Essay: Psychics and Trickery

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2004.

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Psychics and Trickery 

 

I'm sick of Uri Geller.

I mention this because, more than a year ago, I wrote an essay concerning some experiments in ESP in which Geller, the famed Israeli psychic, was the test subject ("Flim-Flam Flummery"). These experiments had come in for severe criticism by well-known skeptic James Randi in his book Flim-Flam. I, in turn, subjected Randi to criticism for what I saw as errors and omissions in his account. Since then I've posted several addenda to the piece - in fact, the addenda are now roughly equal in length to the original essay! Nothing much has been settled, and since these experiments were conducted back in the 1970s, it seems unlikely that the various arguments will ever be resolved.

But that's not why I'm sick of Uri Geller. No, I'm sick of him because in my modest efforts to challenge Flim-Flam's portrayal of the experiments, I had to become Geller's defender. And this put me in an uncomfortable position, because Geller is a hard person to defend.

Consider: This is a man who, at one point, claimed to be in telepathic contact with an intelligent supercomputer piloting an alien spaceship beyond the orbit of Pluto. This is a man who claims to have genuine psychic powers, yet has used them in glitzy stage performances and for such trivial purposes as bending spoons. This is a man who claims to be able to produce "apports," or materializations of physical objects out of midair or through solid walls - yet no apports have ever been detected in laboratory tests with Geller.

In short, this is someone who could easily be dismissed as a faker - not, mind you, a fakir, or Hindu holy man, but a plain old-fashioned phony-baloney snake-oil salesman.

And yet ... I have read of tests in which Geller, under close observation and with no apparent means of cheating, was able to producer results no one could explain.

Which is why I'm sick of Uri Geller. He makes my head hurt. Part of me cannot give any credence to a self-promoting confabulator and stage magician. But another part of me cannot dismiss well-conducted tests that yielded positive results. (The tests discussed in Flim-Flammay or may not have been carried out properly, depending on whom you believe. Examples of other experiments with Geller that appear to have been conducted according to rigorous standards are given in Richard S. Broughton's Parapsychology: The Controversial Science.)

What’s worse is that Geller is by no means unique. The history of research into psychic phenomena is rife with persons who appear to have had genuine paranormal abilities, yet who clearly resorted to trickery on some occasions.

A famous example is Eusapia Palladino, a Sicilian medium known for the "physical" (as opposed to mental) phenomena displayed in her séances. These phenomena took a bewildering variety of forms, including a cold draft clearly felt in the sealed séance room, the billowing of Eusapia's skirt with no apparent cause, the movements and levitations of tables and other objects, partial manifestations of spirit forms, unexplained noises, and the playing of musical instruments without human assistance. This is just a small sampling; a detailed first-hand report is found in Everard Feilding's Sittings with Eusapia Palladino and Other Studies, and a long summary can be read in Stephen E. Braude's The Limits of Influence.

Investigators who studied Eusapia closely and conscientiously most often concluded that she had genuine - and formidable - psychic powers. Experienced magicians testified that no sleight of hand and no use of hidden mechanical contrivances could have produced the effects generated by Eusapia, who often provided her demonstrations in a room chosen by the experimenters - a room carefully searched before and after each sitting.

But here's the thing about Eusapia: As genuine as her abilities seem to have been, she was still a notorious cheat.

Everyone who worked with her commented on this fact. Eusapia would cheat whenever she thought she could get away with it. She took a childish delight in cheating and showed no remorse when caught. She seemed to regard the experiments as a game, and the experimenters as stuffed shirts whom she was eager to deceive.

If Eusapia, was a cheat, how can any of her phenomena be taken seriously? For the simple reason that under conditions in which cheating was almost certainly impossible, she continued to produce results. In fact the results she obtained through the legitimate use of her powers were far more impressive than the crude parlor tricks she sometimes resorted to.

So here we have another case of a psychic with some measurable - in fact, quite dramatic - supernormal talents, yet who had a marked proclivity to deceive. Other possibly genuine psychics or mediums who nevertheless may have resorted to trickery include Kate and Margaretta Fox,  Florence Cook,  Madame Blavastky, Marthe Beraud (see my essay "Of Dinosaurs and Phantoms" and its sequel),  and Mina Crandon (see my essay "The Two Faces of Margery").  

Before we go on, it's important to observe that not all mediums and pyschics have been accused of trickery. Genuine mediums whose long careers were never tainted with any suspicion of deceit, despite frequent investigations, include D.D. Home, Leonora Piper, Gladys Osborne Leonard, Margaret Verral, and Eileen Garrett, who is discussed in my essay "R-101." 

