Michael Prescott's Blog

Mental illness and the Internet

An interesting article appears in the latest issue of The Atlantic, arguing that the trend toward hypersensitivity on college campuses reflects an unhealthy and counterproductive set of coping mechanisms. Called "The Coddling of the American Mind," it points to a series of cognitive distortions that are associated with neurosis and shows how each of these is encouraged by the strange new campus culture of "trigger warnings" and "microaggressions." Authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argue that instead of cultivating supersensitive students who will be ill-equipped to deal with the sharp elbows and rough edges of the real world, colleges ought to train incoming freshmen in simple methods of identifying and combating cognitive distortions.

All of this is interesting enough in itself, but it got me thinking about a related but slightly different issue – namely, the Internet, and how it affects social interactions and personal well-being. It seems to me that the same cognitive distortions that are at play in the arena of the college campus are also very much on display in social media, Internet news sites, and blogs.

Let's look at some of these cognitive distortions, which were first popularized by psychologist David Burns, and see how they might relate to our everyday online experience.

Mental filtering - focusing on the negative aspect(s) of a situation while ignoring everything else. We see this all the time on political sites which exclusively report news detrimental to the other side of the partisan divide. The result, for people who rely on these sites, is the growing sense that everything in the world is going wrong and that those who are opposed to them politically have nothing positive to offer.

Black-and-white thinking - when anyone who disagrees with us must be evil or crazy. I've seen conservative sites that insist "liberalism is a mental illness,” and liberal sites that say "conservatism is a mental illness.” We also see this kind of thinking on sites devoted to Skepticism, in which anyone who suggests that there could be some merit to parapsychology is immediately disparaged as a nut, a moron, a liar, or a huckster out to make a quick buck. And we see it on New Age sites that similarly disparage anyone who registers even moderate skepticism as "part of the problem," a person with "negative vibrations," a cynic, “unevolved,” and so forth.

Jumping to conclusions. This fallacy seems to be particularly prevalent in social media, where the trend lately has been for outraged lynch mobs to go after some particular person who's offended them. In many cases, the outrage is based on a superficial and incorrect understanding of the situation – often taking something out of context. A recent example involves a dentist who killed a lion while on safari in Africa. When he made the mistake of tweeting a photo of himself with the carcass, he came under sustained attack from people opposed to big-game hunting. He even had to close his practice for a while and go into hiding because of death threats. And yet the full context painted a different picture than the simplistic story spread via Twitter. The game park's survival depends on the large fees paid by hunters. The dentist's native guides specifically directed him to that particular lion. And in the absence of any natural predators, some form of culling must take place to control the animal population. While it is still possible to disapprove of hunting as a sport (I'm not too sympathetic toward it myself, as my short story "Rite of Passage" makes clear), the full story at least made the dentist out to be something other than a heartless monster.

Fortune-telling and catastrophizing - the tendency to anticipate the worst possible outcome (fortune-telling), or to assume that this outcome has already occurred (catastrophizing). The two fallacies are closely connected. Such reasoning is found all over the Internet. Political sites see any policy they disapprove of as the harbinger of an unspeakable catastrophe. Skeptical sites insist that any acceptance of paranormal phenomena must lead to a new Dark Age.

Note how quickly the prediction (fortune-telling) turns into fact (catastrophizing) in the believer's mind. From arguing that current trends will lead to (say) dictatorship, the political writer segues into the conclusion that we are already in a dictatorship. The Skeptic's prediction that belief in the paranormal will bring on a new Dark Age quickly becomes the conclusion that we’re already living in a Dark Age of ignorance and superstition.

Another example would be sites devoted to arguing either for or against anthropogenic global warming, with proponents claiming that a planetary disaster of unprecedented proportions is now inevitable, and opponents claiming that any restrictions on carbon dioxide output will bring our technological civilization to a screeching halt. And then there are financial sites that see every market correction as the first step toward total economic, social, and political collapse, and keep their readers in  chronic state of anxiety and panic.

Personalization - making everything personal. We need look no further than the comment threads of many sites and blogs to find people who immediately take any contrary opinion as a personal attack. Comment threads tend to deteriorate into mudslinging contests for this very reason. The fact that commenters can hide behind screen names and usually have no personal connection with their interlocutors makes it all too easy to lash out in an angry, sarcastic, or belittling fashion without worrying about the consequences.

Emotional reasoning - “if I feel it, it must be true, and the more strongly I feel it, the more true it is." It's impossible to avoid this fallacy if you spend any time on the Internet. All too often, arguments are made on the basis of strong emotion, rather than any factual basis. If somebody feels strongly that Obama is a Muslim who was born in Kenya and faked his birth certificate, it is simply impossible to talk him out of this opinion. He feels it, dammit, so it must be true – and who are you to question his feelings? Or, to take an example from the opposite side of the political spectrum, if somebody feels that the minimum wage should be $20 an hour, it's almost always a waste of time to point out that an unrealistically high starting wage will eliminate entry-level jobs and increase unemployment. Arguing for a $20 minimum wage makes a person feel good about himself – makes him feel that he is caring, kindhearted, and idealistic – and this feeling is more important than any facts.

I've also seen this fallacy displayed on paranormal sites where evidence is presented without much concern for accuracy. When I point out that certain case histories have been misreported, I sometimes get the reply that the factual particulars don't matter – we shouldn't get "bogged down" in details. What this means is that we shouldn't pay attention to facts that get in the way of the feelings we want to have.

A few months ago I encountered a very clear example of this fallacy on Facebook. The above image of a monkey carrying a puppy had gone viral, with the caption that the monkey was rescuing the dog after a factory explosion in China; the uplifting message was that if animals can show such concern for each other, then surely we as humans can do no less. Well, I Googled it and quickly determined that the story was not true. The photo was not taken in China, and there was no factory explosion. In fact, the monkey was not rescuing the dog, but just playing with it, as the photographer herself has stated. But when I mentioned this, the reaction I got from other people on Facebook was sharply negative. They didn't want to know the truth about the picture. One of them told me explicitly that it made her feel good to think that the monkey had rescued a puppy, and she didn't want her feelings altered by facts.

Always being right. This one speaks for itself. Many online arguments continue in perpetuity, with neither side willing to give in or walk away. And the longer the argument goes on, the more likely it is that other fallacies will come into play – that the combatants will start to personalize, engage in emotional reasoning, catastrophize, resort to black-and-white thinking, and so forth.

In listing these distortions, I don’t mean to suggest that I'm immune from them myself. Sadly, the opposite is true. For instance, my insistence on getting the facts about the monkey picture was probably a case of “always being right.” I’m prone to catastrophizing when it comes to political developments. I often have a mental filter about current events, seeing only the negatives (which make headlines) and ignoring the positives (which are easily taken for granted).

There’s nothing new about these distorted ways of thinking. People have always reasoned fallaciously in just these ways. What is new, I think, is the extent to which we're exposed to cognitive distortions on a daily basis if we spend a lot of time online. Chronic exposure to social media, political sites, comment threads, and even blogs like this one can subtly teach us counterproductive and illogical ways of thinking; the more we encounter these fallacies in other people without recognizing them, the more inclined we are to duplicate their distortions. Then we ourselves encourage the same kind of distorted thinking in other people, and the fallacies spread and intensify.

The rise of the Internet has obviously contributed to the growing polarization of our society. The most often-cited reason is that the Internet allows people to hang out in isolated echo chambers and groupthink ghettos where their own biases are constantly reinforced. While this is true, another factor is that so much online commentary and discussion engenders black-and-white thinking, mental filtering, catastrophizing, and other fallacies that encourage us to demonize anyone with a different point of view.

This may also partly explain the sharp polarization between Skeptics and proponents of the paranormal, who seem to have so little common ground. Sometimes when arguing against certain dubious pieces of evidence for life after death, I’ve been told, “You’re only helping the Skeptics when you do that” - as if what matters is not getting at the truth, but winning the debate. This mindset can take hold most easily when the opposite side is viewed as evil, vicious, duplicitous, and lacking in any positive qualities - a view encouraged by most of the cognitive distortions listed above.

