The life-death opposition also offers possibilities for reconsidering hysteria. Freud understood it in terms of sexuality, but again, that explanatory framework is not the only one available. Schneiderman points out that “the dead have far more appeal to the hysteric than anything about the living has and that hysteria is a failed attempt to stay in touch with the dead.” Hysteria is an interesting example, especially in light of the history of French psychiatry and the work of Jean-Martin Charcot. Charcot revived the use of hypnosis with his treatments of hysterics, who were associated with somnambulism and also clairvoyance. Here again we see a confluence of liminal elements (hypnosis, hysteria, clairvoyance), and Schneiderman links them to the life-death binary opposition. This is fitting because spiritualist mediums were often accused of being hysterics.
The life-death opposition is not the only one relevant to the paranormal. Others include: internal-external, self-other, and imagination-reality. Lacan’s ideas are pertinent to those too. He wrote about mirrors, the imaginary, the real, and the symbolic. A later chapter will discuss the imaginal realm, a combination of imagination and reality developed by Henry Corbin. Some of Lacan’s ideas are at least vaguely related. Edith Kurzweil refers to “his central concept of the imaginary (this highly idiosyncratic concept has its roots in the mirror-stage, where it is said to form a ‘Borromean knot’ with the real and the symbolic … he has never quite explained how this imaginary functions.”
Lacan also wrote on paranoia, in fact it was the topic of his doctoral dissertation. I will briefly draw upon Lacan’s notions on it in a later chapter.
The above ideas are not fully formed; indeed, they are only allusions to possibilities that might be developed. Yet they flag issues that need new ways of understanding. Lacan’s obscurity is not necessarily a drawback. It can stimulate exploration and perhaps point a new way, without being unduly constrictive. His ideas might pollinate those in related areas. Ambiguity has its benefits.
The difficulty in understanding Lacan hints that the issues are inherently problematic and ones that rationalists wish to avoid. Lacan raises many matters related to the supernatural, and then seems to intentionally obscure them. It is to our advantage that he tries to address them, for it shows the difficulties one may encounter.
Summary
To date, literary theory has had no impact on parapsychology, not surprisingly because literary concerns seem far removed from those of the sciences. Nevertheless literary theory has much to say. It deals with information and communication in ways that science does not.
Literary theory intrudes into anthropology, particularly in the structuralist lineage. Semiotics and structuralism help show the relationships between literary ideas, on the one hand, and social structure on the other. These perspectives are primarily concerned with stable systems; they give less attention to ambiguity, uncertainty, liminality, and dissolution of structure.
Literary criticism emphasizes interpretation, i.e., the determination of “meaning.” When we interpret, we reduce ambiguity and uncertainty, we perceive order and structure in the world. When we cannot effectively interpret, our world becomes chaotic and disorganized. In most of our day-to-day activities, interpretation is straightforward, and meaning poses little problem. We generally give it little thought. Closer examination reveals difficulties.
Deconstructionists emphasized ambiguity. Some of them intentionally made their writings difficult to understand, perhaps to illustrate the problem of meaning. The issue is subtle, and we are usually unconscious of it. A person’s background influences how a message is understood. Choice of words, what is given prominence, who is speaking, what is left unsaid, all have implications. There are many layers of meaning, and they are not the same for everyone. Science assumes that meaning is unproblematic—that it can be objectively, impersonally, and rationally determined. Deconstructionists argued otherwise.
Deconstructionism provoked violent controversies. It probed foundations, challenged the status quo, and attacked the myth of objectivity. The attackers eventually realized that deconstructionism could be turned back upon themselves. They blunted their weapon, and that was signalled by the adoption of the term post-structuralism.
One root of the structuralist lineage traces back to the totemism debates at the beginning of the twentieth century. Those addressed rationality and the supernatural. This root is almost entirely forgotten, but the implications are profound.
Probing foundations and questionning basic assumptions are the beginnings of liminal conditions. Those are governed by the trickster; they have a power of their own. The primitives understood that; most academics do not. Deconstructionists and post-structuralists are really rationalists who are oblivious to the liminal realms and taboo areas. It is no accident that the lives of Barthes, Foucault, de Man, and Lacan were marked by unsavory trickster qualities.
Today, most who draw upon concepts from the structuralist lineage have little understanding of anthropology. Edmund Leach explained that non-things, that is, things that are not named, are taboo. They lie betwixt and between “things.” Those interstitial areas are rarely examined. Psi is one of those “non-things”; psi is defined by what it is not.
The paranormal shares a central concern with literary criticism—interpretation. Many divination systems require interpretation. Likewise many psychic readings are ambiguous and also need to be interpreted. The situation is especially clear with formal psi experiments. In virtually all such tests, at the heart is some random process, and the outcome of that process is “interpreted” as being “significant” (i.e., meaningful) or not. If an experiment achieves statistically significant results, psi occurred, by definition. Magic (psi) and meaning are essentially equivalent in psi experiments.