Nevertheless, the flakes and the occasional deceivers outnumber the more reliable psychics. Any good history of parapsychology will provide numerous examples of this problem. See, for instance, Broughton's above-mentioned Parapsychology: The Controversial Science, or Brian Inglis's Natural and Supernatural and its follow-up Science and Parascience. I won’t belabor the point here. The really interesting question is how to explain this frequent confluence of deception and genuine abilities in the same person, whether that person is Uri Geller, Eusapia Palladino, or anybody else.

Various explanations have been offered. First, because psychic abilities are typically transient and unpredictable, psychics can be hard pressed to produce results on a regular basis. On days when they're feeling "off," they may resort to trickery to supplement their actual abilities.

Second, some psychics report physical and mental strain after a séance. Eusapia was said to be seriously ill for two or three days following any successful demonstration. A psychic wishing to avoid this penalty might be tempted to produce similar effects through legerdemain.

Third, some physics, like Eusapia, seem to regard the testing procedure as a kind of game. They may take a certain glee in showing up the supposed experts who have arrived to pass sober judgment on the case.

Fourth, psychics who become fatigued or disgruntled after an exhaustive series of tests may consciously or subconsciously sabotage the proceedings.

No doubt there is some validity to all these suggestions. Another possibility, related to the third and fourth points but with a slightly different emphasis, involves the nature of what we might call "the psychic personality."

Is there, in fact, a typical personality profile for people with psychic gifts? I suspect that there is, and that true psychics tend to be similar to artists, poets, musicians, and other creative types. That is, they tend to be sensitive, deeply intuitive, and right-brain-oriented. Creative people are generally not known for methodical reasoning and linear thinking, but rather for a more free-form, holistic way of processing information. Psychics, likewise, may not be keen logical thinkers who reason their way from premise to conclusion. Instead they may be more likely to follow a line of thought that "feels right" or "just seems to make sense," operating in a nonlinear, intuitive fashion.

This mindset is both the psychic's strength and weakness. It is the psychic's strength because it allows the uncensored, unconstrained development of a socially disreputable and psychologically unsettling talent. It is the psychic's weakness because it renders the psychic peculiarly vulnerable to any stray thought or passing impression. If the thought pops into Uri Geller's mind that he's in contact with an extraterrestrial supercomputer, he may lack the critical faculties necessary to subject this idea to rigorous analysis. To him, this idea might be just as true, this impression just as real, as any other idea or impression that registers with him. He may not be a critical thinker who can readily distinguish valid insights from nonsense.

Similarly, if Eusapia finds it entertaining to fool the investigators who have come to examine her, then she will have her fun. For her, there is no conception of the possible importance of the investigators' work. They are seeking data in their methodical, no-nonsense way, while she is a free spirit, uninterested in hypotheses and theories, evidence and proof. She cannot take them seriously because she cannot understand them - just as they, with their logical, analytical minds, cannot understand her.

Imagine how Picasso would respond if a team of scientists tried to study him in a lab. He would probably end up painting mustaches on their faces. They would call him crazy, and he would call them boring. They would accuse him of taking nothing seriously, and he would accuse them of having no sense of humor. They might even decide that he had no real talent, since they were not able to measure it - while he would conclude that they had no conception of talent, because they didn’t know how to recognize it when it was right in front of them. Between the two sides there would be an unbridgeable chasm - the distance between two very different mindsets.

I think this way of looking at things helps us to realize why the study of psychic phenomena can be so frustrating, so crowded with contradictions. The people gifted with these "wild talents" (as they are known in some cultures) are exactly the sort of folks who will not respond favorably or predictably to confinement in a laboratory. Just as it is difficult to quantify genius in a standardized test, so it is difficult to isolate unmistakable, repeatable psychic phenomena under standardized laboratory conditions - because the mentality most conducive to the development and exercise of these abilities is antithetical to that of the researchers designing the tests.

None of this means that scientific examination of psychic phenomena is useless. Despite the difficulties, considerable evidence has been collected. But much of this evidence is rendered less persuasive because of the test subjects' bizarre claims or erratic behavior. This is frustrating, but it may also be inevitable. If you work with a genius, you have to expect tantrums, moodiness, and other expressions of the creative temperament. And if you work with a psychic, you may have to expect - and accept - off-the-wall claims, childish trickery, and general monkey business. Except in rare cases, you probably can’t get one without the other.

 

Sources

Stephen E. Braude, The Limits of Influence (1991)

Richard S. Broughton, Parapsychology: the Controversial Science (1991)

Everard Feilding, Sittings with Eusapia Palladino and Other Studies (1963)

Brian Inglis, Natural and Supernatural (1977), and Science and Parascience (1984)

 

Comments

[Julien]

Have you heard about Jean-Pierre Girard ?

Never caught cheating and the effects he produced were assessed live by French scientists (and magicians).

https://youtu.be/axHjnSjSPIQ?si=i3mQ476k_rpvAvwx

And Randi was unable to reproduce his psychic effects

Julien

Cheers

[Michael Prescott]

I haven't heard of him. Thanks for the info.