Is there any solution? Actually, yes. The best way not to fall prey to these errors is to identify them in our own thinking and then replace our distorted thought patterns with more realistic ones. Many articles and books offer advice on how to do this. There are also apps, such as this one for the iPhone, which allow you to write out your troubling thoughts and then identify which cognitive distortions are at work.

Besides all that, it would probably be helpful for all of us to spend less time online. Speaking of which, I think now I'll turn off my computer and head outside.

Cheerio!

Monsters of Florence

Yesterday I read The Monster of Florence: A True Story, by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi.  When I say I read it yesterday, I mean I consumed the entire 328 page book in one day, staying up well into the night to finish it.

It's a real page turner that recounts a series of baffling murders in Florence, Italy, and the remarkably inept police investigations that ensued. In the course of these investigations several completely innocent people ended up in prison, each accused of being the serial killer, only to be released when the real killer struck again. The book makes clear that there was little or no evidence convicting any of these people and that prosecutors simply saw the high profile case as a good way to advance their own careers. The faster they could convict somebody – anybody – of the crime, the faster they would move up the ranks. They do not appear to have been overly scrupulous about the methods used.

Besides career opportunism, there was another motive driving the prosecutors and police. Once they came up with a theory, no matter how far-fetched, they would stick to it to the bitter end. They were utterly unwilling to change their minds, and they regarded any criticism of their position as evidence that the critic himself was covering up for the murderer. In the culture of Italy, to lose face is unthinkable, and an authority figure who had to admit he was wrong would suffer a severe loss of face. Any alternative, including putting innocent people in jail for life, was preferable. And no amount of evidence could possibly persuade a person whose "face" was on the line to back down.

Preston and Spezi  provide a good example of this attitude. Authorities concocted the theory that a doctor who had drowned in a local lake was actually part of a secret society that organized the killings in order to harvest body parts for occult rituals. Needless to say, there was absolutely no evidence supporting the existence of such a society or such rituals. Of course, the absence of evidence simply meant that the society was exceptionally good at covering its tracks!

The trouble was that the official medical examination had ruled accidental drowning as the cause of death. To get around this obstacle, authorities conjectured that someone else's body had been substituted for that of the murdered man. Incredibly, they were able to get permission to exhume the corpse, at which point they discovered that it was indeed the body of the doctor and not a substitute. Did they abandon their theory? Not at all. They simply deduced that the secret society had made a second substitution – digging up the corpse and putting the doctor's remains into the coffin before the remains could be officially exhumed.

In other words, the discovery of the doctor's body in the coffin was taken as evidence that the secret society was even more powerful and wily than originally believed. And this pattern was repeated throughout the investigations. Evidence contrary to the official line of reasoning was either ignored or explained away as having been manufactured by the conspirators to throw the investigators off track. The more exonerating evidence was uncovered, the larger and more nefarious the conspiracy was proven to be! And anyone who questioned these methods was immediately suspected of being part of the conspiracy himself.

Incidentally, the same judge who ordered the exhumation of the drowned man's body also directed the investigation into the murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia, which resulted in the imprisonment of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito without a scintilla of evidence against either of them. As before, the judge had come up with an elaborate and totally unsupported theory involving a Satanic ritual to explain the murder, even though the facts of the case pointed to a much simpler story – a break-in gone wrong.

Corruption and fear of losing face are two of the big issues here, but why do the Italian people stand for it and even cheer on the prosecutors who make such transparently ridiculous allegations? Douglas Preston got an answer to this question from an Italian friend after his co-author, Mario Spezi, was himself arrested and jailed on charges of being the Monster (or perhaps aiding and abetting the Monster – the actual charges were never quite clear). Spezi had irritated the authorities by writing articles and participating in TV programs that debunked their cherished theory of the case. The authorities struck back by cobbling together the preposterous story that the veteran journalist must be in on it and intentionally covering for the real killer, and that he may have committed the crimes himself. Worldwide condemnation resulted in Spezi's eventual release, but only after months of incarceration, including one five-day period when he was not even permitted to talk to a lawyer.

Preston fought vigorously for his friend's release, but in the process learned something important about the Italian mindset:

[The Italians] viewed my outrage as naïve and a bit gauche. To be outraged is to be earnest, to be sincere – and to be a dupe. Some Italians were quick to strike the pose of the world-weary cynic who takes nothing at face value and who is far too clever to be taken in by Spezi's and my protestations of innocence.

"Ah!" said Count Niccolo in one of our frequent conversations. "Of course Spezi and you were up to no good at that villa! Dietrologia insisted it be so. Only a naïf would believe that you two journalists went to the villa 'just to have a look.' The police wouldn't have arrested Spezi for no reason! You see, Douglas, an Italian must always appear to be furbo. You don't have an English equivalent for that marvelous word. It means a person who is wily and cunning, who knows which way the wind is blowing, who can fool you but never be fooled himself. Everyone in Italy wants to believe the worst of others so they don't end up looking gullible. Above all, they want to be seen as furbo."

Elsewhere, the count explained the term dietrologia as 

"the idea that the obvious thing cannot be the truth. There is always something hidden behind, dietro. It isn't quite what you Americans call conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theory implies theory, something uncertain, a possibility. The dietrologist  deals only in fact. This is how it really is. Aside from football, dietrologia  is the national sport in Italy. Everyone is an expert at what's really going on, even … how do you Americans say it? … even if they don't know jack shit."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it gives them a feeling of importance! This importance may only be confined to a small circle of idiotic friends, but at least they are in the know. Potere, power, is that I know what you do not know. Dietrologia is tied to the Italian mentality of power. You must appear to be in the know about all things."

"How does this apply to the Monster investigation?"

"My dear Douglas, it is the very heart of the matter! At all costs, they have to find something behind the apparent reality. There cannot not be something. Why? Because it is not possible that the thing you see is the truth. Nothing is simple, nothing is as it seems. Does it look like a suicide? Yes? Well then it must be murder. Somebody went out for coffee? Aha! He went out for coffee … But what was he really doing?"

Although the count contrasted dietrologia with conspiracy theories, I don't think there is really much difference between them. Most proponents of conspiracy theories do not treat their speculations as "mere theory," but as self-evident fact. Their motivation seems to be just the same as that ascribed to the dietrologists -  a desire to be in the know, to feel smarter than everybody else, and above all, not to be a dupe.

This potent cocktail of furbo, face-saving, and opportunism explains a lot about the Italian justice system. But I think it also provides an explanation for the behavior of at least some militant debunkers of the paranormal. Many of them give the unmistakable impression that their greatest fear is to be fooled, and their greatest pride is that they can see through any deception. They are not taken in by surface appearances; they always dig up the real story, no matter how convoluted and far-fetched. And they cannot be persuaded to change their minds; if evidence is produced that casts doubt on their position, they either ignore it or explain it away. Finally, like the dietrologists, they are deeply cynical about human nature and seem to regard earnestness as a sign of naïveté, an indication that one has been duped. Smart people, they appear to feel, are always in on the con, and are never more than wryly amused by it. 

To be clear, I'm not talking about all skeptics, or even all of the militant ones. But I do think this kind of attitude is pretty widespread in the skeptical community and would be on open display at any skeptical gathering. The methods used by many professional skeptics - sarcasm, ridicule, authoritative-sounding pronouncements unanchored to any facts - are in line with these skeptics' self-image as more clever, more worldly, and more knowledgeable than the rubes and yokels who are readily taken in by sleight of hand, slippery language, and assorted con games. 

It's hard to overestimate the amount of damage this mentality can cause. The damage is obvious in miscarriages of justice (as in the Florence and Perugia cases), and less obvious in other areas, such as controversies over the paranormal and other out-of-the-mainstream subjects. I suppose it all boils down to insecurity, which would explain the desperate desire to save face, the need to appear more knowledgeable than other people, and the thirst for power, which is often sought as a way to compensate for personal inadequacies. 