Obviously interpretation does not involve psi (magic) in the vast majority of instances. For most of everyday life interpretation is relatively straightforward. Yet at limits, in ambiguous situations, the parallels become apparent, and meaning can be seen as equivalent to magic (or psi). Perhaps clarity and precision help keep psi at bay.
Part 6
Overview
The two chapters in this Part cover the imagination and paranoia. Analysis of binary oppositions is again employed. A key opposition is imagination-reality, and it has deep parallels with others such as representation-object and internal-external. The boundaries between the elements are not as clear as one might expect.
The “imagination” is not as simple an idea as commonly thought. A number of disciplines have addressed it including psychology, sociology, literature, anthropology, and religion, among others. I will draw upon all of them and mix concepts that seem wildly disparate. Undoubtedly this will disconcert those who prefer to stay within firmly established categories, but the trickster demands the commingling.
Clairvoyance and PK also blur the distinction between mental representation (imagination) and object (reality). Pretending blurs the same distinction, as well as that between falsehood and truth. So does deception. Pretending and deception have important functions in the mental development of primates and young human children. They are crucial for growth of self-awareness and formation of ego.
Paranoia often signals the fear of loss of the boundary between internal and external. Telepathy, clairvoyance, and PK blur the same boundary. Paranoia is frequently associated with the paranormal. Witchcraft accusations, fear of being psychically spied upon, and rumors of government cover-ups of UFOs are examples. The paranoiaparanormal affiliation is common, but parapsychologists have given it remarkably little attention.
CHAPTER 24
The Imagination
Imagination, fiction, and the like are commonly thought to be clearly separated from reality and fact. This is usually a good assumption. Yet upon closer examination, the situation is more problematic. There are many situations where they are blended. Myth is often defined as truth expressed fictionally. ESP and PK call into question the sharp demarcation of mind (imagination) and matter (reali
ty). In deception, fact and fiction are often mixed. There are a number of other circumstances with similar blurring, and it makes sense to explore them for commonalities. This is a speculative chapter, and the ideas are not fully developed. I hope to point directions for future elaboration.
Earlier Parts of this book examined a variety of phenomena in terms of binary oppositions. I will continue using that structuralist approach because it gives useful ways to think about things. It encourages comparisons that might be otherwise overlooked.
The binary oppositions in Figure 7 are found in many contexts, and they show a similar pattern. Typically, one element in a pair has a privileged position, and the elements in the top row generally have the higher status. When that status is challenged, or the elements are blurred, there is a threat to stability and clarity. As individuals and as societies, we have methods to assure that these oppositions are clearly demarcated. When they are not, a liminal, anti-structural condition is developed. Instability is courted, and the trickster reigns.
With the paranormal, the privileged position is often reversed. For instance, billions of dollars are devoted to paranormal fiction in movies, TV shows, and books. Gross national expenditures for scientific research on the paranormal are tiny (the inverse of normal occupations). In UFO research, hoax cases generate far more attention than genuine ones.
Figure 7 Binary Oppositions
Note: The elements in the top row generally have a higher status than those in the bottom row. The arrows indicate that the statuses reverse in liminal conditions.
This chapter continues to explore how binary oppositions are demarcated and how they become blurred or inverted. The broad concept of representation will again be invoked. Representation is addressed in several seemingly disparate areas, including semiotics, research on animal deception, studies of the imagination, and theories of fiction.
The idea that imagination and reality can, in principle, be blurred raises a severe challenge to the Western worldview and provokes anxieties. It disputes the notion of a fully objective reality. This problem should not be minimized or slyly avoided. It must be confronted directly because it is a fundamental issue of psi.
Imagination
The usual idea of the imagination is simplistic—it’s all in the head. To say something is “just imagination” is to deprecate it. Even when it is not meant that way, a message is conveyed that the matter is not serious or important. In other words, “the imagination” has low status.
The imagination has received extensive discussion through the centuries, but new conceptions keep being proposed. Some are not too well developed and display a bit of confusion, and some have nothing to do with imagery. We must cross disciplinary boundaries if we are to understand the imagination. We need to ponder ideas from anthropology, religious scholarship, sociology, analytical psychology, and others. Indeed, many readers will probably consider my conglomeration of theories and examples as illegitimately mixing concepts that have nothing to do with each other (but this is fitting for the trickster). The perspectives on the imagination are diverse and not yet cohesive; most seem to have been developed independently, with little overlap or cross fertilization from outside a theorist’s field.
