliable relationship and a formulation of the general principles according to which the phenomenon occurs. It is possible for a phenomenon to elude all attempts to establish a cause-effect relationship for it. This still does not mean that it is supernatural. Chance alone can produce highly meaningful coincidences. An unusual event may also be a non-event, in that it may not be a uniform set of phenomena but a different kind of thing every time it is observed.

There is, of course, the possibility that it might be necessary to invoke a new principle of nature to explain an anomalistic phenomenon and, in the process, to revoke one or more of the basic limiting principles. Because a revision of what is normal, natural, and scientifically lawful would be called for, in addition to requiring compliance with the usual requirements that are imposed on scientific methodology, the burden of proof that a paranormal event has occurred is placed on those who make the claim. What this amounts to is that as long as a naturalistic explanation is possible, that explanation, regardless of how unlikely it may appear, will be invoked by the skeptic, it being up to the proponent of the paranormal explanation to show that the naturalistic explanation is inappropriate. In addition, the demand is made that the weight of evidence presented in favor of the paranormal claim be commensurate with the strangeness of the facts. Demanding that extraordinary proof be produced for extraordinary claims is known as the principle of Laplace (so named after the French astronomer and mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace, 1749–1827). These requirements may appear to be unduly limiting. They may be not only used but misused to the point where no amount of evidence of a paranormal claim will avail against a skeptic who has already prejudged the issue. To temper the harshness of the principle of Laplace, Theodore Flournoy, a Swiss psychologist, suggested that both it and another principle, which he called the “principle of Hamlet,” be used when investigating paranormal phenomena. The principle of Hamlet simply states that all is possible. It is not very frequently invoked by disbelieving scientific investigators of the paranormal, however.

Two other terms that are used in the following pages are occult and esoteric and their derivatives. Occult means (a) that which is mysterious and beyond the reach of ordinary knowledge; (b) secrecy, exclusiveness, and the communication of arcane knowledge to the initiated only; and (c) pertaining to metaphysical systems characterized by monistic idealism, which stress the basic interrelatedness of everything in the universe and, hence, the possibility of action through affinity or magic, as in astrology and theosophy. Esoteric means designed for or understood only by those who have been properly initiated. It therefore overlaps with only the second meaning of occult and can be applied to knowledge that has no paranormal connotations whatever. Although the term is so used ordinarily, some groups use the term esotericism as a synonym for occultism.

Social scientists have stressed different, sometimes contradictory aspects of occultism. Marcello Truzzi, who has concerned himself with the problem of defining the occult (Truzzi, 1971), stated that the common denominator for most perspectives labeled occult “is that they in some way concerned themselves with things anomalous to our generally accepted cultural storehouse of ‘truths.’ That is, we are dealing here with claims that contradict commonsense or institutionalized (scientific or religious) knowledge” (p. 367). Because the basic limiting principles are part of the “cultural storehouse of truths,” occult and anomalistic become synonymous in Truzzi’s definition.

In his definition of occultism, Truzzi stated that its claims are contradicted by both scientific and religious knowledge. They are not only contradicted, but rejected, by institutionalized science and religion. The best example of this is theosophy. Modern theosophy is a body of teachings labeled as a synthesis of science, religion, and philosophy, but is rejected equally by all three. Theosophy is the best example of what occultism means because it represents a body of knowledge that incorporates most of the esoteric teachings and occult practices of the past, does not accept the supernaturalism of religion, but equally rejects the materialistic and deterministic views of science and emphasizes the hidden, occult nature of its knowledge. Much of this knowledge, of course, has been made openly available through numerous publications, lectures, and courses. Some of it, however, has been reserved for an inner circle of disciples, to whom it is imparted after due initiation, as has always occurred in all mystery and initiatory groups.

ANOMALISTIC PSYCHOLOGY AND PARAPSYCHOLOGY

Psychology’s relationship to the paranormal and the occult has always been ambivalent. Even though parapsychology has the word psychology in its name, it has never been part of psychology, and parapsychology has not exercised any major influence on psychology. On the other hand, if telepathy and other such phenomena are granted even the most tenuous status of unlikely hypotheses, these hypotheses clearly concern subject matters that are psychological in nature and therefore ought to be tested by psychologists. Parapsychologists deal with human experiences and behaviors using the same laboratory methodologies and statistical treatment of data as conventional psychologists are using. Still, surveys show that of all groups of scientists, psychologists are least apt to believe parapsychology’s findings (e.g., Wagner & Monnet, 1979). With the exception of relatively few individuals who have shown interest in parapsychology or have done parapsychological research themselves, psychologists have shown little interest in parapsychology, and contacts between the two fields have been infrequent.