Overall, it's a sorry picture of the human race - and by no means limited to Italy. Furbo is everywhere ... and it is not our friend.

Options, live and dead

Somewhere in his lectures, William James discourses on the topic of live options. As I recall, he told his classroom of British university students that for many of them, whether or not they were religious, the resurrection of Jesus was a live option - meaning that they would at least take the idea seriously and not dismiss it out of hand. On the other hand, the idea that the prophet Mohammed rode a flying horse (a story recounted in the Koran) would not even be considered. This was because the students, raised in a Judeo-Christian environment, were inclined to treat articles of the Christian faith with at least a modicum of respect, while they were not inclined to treat other religions the same way. James went on to say that for all of us, there are live options and others that are not live - things we are willing to think about in a serious way, and things we reflexively reject.

Times change, and if James were speaking today he would use different examples. But his basic point is still valid. All our opinions are filtered through a screen of preconceived assumptions about what is or is not worth considering. If a given subject can't get through the screen, we won't accept it on even the most provisional basis. It's not that we necessarily have taken the time to examine the claim in detail and refute it. Sometimes we do that, but more often we just brush it off as nonsense. 

People may refer to their particular screening process as common sense, the way things are, the way the world works, or their BS detector. Or they may call it the laws of physics or simply science. ("Science says ____ is impossible.") Or they may call it the word of God. ("Scripture tells us ____ is impossible.") 

It's easy to see the screening process at work in other people, but much harder to see it in ourselves. Subjectively, our personal filter appears to be absolutely identical to reality or logic or revelation - whatever our standard of judgment is. Objectively, the filter differs from one person to the next; probably no two people have exactly the same filter. 

In describing things this way, I don't mean to suggest that the filtering process is bad. On the contrary, I think it's essential. We're bombarded with ideas and claims and opinions. We need some way to cut down the clutter. Just as an email program would be overrun with junk without a spam filter, our minds would be overwhelmed by distracting irrelevancies and intellectual dead ends without a screening system. 

I feel this way even in cases where I disagree with the standards imposed by the particular filter. For instance, the great physicist Helmholtz famously said that he would not believe in telepathy no matter what the evidence, even if he witnessed it firsthand. For him, telepathy was not a live option. Though I think he was quite mistaken, I can understand how someone who had organized his worldview around the principles of classical physics would reach such a conclusion. For him, the implications of telepathy were too shattering to bear thinking about. Proof of telepathy would upend his entire belief system and throw his thoughts into chaos. As a matter of psychological self-defense, he had to repudiate the very possibility. And why not? Nobody is obligated to embrace an idea that will destroy the entire intellectual structure of his life. 

I have my own filter, of course. There are ideas that I reject out of hand, seldom troubling to investigate them. Examples include: 

• conspiracy theories claiming that the moon landings were faked
• conspiracy theories claiming that 9/11 was an "inside job," and the Twin Towers fell because of "controlled demolition" 
• assertions that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, has a fake Social Security number, or was fathered by someone other than Obama Sr. 
• any form of young-Earth creationism or special creation of all species at once (I'm open to more sophisticated intelligent design arguments) 
• claims of "ancient astronauts" who built the pyramids 
• claims of shape-shifting aliens who live among us
• claims regarding the Illuminati or other mystical cabals that secretly rule us

Then there are ideas that strike me as so implausible I'm just not interested in pursuing them. I don't necessarily rule them out altogether, but I don't take them seriously. Examples include:

• homeopathy
• pyramid power
• stories about Atlantis, Lemuria, and other lost civilizations (unless presented as legendary treatments of known civilizations like Crete)
• the Loch Ness Monster, the yeti, Bigfoot, and other creatures of cryptozoology

These lists are far from exhaustive. They are only meant to show that I have my own filter, just like anyone else.  

When we see skeptics bending over backward to contrive a non-paranormal explanation for some well-documented anomalous phenomenon, it would be a mistake to assume that they're being churlish or deliberately obtuse. Even if there are obvious holes in their logic or clear misrepresentations of the reported facts, we should not necessarily assume dishonesty (unless a particular skeptic has a track record of intentional deception). In most cases, these errors are the result of dismissing the claim too quickly, without really studying it or even thinking about it - i.e., without taking it seriously. And the inability to take it seriously is a function of the skeptic's own individual mental filter. For him or her, this kind of claim is not a live option. 

Proponents of the paranormal sometimes complain that skeptics are willing to latch on to any explanation, no matter how far-fetched or absurd, as long as it obviates psi or life after death. But in a certain sense, this kind of thinking is quite logical. If psi and an afterlife are ruled out of bounds - if they are not live options, are inconceivable, are something that cannot possibly be considered, ever - then any alternative explanation must be preferable. It may seem unlikely that NDEs can be explained by brain chemistry given that the brain is minimally active during a cardiac arrest, but if any non-materialist explanation is impossible, then brain chemistry simply must be at work somehow. It may seem unlikely that all of the thousands of children who spontaneously report past lives are lying or being manipulated by unscrupulous parents, but if past lives are out of the question, then deceit must be involved somehow. And so on. 

The old saw is that we should have "an open mind, but not wide open." In truth, nobody's mind is wide open. We all have mental gatekeepers - bouncers on autopilot, whose job is to keep out the riffraff. We simply differ on which ideas should be bounced.

Mysticism and madness

Many cultures have seen a close connection between mysticism and madness — and in fact, there are significant similarities between behaviors associated with some forms of mental illness and the behaviors associated with mediumship (trance mediumship in particular). There are also areas of overlap between the intellectual fixations of some mental patients and the accounts of near-death experiencers.

Critics see these parallels as evidence that paranormal states of consciousness can be explained as instances of a psychological or neurological problem. Basically they say, “You’d have to be crazy to believe this stuff.”

I don’t agree with that assessment. But I do think it’s interesting and instructive to examine these similarities, which some people with spiritual inclinations may find troubling.

Anyone who's had the opportunity to spend time with a person suffering from delirium, schizophrenia, or dementia may have noticed some or all of the following behaviors:

• Incessant talk about God, visiting heaven, and meeting with deceased relatives, often expressed with intense emotion.
• Belief in out-of-body experiences and heavenly communications, including direct contact with God.
• Periods of communication with an unseen presence, in which the patient will talk, with eyes closed, to someone who “isn’t there.”
• Grandiose projects intended to save the world – projects that are admirably altruistic but mostly impractical.
• Stream-of-consciousness speech, incredibly loquacious and verbose; the rapid production of large blocks of words, at a rate that would challenge the skills of a stenographer.
• The insistence that everything is connected and is all part of a larger plan; the connections cited are trivial, random, and arbitrary, but are interpreted as profoundly meaningful.
• The claim that “time is running out” and that some amazing, transformational event is about to take place, for which the world must be prepared.
• The assurance that all these revelations are startlingly clear and make perfect sense, even though they seem nonsensical to observers.

I have personally observed all of the above.

Now, if we look at parapsychological phenomena, we can easily see areas of overlap with the behaviors listed above. Mediums, by definition, spend time talking to someone who “isn’t there,” at least in a mundane sense. Trance mediums who practice automatic writing are known for their incredible output, producing thousands of words with little apparent effort and with minimal need for revision. It has often been noted that those on "the other side" have no shortage of altruistic plans and projects, but that these schemes are generally impractical. There is also no shortage of failed predictions by mediums, usually involving some momentous event of world-shaking import.

Near-death experiencers often report that while they were out of their body, they understood that everything that happens is interconnected in a vast, beautiful, and perfect design. Some also report having had access to all knowledge with astonishing clarity, yet they are rarely, if ever, able to convey this clarity after being revived.

Such parallels go a long way toward explaining why mainstream psychiatrists, who often encounter delirious, schizophrenic, or senile patients, are generally skeptical of phenomena like mediumship and NDEs. There are, however, crucial differences that shouldn't be glossed over. The best cases of mediumship involve verifiable details that the medium had no normal way of knowing, and in some cases involve actually re-creating the characteristic mannerisms, gestures, facial expressions, and verbal tics of a deceased person unknown to the medium. The best NDE cases include veridical observations of things that took place while the patient was deeply unconscious or even clinically dead.