The imagination is valued in fantasy and fiction. Thus we might expect some useful insights from theories of fiction. This may alarm some readers who may think that I am disparaging the reality of the paranormal. If people read this chapter separately from the rest of the book, they might conclude that I was debunking the paranormal. The ideas are easily misunderstood. My intention is not to belittle paranormal phenomena but to emphasize their ambiguity and explore the consequences of that.
Status has been an issue throughout this book, and it is key in understanding the imagination. Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin and a prominent 19th-century scientist in his own right, made an intriguing study of mental imagery. He asked people to visualize their breakfast table and describe the image that appeared to them in their mind’s eye. He reported “To my astonishment, I found that the great majority of the men of science to whom I first applied protested that mental imagery was unknown to them, and they looked on me as fanciful and fantastic in supposing that the words ‘mental imagery’ really expressed what I believed everybody supposed them to mean … They had a mental deficiency of which they were unaware, and naturally enough supposed that those who affirmed they possessed it, were romancing.” Gal ton found that imagery was frequently reported by women and children.
Galton was not the only one to find a relationship between social position and imagery. Yale psychologist Jerome Singer found parallel results with fantasy daydreaming. He conducted a study in the 1950s and discovered that Jewish and African Americans had higher daydreaming frequency than those of Anglo-Saxon descent. This finding supports the association of imagery with marginal, low-status groups.
C. Wright Mills’ book The Sociological Imagination (1959) is a classic in its field. Mills was not a psychologist, and not surprisingly, he did not discuss mental imagery. His concept was a bit different. He defined the sociological imagination as a quality of mind that “enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals.” It allows one to accurately perceive large social forces that shape individuals and societies, but most people typically do not understand the idea. Mills noted that the acquisition of the sociological imagination “by individuals and by the cultural community at large is slow and often fumbling; many social scientists are themselves quite unaware of it.” Though Mills’ use of the word imagination did not involve imagery as such, it emphasized a broad, wholistic perspective.
John Macionis pointed out in his introductory text Sociology (1989) that persons in socially marginal positions have an above-average ability to take a sociological perspective and understand patterns in society that are not immediately observable. He also noted that certain periods foster the sociological imagination and stated specifically that “the 1930s stand out as a decade of heightened sociological awareness” and that “People very quickly develop a sociological perspective when the established patterns of society began [sic] to shake and crumble.”5 He mentioned the 1960s as a similar era. Both marginality and periods of transition foster the sociological imagination; both are anti-structural. The sociological imagination itself may be a bit subversive. For society to function smoothly, there must be shared, though arbitrary, values and customs, and these must be accepted without much conscious questioning. The sociological imagination brings these patterns and values to consciousness, and, as such, serves a function of liminality.
In summary, several lines of research indicate that one’s imagination is linked to one’s social position, to one’s status. A key finding is that the imagination is more developed in anti-structural conditions and persons.
The Religious Imagination and Personification
Gods and supernatural beings are part of all cultures. They are typically personified i.e., endowed with human characteristics. But gods are more than mere persons. In monotheistic religions, God is considered as “totality,” though it is difficult or impossible to speak of that concept directly. The religious imagination grapples with the problem, and it deserves special comment. It cannot be fully distinguished from social and psychological concepts because they blend into each other. It is a mistake to try to completely disentangle them.
Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of the sociology of religion, suggested that gods and religious institutions are collective representations of society (here again we encounter the broad but seminal concept of “representation”). In his The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912), he went so far as to say that “At bottom, the concept of totality, that of society and that of divinity are very probably only different aspects of the same notion.” The gods reflect the values and structure of society, but most people usually do not consciously recognize the implications. It
is beneficial for society for them not to. In fact Macionis comments that “the ability of the sacred to legitimate and stabilize society rests on one major condition: the socially constructed character of the sacred must go unrecognized’ (emphasis by Macionis). In other words, religion must partly obscure its own nature.
The gods are perceived as having a force and will of their own. These collectively shared representations (images) are personified, and we need to contemplate the topic of personification. It is an essential aspect of myth (the trickster, for instance, is a personified being). Imagination and personification go together; they need to be understood jointly. Both are poorly regarded by scientists. Both have low status. Hence most scholars ignore them.
James Hillman is one of the most insightful writers on personification. He is a primary exponent of analytic psychology (analytic psychology follows a Jungian tradition and differentiates itself from Freudian psychoanalysis), and he has written a bit on parapsychology. Hillman has been a controversial figure among Jungians, and he has some parallels with French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who was introduced in the earlier chapter on literary criticism. The two recognized the importance of many of the same fundamental issues. Hillman, like Lacan, has written on paranoia. Hillman also discussed the imagination, and “the imaginary” was part of Lacan’s theorizing. Both were critical of most therapeutic practices and of scientific conceptualizations of therapy. Both challenged the establishment, and both were accused of irrationalism. Lacan’s and Hillman’s writings are relevant far outside the clinic, and cultural theorists have drawn upon
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