BOX 1.1. THEOSOPHY

Theosophy (from the Greek theos [god] and sophia [wisdom]) is religious and philosophical thought that derives a view of the universe, humanity, and humanity’s place in the universe from an insight into the constitution and operation of the divine. The insight is arrived at intuitively or is revealed by superior or more advanced beings. Because no clear distinction is made between religious and philosophical modes of thinking and the role of logic is minimized, theosophy is closer to Oriental than Occidental thought. India gave birth to the earliest theosophical speculations, and the similarity between these and certain features in the thought of Western theosophists who knew little or nothing about India is often pointed out. The imperfection of this world and of human beings and the aspiration to achieve the same exalted states of being as characterized by seers and masters who reveal the divine wisdom is a cardinal feature of theosophical systems. Jakob Böhme is the best example of an early Western theosophist. He was influenced by such men as Paracelsus and Cardano, who during the Renaissance, combined theosophy with physics or chemistry as well as with such other but related forms of thought as neoplatonism, mysticism, hermeticism, and cabalism.

It is the modern version of theosophy that is of importance to anomalistic psychology. It combined into a synthetic conglomerate Indian philosophy, Buddhism, gnosticism, hermetism, cabala, most of the paranormal and occult practices dealt with in this book, as well as many others, and added a generous portion of modern science, especially the notion of evolutionary development. Theosophy became the treasure trove from which hundreds of groups, organizations, cults, and movements that were to parallel it took their items and, in combination with their own special revelations and terminologies, presented them to the world as their brand of Ancient Wisdom.

The founder of modern theosophy was a Russian adventuress, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, an extraordinary woman of the 19th century who represented an amazing blend of intelligence, shrewdness, vulgarity, unattractive physical appearance, temper, prodigious working capacity, and contempt for people with the ability to control them if they were eager to believe in miracles. She was born Helena Hahn in Russia in 1831. At age 17, she married an official by the name of Blavatsky, 25 years her senior. The marriage lasted only a few months, after which HPB, as she is known among occultists, went traveling in different countries, reportedly in Greece, Egypt, Turkey, and Tibet, among other places, although what she did for the next 25 years is mostly mystery clad in legend. It is known that for a number of years she made a living as a medium in Cairo. In 1872, she arrived in New York, met Colonel H. S. Olcott, who immediately fell under her spell and with whom she founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. In 1877, HPB published her first compendium of theosophical lore, Isis Unveiled (Blavatsky, 1877/1950).

The aims of the Society were declared to be: (a) to form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity; (b) to promote the study of comparative religion, philosophy, and science; and (c) to investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man. Isis Unveiled was an incredible collection, totally unsystematic, of the occult lore of all nations, which HPB had presumably gathered during her extensive travels, presented as the secret wisdom of the ages and revealed by her. Both acclaim and criticism followed.

The magnum opus of theosophy, The Secret Doctrine, (Blavatsky, 1888/1946) in six volumes, replaced Isis Unveiled in 1888. It was a somewhat more coherent work than its predecessor. HPB claims that in order to write it she had consulted numerous reference works in many libraries—not in person but traveling in her astral body. In The Secret Doctrine, HPB made an important connection with science by claiming the idea of evolution as the focal part of her doctrine. Not only do plants and animals evolve over very long periods of time, but so do humans, human races, planets, and deity itself. Evolution is the law of the universe. Many pages of polemic are devoted to this subject. The second important point that was added to the occult lore by HPB was the notion of the Mahatmas or Masters. Unlike the spiritualists who obtained their information from the spirits of the departed, HPB claimed a much more refined and exalted source of information, humans who had advanced far ahead of the rest of humanity on the evolutionary road, had access to knowledge no ordinary human had, possessed marvelous abilities, such as those of materializing objects, teleportation, and clairvoyance, and who usually worked on levels of existence other than that of gross physical matter, although they still used their physical bodies when convenient. The Masters were said to control the destiny of humanity by means of messages to world leaders, to be fighting the forces of evil, and to reside in secret places, not visible to anyone but those specially favored. At first, HPB located the secret brotherhood of Masters in Luxor, Egypt, with Tuiti Bey as the leader. Later, the Mahatmas were transferred to Tibet, and the leadership acquired an Indian complexion. In the fully developed theosophical scheme, the Masters are of all nationalities, and include such personages as Jesus and the Count Saint Germain.

Other topics that may be found in The Secret Doctrine, either in full or in germinal form and elaborated later by theosophical writers, and that are now familiar to those who are “into” the occult are: the lost continents of Atlantis and Mu and their civilizations; the nonphysical bodies of man, such as the etheric and astral bodies; astral projection; clairvoyance, karma and reincarnation; vibrations and forces unknown to science, ancient astronauts, and many others. Through all of this runs the unifying thread of the idea of evolution as the supreme law of the universe and its implications for humans in terms of the possibility of spi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction to Anomalistic Psychology
• 2 Magical Thinking
• 3 Psychophysiology
• 4 Perception
• 5 Divided Consciousness and Imagery
• 6 Memory
• 7 Cognitive Processes
• 8 Personality
• 9 Beliefs
• 10 Psychopathology
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index