Even though it would be a mistake to conflate mental breakdown and paranormal mindsets in a simplistic way, the obvious similarities still require an explanation. Why should madness and mysticism be so closely linked?

My best guess is that the "mental filter" hypothesis popularized by Aldous Huxley in such books as The Doors of Perception is at least partially correct. This hypothesis holds that consciousness exists outside of the brain, rather than being created by the brain; the brain serves as a filter that shuts out the greater part of consciousness, allowing us to focus on narrower, more specific objectives consistent with survival on earth.

If the brain is damaged or its chemistry is altered, the filter starts to break down and normally restricted input begins to trickle in. The result is a subjective sense of mind expansion, a conviction of direct contact with "the beyond," and an urgent desire to communicate ineffable ideas. Unfortunately, there is a severe downside: the person's ability to function in the everyday world is seriously compromised. (Remember that the need to function in ordinary reality is the reason for the filter mechanism in the first place.)

Moreover, whatever legitimate input may be coming to the person’s attention is mixed together with erroneous or irrelevant thoughts – what William James called “bosh" in connection with the mediumship of Mrs. Piper. (As Michael Tymn notes in Resurrecting Leonora Piper, James characterized a great deal of what Mrs. Piper had to say while in trance as bosh or nonsense, while acknowledging that a smaller portion of what she said was not explicable by any normal means. It was this smaller portion that fascinated him and other investigators.)

The filter hypothesis is very ably explained and defended in Chapter 2 of Bernardo Kastrup’s new book, rather combatively titled Why Materialism Is Baloney. Kastrup, who maintains a blog arguing for philosophical idealism, notes that the filter hypothesis implies two important predictions. The first is that:

The subjective experiences that are filtered out become the so-called 'unconscious' mind of the respective ego. Since each ego allows in only an infinitesimally small part of all potential experiences – given the unfathomable variety of conscious perspectives that exist in potentiality – the 'unconscious' minds of different egos will differ only minimally, the vast majority of the 'unconscious' being identical across egos. As such, the filter hypothesis, unlike materialism, predicts the existence of a 'collective unconscious,' a shared repository of potential experiences that far transcends mere genetic predispositions of a species.

He finds evidence supporting this prediction in the work of analyst Carl Jung and the whole field of transpersonal psychology.

The second prediction is that there should be "a broad pattern of empirical evidence associating non-local, transpersonal experiences with procedures that reduce brain activity."

In support of this prediction he cites fainting caused by asphyxiation, pilots who lose consciousness when blood leaves the brain, hyperventilation, psychedelic substances, inhibition of brain activity via electromagnetic fields, brain damage, automatic writing practiced by trance mediums, near-death experiences, immersion in an isolation tank, and various initiatory rituals in tribal cultures. (“It is very reasonable to assume that such ordeals – like long sessions in sweat lodges, exposure to the elements, extreme exertion, and even poisoning – physically compromised brain function.”)

All of these cases, Kastrup argues, have been associated with nonlocal, transpersonal states of consciousness, strongly indicating at least a correlation between reduced or impaired brain activity and experiences of "cosmic consciousness" (to use the phrase coined by R.M. Bucke).

Kastrup notes that materialists often cite many of these cases as evidence that transpersonal experiences, being precipitated by biological changes, must be purely illusory. He counters with this argument:

Well, such an assumption is, in my view, the product of shallow thinking at best and of prejudice at worst. Just why can't a true transpersonal experience be triggered by physical intervention in the brain, given the obvious fact that mind and brain are related in some way? What is in dispute is the nature of this relationship, not its existence. If the nature of the relationship is such that the brain modulates and localizes consciousness, without causing it, it is not only reasonable but also expectable that physical interference with the brain should change one's subjective state. Not only that, partial deactivation of certain brain processes through physical means – be them psychoactive drugs, magnetic fields, hyperventilation, asphyxiation, ordeals, sensory deprivation, etc. – should allow consciousness to partially de-localize and expand, which is perfectly consistent with the types of transpersonal experience listed above …

While particular reports of transpersonal experiences could possibly be explained away, the broad pattern that associates peak transpersonal experiences with reductions of brain activity clearly points to a robust and consistent phenomenon.

To change the analogy slightly, let’s look at the brain not as a filter but as a receiver. The two metaphors are closely related; each assumes that consciousness originates outside the brain, and that the brain must modulate the inflow of consciousness in some way. A radio receiver can be tuned to any number of frequencies. In effect, the tuner is designed to "filter out" unwanted frequencies and allow only the desired frequency to come through. As long as the radio is tuned to a clear signal, the information will come through with minimal distortion.

But suppose something goes wrong with the tuner. Suppose the radio starts randomly jumping from one frequency to another. It would, in one respect, be accessing more information – or at least a broader range of information – than before. Yet the resulting transmissions would be confused and chaotic, because the dial would keep slipping unpredictably from one station to another.

Or suppose the radio acquired the ability to tune in to more than one station at a time. Then two or more transmissions would come through together. If one signal was stronger than the others, it might come through clearly enough, with only faint "ghost" transmissions in the background. (The term “ghost” is an interesting one in this context.) But if all the signals were of approximately equal strength, the resulting noise would be almost impossible to interpret. Technically, more information would be coming through; but it would be indecipherable.

There's an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer titled “Earshot" in which Buffy develops clairaudience – she can hear other people's thoughts. At first she finds this new found talent helpful. But as the episode progresses, her clairaudience increases, until she hears a babble of voices in her head at all times, a condition that incapacitates her and threatens to drive her insane. Though I doubt it was intentional, this storyline is a good metaphor for the benefits and hazards of impairing the brain’s “filter” mechanism.

We can probably see now why mental illness and paranormal states of mind have significant areas of overlap. In both cases, the brain's function as a filter (or tuner) has been compromised, letting in a stream of information that would ordinarily be kept out. Within limits, opening up the filter can be beneficial; outside those limits, it can do more harm than good.

In short, the filter hypothesis seems to provide a pretty good explanation for the way in which mental breakdown dovetails with trance mediumship and NDEs. The alternative explanation, proffered by materialists, would be that the communications provided by mediums and the narratives recounted by NDErs are themselves instances of mental illness or temporary mental breakdown. But this viewpoint doesn’t account for the veridical aspects of these cases, or for the fact that, typically, mediums and NDErs are able to function quite normally in their everyday lives.

All that having been said, there’s one more thing to consider. Many cultures, both ancient and modern, have taboos against delving too deeply into the paranormal. It’s possible that such taboos serve a legitimate purpose, and should be violated only with caution. If the brain’s filtering activity is indeed essential to allowing us to navigate the physical world, then any impairment of the filter may reduce our survival prospects. In fact, natural selection seems to dictate that really strong psi talents would be progressively weeded out of the population, since whatever advantages psi might offer would be more than offset by the risk of being overwhelmed and disoriented by excessive mental input. (On the other hand, more moderate psi talents would not necessarily face extinction, and higher level talents could be cultivated with practice or might appear spontaneously in rare cases, either at birth or as a result of some alteration in brain function. Cultures that placed a high value on shamanic talents would look after such individuals and see to it that their everyday needs were met.)

For millennia, mystical adepts have warned casual enthusiasts not to get caught up in things beyond their ken. It’s worth keeping these injunctions in mind. The mind-brain relationship can be a fragile thing; we toy with it at our peril.

Who's there?

In the early years of the 20th century, a few pioneering Spiritualist psychiatrists attempted to cure acute mental illness via mediumship. Probably the most famous of these is Carl Wickland, whose 1924 book Thirty Years Among the Dead recounts his experiences in treating–and curing–a variety of psychoses in institutionalized patients. In these sessions, the obsessing or possessing spirit that was purportedly responsible for the patient's psychosis would communicate through Dr. Wickland's wife Anna while she was entranced. (A PDF of Wickland's book can be downloaded here.) Wickland would address the spirit as an equal, convincing the entity to accept the fact that he or she was dead and to move on to a higher plane.

Another Spiritualist psychiatrist of some note was Titus Bull, who employed somewhat similar techniques.

As the Spiritualist movement waned in the United States and Europe, such approaches to psychiatry, very rare to begin with, became all but extinct. Recently, however, I came across an article in the summer 2012 issue of The American Scholar which discusses a new trend in the treatment of schizophrenia, a disease characterized by hearing voices. The new approach, though it seems to owe nothing to Spiritualism, at least provides food for thought in considering the nature of these mysterious voices in people's heads. Perhaps it even suggests that these voices have more of an independent existence than conventional wisdom would have us believe.

The article, "Living With Voices," by T.M. Luhrmann, begins with this striking paragraph:

Hans used to be overwhelmed by the voices. He heard them for hours, yelling at him, cursing him, telling him he should be dragged off into the forest and tortured and left to die. The most difficult thing to grasp about the voices people with psychotic illness hear are how loud and insistent they are, and how hard it is to function in a world where no one else can hear them. It's not like wearing an iPod. It's like being surrounded by a gang of bullies. You feel horrible, crazy, because the voices are real to no one else, yet also strangely special, and they wrap you like a cocoon. Hans found it impossible to concentrate on everyday things. He sat in his room and hid. But then the voices went away for good.

How did the voices go away? Luhrmann reports that "recently a new grassroots movement has emerged. It argues that if patients learn to address their voices directly and appropriately, as if each voice had intention and agency, the voices will become less hostile and eventually go away. From the perspective of modern psychiatry, this assertion is radical, even dangerous. But it is being taken seriously by an increasing number of patients and psychiatrists." 

This new grassroots movement is called Hearing Voices. Practitioners encourage patients to interact with the voices, treating them with respect and civility, as if they were real, independent entities. This approach, of course, stands in stark contrast to the conventional wisdom on the subject, which holds that the patient should not be encouraged in his belief that the voices are real. As Luhrmann observes, "In biomedical psychiatry, mental health professionals ask whether the patient hears voices, not what the voices say. The goal is to get rid of the voices, like getting rid of a fever, and the mind-numbing, sleep-inducing antipsychotics are prescribed toward that end." 

But antipsychotics don't always work, and even when they do, their side effects–as Luhrmann indicates–can be almost as devastating as the disease itself. At the end of his rope, Hans tried the Hearing Voices approach: 

Hans joined a group of people like him who met once a week. They talked about their voices, and they were encouraged to talk back to them. They were even encouraged to negotiate with their voices. One of Hans's voices thought he would be better off if he devoted his life to Buddhist prayer. Hans is not a Buddhist–like many Dutch, he grew up as a secular Protestant–and he did not want to follow the voice's command. The group persuaded him to cut a deal with his voices. He told his voices that he would read a book on Buddhism every day for one hour–but no more. He would say one Buddhist prayer every day–but no more. And if he did this, he told them, they had to leave him alone.

They did, more or less. He began to feel better. His psychiatrists began to lower his Clozaril from its high of 500 mg per day down eventually to a dose of 50 mg. He lost weight. He became more alert. He moved out of the hospital. The voices didn't disappear entirely, but they got nicer. When he was moving into an apartment by himself–and petrified by the prospect–he heard a voice say, “Buck up, we know you can do it.” By the time I met him in 2009, he hadn't heard a voice in more than a year. 

Lurhmann emphasizes that treating the voices as real participants in the process is the cornerstone of the technique:

Staff members conduct “voice dialogues,” often working one on one with a client. The staff member asks to speak with the voice. The client will listen for what the voice says and then reported back, in a strangely ventriloquized process. Some staff members invite the voices to attend the group meeting.…

The group thought that one had to talk with respect even to the harshest voices–the ones that screamed and cursed and wanted you dead. It is not easy, Hans said slowly, to talk nicely to your most aggressive voices. But the group said that if you showed respect, they would calm down. And they did.

The paradoxical assumption here is that if the voice-hearer treats the voices as if they are real, as if they are like the independent, external people in the world they are perceptually experienced as being, the voices will become less real. 

This respectful approach seems to bear fruit in many cases:

The people who were comfortable with hearing voices told the same story; their experience had a trajectory. Some voices had started out mean and difficult, and the hearers had first responded with startled fear, but once they had chosen to interact with them, the voices settled down and became more manageable, sometimes even useful. “They show me the things I do wrong,” one voice-hearer said, “and teach me how to do them otherwise. But they leave the choice to me if I really want to change it or rather leave it as it was."

Luhrmann includes the caveat that, "[a]lthough the Hearing Voices movement is one of the most innovative approaches in decades to the problem of hearing distressing voices, clinical research is still in the early stages, with, to my knowledge, no completed randomized, controlled trials." In other words, it's too soon to conclude that the approach will hold up under more rigorous scrutiny. Still, the anecdotal evidence is provocative, at the very least.

In light of this new methodology, we might say there are two possible ways of interpreting the success of Carl Wickland's methods. One possibility is that the mediumistic sessions encouraged the patients to think of the voices as real, independent entities, and this subjective belief then helped to effect a cure, just as it seems to have done in the case of Hans. The other possibility is that, in at least some cases, the voices actually do belong to obsessing or possessing spirits, just as Dr. Wickland believed, and the Hearing Voices movement, by establishing a respectful dialogue with these entities, is helping to moderate their behavior.

I suppose a third, more esoteric possibility is that both things are true–that the voices are purely functional constructs, as mainstream psychiatry would say, but also “spirits,” as Spiritualists would have it. This could be true if we view personality as such as a functional construct, somewhat in the way that Eckhart Tolle does. 

In other words, if the ego-persona is itself a functional construct, then to all intents and purposes there is no difference between an artificially constructed voice in one's head and the artificially constructed façade of the self as we experience it in everyday life. What is real, then, would be only the higher self, the witness that watches all these ego-based dramas play out.

But I'd better stop now. Because if I carry this line of thought any further, I just might drive myself crazy ...

Everyday insanity

Yesterday I learned that there may be an effort by members of my condominium association to remove a tree that stands directly outside my unit. When I woke up today, the first thing I found myself thinking about was the tree. The more I thought about it, the more exercised I became. I could not stand the thought of losing the tree. I spent most of the day dwelling on the problem, envisioning various strategies to protect the tree, and considering fallback positions if the tree should in fact come down. I put in a work order to have some groundcover cleared away by the landscaping crew so as to determine whether the root system of the tree poses any threat to the sidewalk or nearby driveway. I called a tree surgeon to arrange an appointment so I could get an expert opinion on the health of the tree and whether it ought to be removed. I was so distracted by this problem that I found it difficult to work, even though I'm overburdened with projects at the moment and have several deadlines I'm trying to meet.

And then at some point in the evening, a little ray of clarity broke into the turbulence of my thoughts. I found myself thinking, What the hell, man? It's only a tree.

At that point, I was able to step outside of my emotional connection to the tree, my feeling that any attack on the tree was an attack on me personally, my egoic attachment to this tree which is an extension of my home and therefore an extension of myself. That's not to say I was suddenly okay with the prospect of the tree coming down, if it is in fact healthy and not posing a threat to the sidewalk, etc. But at least during this period of clarity I was no longer fuming and obsessing.

Later, I happened to look out the window at the tree, and the simple sight of it immediately brought back a lot of the rage, frustration, and exasperation I'd been feeling. I could easily have gotten caught up in another whirlwind of negative thinking if I hadn't consciously pull back.

What this little episode illustrates, I think, is a simple point that has been made often enough by Eckhart Tolle and similar writers, but remains insufficiently appreciated–namely, the ego is insane.

I mean this literally. There is a sane part of us, but it is not the ego. The ego is capable of lucidity when lucidity serves its self-defined interests. But it is equally capable of brazen irrationality when irrationality serves its perceived interests. It is also very adept at disguising irrationality and making it appear perfectly sensible, at least to ourselves, and sometimes to others.

The ego is not our friend. The ego is looking out only for itself. The ego wants to enlarge itself, and it does so by getting us worked up, angry, righteous, obsessed, vindictive, frustrated, and defensive, among many other things. Occasionally it may actually be beneficial for us to experience one or more of these states of mind, but most of the time it is not helpful. Not helpful to us, that is. It is very helpful to the ego.

It is true that most of us identify with the ego and have trouble drawing a distinction between the "I"  and the ego. And that's just the way the ego likes it. The more we identify with it, the more power we give it and the less able we are to resist its siren song. People who are totally in the grip of the ego, without any ray of clarity from the higher self or true self, are psychotic. They may be walking around in public, they may be successful in their field, they may even be admired and envied, but they are still psychopaths.

It is entirely possible for a person to be very successful in a material sense, outwardly normal and even likable, and still be, in fact, insane. Actually, I think this state of affairs is more common than we like to admit.

But all of us have an ego, and all of us are insane to one extent or another. Maybe there are a few very enlightened gurus who have overcome the ego completely, though I wouldn't count on it. But the overwhelming majority of human beings on the earth, and probably every human being you or I will ever meet, is in the grip of the ego much of the time, and therefore is functionally insane for a good part of his or her life.

People wonder why they see so much cruelty in the world, so much craziness, so many examples of man's inhumanity to man. But if you consider that nearly all of us are insane at least part of the time, and many of us are insane most of the time, the cruelty, craziness, and inhumanity of the human species is less surprising. To be honest, it is a little surprising that things aren't even worse. The better angels of our nature do seem to temper our egoic tendencies more often than we might expect.

Lately on this blog, I've been talking a lot about manias, and specifically the idea that the heyday of Spiritualism as a cultural, social, and religious movement may have been characterized by an atmosphere of mania, or perhaps more accurately, by recurrent waves of mania erupting at different places in different times, not unlike the witch hysteria of an earlier era. But how can otherwise rational people become subject to any sort of mania? Well, perhaps they can't; but the trouble is, people are not “otherwise rational.” As creatures of the ego, they are insane for a good part of their lives, so it's not surprising that their individual insanity should sometimes coalesce into a group insanity, and that this insanity should seem perfectly reasonable to the people who are subject to it.

That's why I have to treat with skepticism even the most sober accounts of séances and other purportedly paranormal experiences if they were supplied by people whose rationality and objectivity had been compromised either by excessive personal enthusiasm or the larger insanity of a mass movement. These people were convinced that they had witnessed paranormal or supernatural phenomena of epochal importance. Naturally they became intensely committed to the reality of what they had seen. Their commitment was reinforced by sharing their experiences with others who felt they had seen the same things. This commitment became an extension of the ego, and any attack on that commitment–any questions raised about the validity of the phenomena–were felt as an attack on the ego. And the ego will go to astounding lengths to protect itself from such an attack. It will marshal all of its resources, including all of the intellectual capabilities of the mind it is using (and I do think the ego uses the mind, not in a symbiotic relationship but parasitically;  the ego is, in a sense, an alien entity that clings to the mind in order to sustain itself).*

A mind that has been hijacked by the ego can believe itself to be entirely lucid, objective, even unusually perceptive–while spouting sheer nonsense. Some behavioral psychologists use the term “thought attack” to describe the cascading avalanche of irrational thoughts that can lead to severe anxiety, depression, violence, etc. But all ego-based thinking is a thought attack to some degree. And while we are caught up in it, we are no more able to extricate ourselves from our racing thoughts than from a descending mountainside of snow.

I think we need to keep this in mind when we evaluate any eyewitness accounts or recollections of paranormal events, especially those from the frenetic halcyon days when Spiritualism, like Revivalism before it, was burning like a prairie fire across the nation. Again I have to say: the ego is not our friend. It is not interested in truth or facts or even logic and reason, except as these may be used to serve its own purpose, which is to survive and grow stronger. The ego is not a reliable guide. It will intentionally mislead us if, by leading us astray, it can aggrandize itself. The ego is not honest or rational or moral, though it may speak in the language of reason and morality when it pleases.

The ego is really the devil in us all, the original sin that taints us. We ignore it at our own risk. And nowhere is this more true than when matters of ultimate spiritual significance–the nature of life and death, and the meaning of it all–are at stake.

---

*It's possible that the relationship orginally was symbiotic, i.e., mutually beneficial, but it does not seem to fit that description today. At the very least, the relationship seems to do much more harm than good in modern society. 

Seance and sensibility

For a preliminary look at the possibility that reports of psychic phenomena can be influenced by emotional and psychological factors, I tracked down a paper co-authored by Richard Wiseman, Emma Greening, and Matthew Smith titled "Belief in the Paranormal and Suggestion in the Seance Room," published originally in the British Journal of Psychology, 94(3), 285-297. It is available online here (PDF). 

Before going on, I should say that I have certain reservations about using this paper, because one of the authors, Richard Wiseman, has a dubious reputation in the field of parapsychology. Consider how he is characterized on the website Skeptical Investigations (which, despite its name, is actually an anti-skeptical site): 

He has been at the centre of many controversies with researchers in parapsychology, and has often been accused of deliberately misrepresenting data.

In 1995, he replicated Rupert Sheldrake’s results with a dog that knows when its owner was coming home, and then claimed to have debunked the 'psychic pet' phenomenon....

He has been described by the President of the Parapsychology Association as motivated by "obvious self-interest", and by a desire "to support an a priori commitment to the notion that all positive psi results are spurious and all methods which seem to show the presence of psi are flawed".... In December 2000 he carried out what he described as the 'world’s biggest ESP experiment' which, like many of his activities, was widely publicised in the media. A skeptical observer of the experiment claimed that he had designed the experiment to fail and interfered with the procedure in such a way as to gain the non-significant result he expected. 

In September 2004 he took part in a classic CSICOP debunking excercise, claiming that a young Russian girl who had seemingly psychic powers of diagnosis had failed a test he and his fellow skeptics designed. In fact the girl scored at a level well above chance. Prof Brian Josephson, FRS, a Nobel Laureate in physics, investigated Wiseman's claims about this test and found them to be seriously misleading....

By the autumn of 2004, after a series of other very questionable claims, widely publicized in the media, many of his peers in the parapsychology research community concluded that his behaviour was not consistent with commonly-accepted standards of scientific integrity, and he was voted off the main research forum in parapsychology by a large majority. In addition, for similar reasons, some members of the Society for Psychical Resaerch called for him to be expelled for the Society. He resigned. Despite his strong skeptical beliefs, in 2004 he applied for the newly-established chair of Parapsychology in Lund, Sweden, which was endowed to promote research in this field. 

Obviously there are major controversies swirling around Wiseman. Nevertheless, I don't know of any other recent research that looks at the issue of suggestibility in the séance room. So with the caveat that Wiseman's conclusions may not be reliable, here's what he and his colleagues found.

The researchers put on a series of fake séances using an actor or, in a later series, Wiseman himself as the medium. The sessions were held in darkness, with various objects arranged on a table and glowing with luminous paint. During the course of the session, the medium would make suggestions to the sitters about the movement or lack of movement of these items. A hidden assistant would move some of the objects, using a long stick. The first series of experiments was videotaped using infrared photography.

The outcome of this initial series of tests was consistent with the idea that people in a dark séance room have a tendency to see things that didn't happen when these things are suggested to them by the medium. The most striking case involves the purported movement of a small table. Though the medium strongly suggested that the table was moving under the psychic influence of the group, the table actually remained stationary throughout the test. Nevertheless, 31% of participants later said that the table moved.

A second data point involves a small handbell, which also remained stationary throughout the test. In this case the medium told the group to focus their psychic powers on the handbell and make it move, but he did not suggest that their efforts had succeeded. In this case only 10% reported seeing the handbell move. This indicates that the medium's suggestion is an important factor in the way the session is remembered.

Moreover, people who expressed a prior belief in paranormal phenomena were significantly more likely to accept the medium's suggestions than those who expressed a prior disbelief.

The second series of tests yielded results that seem less conclusive. Still, there was a significant amount of misreporting. 11% said the stationary handbell moved. 10% said a stationary tambourine moved. 86% said that an actually moving slate remained stationary (the medium, Wiseman in this case, had strongly suggested that the slate wasn't responding to their psychic efforts, even though his assistant was in fact moving it). 9% said that a moving candlestick was actually stationary.

In addition to the above, many of the participants described feelings and sensations consistent with some kind of paranormal experience–the same kinds of feelings and sensations often reported by people who attended “genuine” séances. 

In Experiment One, 20% of participants indicated that they had experienced these phenomena, with a significantly greater percentage of Believers (30%) than Disbelievers (8%) reporting such experiences (Chi square=6.36, df=4, p=.04). In Experiment Two, 21% of participants reported such experiences. In addition, the relationship between participants’ prior belief in the paranormal and the reporting of such experiences was in the same direction as Experiment One, and approached significance (Chi square=8.78, df=4, p=.07). The Questionnaire also asked participants to describe their experiences. Many people reported the type of quite dramatic phenomena often associated with ‘genuine’ seances, including being in an unusual psychological state (e.g., ‘Feeling of depersonification and elation when the objects moved’); changes in temperature (e.g., ‘Cold shivers running through my body when I concentrated hard on moving the objects’); an energetic presence (e.g., ‘A strong sense of energy flowing through the circle which increased’), and unusual smells (e.g., ‘A smell of hot plastic, combination of sweet and acrid smell’). Thus, the fake seances caused participants to report many of the experiences described by those attending ‘genuine’ seances, suggesting that such effects are the result of psychological processes (e.g., psychosomatic experiences brought about by participants’ heightened expectations or strong beliefs), rather than being caused by paranormal, psychic or mediumistic mechanisms.

Wiseman et al. sum up: 

For over a century people have attended physical seances and reported witnessing seemingly inexplicable phenomena. Experiments conducted around the turn of the last century revealed that many of these accounts were unreliable. The experiments reported here have shown that modern day witnesses also produce inaccurate testimony of séance phenomena. In addition, these experiments represent the first attempt to systematically examine verbal suggestion within the context of the seance. They have demonstrated that such suggestions have the potential to cause sitters to incorrectly report that stationary objects were moving, and that moving objects were stationary. The studies have also produced strong evidence that within the context of a seance, Believers are significantly more susceptible to verbal suggestion than Disbelievers, but only when the suggestion is consistent with the existence of paranormal phenomena. Both experiments also revealed that during the fake seances many participants reported experiencing the type of unusual phenomena often associated with ‘genuine’ seances, including, for example, sudden changes in temperature, a sense of unusual energy and odd smells. Finally, results also showed that about a fifth of participants believed that the fake seance contained genuine paranormal phenomena, and that a significantly greater percentage of Believers than Disbelievers believed this to be the case. 

Again, I don't want to put too much emphasis on this report because I do have doubts about Wiseman's credibility. It is worth mentioning, though, that the paper lists some prior research efforts that purportedly came to the same conclusions regarding inaccurate reporting of séance phenomena and (separately) the heightened suggestibility of believers in the paranormal. One of these papers dates back to 1887 and was co-authored by famed psychic researcher Richard Hodgson, best known for his work with Leonora Piper. 

Hodgson and Davey (1887) held fake seances for unsuspecting sitters and asked them to write a description of the seance. They reported that many sitters omitted important events, recalled others in an incorrect order and often believed that they had witnessed genuine paranormal phenomena. In 1898, Lehmann (cited in Jahoda, 1969) conducted a similar experiment and again described how participants’ accounts of a fake séance were often wildly inaccurate. Besterman (1932) had sitters attend a mock seance and then answer questions relating to various phenomena that had occurred. Besterman reported that sitters had a tendency to underestimate the number of persons present in the seance room, failed to report major disturbances that took place (e.g., the experimenter leaving the seance room) and experienced the illusory movement of objects....

Haraldsson (1985) found a significant positive correlation between paranormal belief and the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale. Likewise, Dafinoiu (1995) reported a significant relationship between participants’ levels of paranormal belief and their scores on a suggestibility questionnaire, with people who believed in the paranormal exhibiting higher suggestibility scores than disbelievers....

Jones & Russell (1980) asked both Believers and Disbelievers to observe a staged demonstration of extra-sensory perception (ESP). In one condition the demonstration was successful (i.e., ESP appeared to occur) whilst in the other it was not. All participants were then asked to recall the demonstration. Believers who saw the unsuccessful demonstration distorted their memories of it and often stated that ESP had occurred. Disbelievers tended to correctly recall the demonstration, even if it appeared to support the existence of ESP.

If we can trust the Wiseman paper's summary of these various reports, it would seem likely that a fair amount of eyewitness testimony from séances in dark rooms is unreliable; that belief in the paranormal renders eyewitnesses more inclined to perceive these phenomena in response to the medium's suggestions; and that emotion and psychology play a large role in how séances are experienced and remembered.

In the Victorian era, when Spiritualism was all the rage, and may even have qualified as a kind of “mania,” these psychological and emotional factors could have been far more pronounced then they are in most people today. Perhaps this social atmosphere helps to explain the extraordinary prevalence of physical mediumistic phenomena in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, compared with their relative absence now.

Having said all this, I need to supply an important addendum. Some of the most convincing investigations of séances were not conducted in total darkness. For example, when Everard Feilding and his colleagues investigated Eusapia Palladino in Naples in 1908, they did so in conditions of dim but (reportedly) adequate light. They also took the precaution of examining the phenomena in detail whenever possible–for instance, crawling under a levitating table to ensure that all four legs were off the floor and that no part of Palladino's body was in contact with the table. These investigators were seasoned professionals who, among them, had exposed and debunked more than 100 physical mediums before encountering Palladino, whom they fully expected to debunk also. They hardly seem to have been carried away by irrational enthusiasm about mediumship, and given the lighting conditions and strenuous efforts to verify the phenomena, I don't think their results can be explained as hallucinations prompted by the power of suggestion (a possibility that the investigators themselves considered).

In short, the research done by Wiseman and his colleagues does seem relevant to a great deal of Victorian table-tipping and related physical mediumship when carried out in pitch darkness by excited amateurs or, in some cases, by overly credulous professionals. But I don't think it can disqualify the best and strongest cases from that era. It may, however, help to whittle down the number of good cases and to explain the extraordinary popularity of séances at that time. It may also explain why physical mediumship is so much rarer nowadays; perhaps people are simply not primed to accept it at face value as they once were.  

Dangerous liaisons

In a recent post I quoted from Richard Carlson's self-help book You Can Be Happy No Matter What. I recommended the book and mentioned that I've found it very useful.

But I don't want to give the impression that I agree with everything Carlson has to say. I think his approach can be too simplistic and, at times, even dangerous. Here's an example from his chapter on relationships:

Think about someone you know whom you perceive to be an offensive or demanding person -- someone you have difficulty maintaining a positive feeling toward. Now, despite your difficulty, you know there are people who feel warmly toward that person. How do they do it? Are they blind to the facts? No. They do the same thing we all do for people we care about, without even knowing it. They look beyond the person's behavior. The person they like is not a static personality, set forever in stone, but someone whose behavior fluctuates according to his level of insecurity. They say, "Oh, Jim didn't mean what he said. He tends to lose his temper, and sometimes he says things he shouldn't." They see Jim, whereas you look at Jim's behavior.

We are all capable of looking beyond another's behavior, and do it all the time intuitively. We dismiss or defend the actions of people we love when we understand that they are feeling insecure. To improve our relationships we need to do the same thing with intention, to have a warm feeling for someone even though we don't feel they deserve it. As we practice this, our rapport and feeling of mutual respect will increase. [Page 81]

Now, there is certainly some truth in this, and in many cases it can probably work, but I would not recommend Carlson's approach in all situations. For one thing, it is not always possible or even desirable to separate the "behavior" from the person. A person, after all, is responsible for his behavior. More important, to intentionally overlook bad behavior on a regular basis is to reward and even enable that behavior.

Consider the case of a battered spouse. The thought process described by Carlson is exactly that of a wife whose husband has just physically abused her. "Oh, Jim didn't mean to hit me. He tends to lose his temper, and sometimes he does things he shouldn't." The battered wife doesn't look -- doesn't want to look -- at Jim's behavior. She wants to look at the "real" Jim, who is somehow distinct from the bad things he does. She wants "to have a warm feeling for someone even though [she doesn't] feel they deserve it."

Practicing this technique will not cause the "rapport and feeling of mutual respect" between the wife and her husband to increase. Quite the opposite. The more excuses she makes for Jim's behavior, the worse his behavior is likely to be.

Carlson would probably say he's not talking about really bad behavior, such as acts of violence. But there are other kinds of abuse. Jim might not beat up his wife physically, but he might subject her to chronic emotional abuse, which can be just as bad.

In general, Carlson strikes me as someone who has had little experience of the dark side of life -- someone who dramatically underestimates the amount of sheer malice that's out there in the world. His techniques work well in dealing with people who are basically decent and well-meaning, but I think they would fail -- in fact, I think they would bring about the opposite effect to the one that he intends -- when applied to people who are just plain bad.

And such people do exist. They're not the majority, but they're not an inconsequential minority, either.

In other words, there are wolves in the woods. And not all of them can be won over by simple acts of kindness. Some of them perceive kindness as weakness, and will take ruthless advantage of you if you let them. They will bite the hand you extend to them.

So by all means, read and profit from Carlson's book. But as always, caveat lector.

Thinking makes it so

Back in 1992, before he became famous as the author of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff and its innumerable sequels and spinoffs, Dr. Richard Carlson wrote a wonderful little self-help book called You Can Be Happy No Matter What. This brief (141 pages) volume is chock-full of penetrating insights and useful advice, presented in a readable and engaging style. Over the years I've turned to it repeatedly and have always profited from it.

Early in the book, Carlson discusses what he calls "thought systems," and makes some valuable points (all emphases are in the original):

All of our past thoughts can be clustered into our "thought system," a self-contained unit through which we see the world. Every decision, reaction, and interpretation we have is colored by our individualized thought system.

Our thought system is like a filter that information passes through before it gets to our awareness. It is a complex, perfectly woven pattern of thought, linked together into concepts, beliefs, expectations, and opinions. It is our thought system that enables us to compare new facts or situations with what we already know from past experience.

Your thought system includes all the information you have accumulated over your lifetime. It is past information that your thought system uses to interpret the relative significance of everything that happens in your life. In this sense, a thought system is the source of conditioned thought. When you rely on it, you are thinking in a habitual manner, your usual way of seeing things. Here is where your habitual reactions to life are formed.

Thought systems contain our view of "the way life is." They are the psychological mechanisms that convince us when we are right, accurate in our understanding, or justified. Thought systems by nature are stubborn and do not appreciate being tampered with. They are absolutely self-validating. If your thought system includes the idea that our country's schools are horrible and are the cause of most of our problems as a nation, then the following scenario would be possible: You're reading the evening paper and on page thirty-six, you come across an article near the bottom of the page that says, "Twenty-one students fail literacy exam in district." You smile; you are proven right again. You show the article to your spouse, "You see dear, our schools are falling apart. It's just like I've been telling you." You don't know that on the front page of the same paper, the headlines read, "Nation's school test scores up 17% over the past five years!" But such is the nature of thought systems. Due to the way they are wired in our minds, there will always seem to be a logical connection among things we perceive to be true. Our beliefs will always make perfect sense to us within our own thought system.

Our thought systems lead us to believe that we are realists and that the way we see life is the way life really is. The fact that one person can view a situation as an opportunity and another equally intelligent person sees the same thing as a major problem doesn't bother a thought system. Our thought system dismisses the other point of view as off track, well-intended but wrong, or not quite right.

Because our thought systems are filled with our memory of the past, information we have accumulated throughout our lifetimes, they encourage us to continue to see things in the same way. We react negatively (or positively) to the same situations or circumstances over and over again, interpreting our current experiences in life as we have in the past. A person who believes that people are inherently critical will become defensive whenever anyone offers a suggestion, regardless of whether the person meant to be critical. This will become a theme in his life unless and until he understands the nature of thought systems, particularly his own. Understanding this concept will help him see that he is not seeing reality, or truth, but an interpretation of reality through his own thinking.

Because our thought systems are so familiar to us, they seem to be giving us true, accurate information. Because of the self-validating aspect of thought systems, we accept familiar ideas and disregard the rest. This is why people rarely change their political or religious views, and why they hesitate to even discuss them with friends or family. They "know the truth" and can come up with examples and arguments to support their claims. They also "know" that their family and friends "don't understand the truth," and because they are stubborn they probably never will. We know the result of locking heads with other thought systems -- usually frustration is experienced on all sides. This is why people gravitate toward others who share their beliefs, and become impatient with those who don't.

Understanding the nature of thought systems can change this. When we know that other people (and ourselves) innocently interpret our beliefs as if they were reality, we can let go of the need to be right. We can see that our beliefs are merely a function of past conditioning and experiences. Had our past been different, our ideas about life would be different. Other people's beliefs are also a result of their past experiences. Had things been different, a totally different set of beliefs would have surfaced.

"This may be true," you say, "but my view of life is a good one and not only do I still think it's accurate, I wouldn't change it even if I could." The point here is not to change your thought system or your ideas about life, but to see the arbitrary nature of them. We only need to see the fact of thought systems, not tamper with the contents, to reduce the frustration in our lives. Unless we understand thought systems, we can rarely hear other points of view. We interpret what others say and do based on what we already know. Information comes in and we decide whether it makes sense, based on our previous knowledge. Unless the information is something we already agree with, our thought system will have a tendency to discount it. In short, new information is usually unwelcome within our existing thought systems. This is why we can be bothered by the same events or circumstances over and over again throughout our lifetimes. We have developed recurrent cause-and-effect relationships between certain events and reactions.

For example, you might believe that whenever someone gives you a suggestion, it means that they disapprove of you as a person. You won't question this because your thought system will validate it. It always seems to be a true, accurate assumption about human nature. Even if someone assures you that your assumption is off-base, you convince yourself that the other person has hidden motives or that they are not aware of their hostility toward you. However long it takes, you will seek to verify your existing beliefs to prove yourself right, even at the expense of making yourself miserable.

But if you understand the nature of thought systems, you can begin to see beyond them, and sense the value in other points of view. What we used to interpret as criticism we now see merely as an opinion from another person with his or her own thought systems. We can virtually eliminate unprofitable arguments in our lives and can completely eliminate feeling resentful, confused, or angry at others who don't see things our way. In fact, when we understand the stubborn nature of thought systems, we will expect others not to see things our way.   [pages 19-23]

I would add that one feature of what Carlson calls thought systems (and what I call worldviews) is that, in order to justify them, we usually create arguments to prove that the consequences of accepting or rejecting a particular worldview are monumentally important.

For instance, skeptics -- in order to convince themselves that their rejection of any belief in the paranormal is a matter of crucial importance -- sometimes make an argument like this:

"Belief in the paranormal would take us straight back to the Dark Ages. It would destroy modern science and technology and reduce us to a primitive, subsistence level of existence. It would wreck civilization. Moreover, Nazism had elements of mysticism and paranormal belief. Opening the door to such things means throwing down a welcome mat for totalitarianism. Therefore, belief in the paranormal jeopardizes freedom, civilization, science, progress, and all human life."

The stakes could hardly be higher than that! But the argument is, of course, a threadbare rationalization. There is no necessary cause-and-effect linkage between belief in the paranormal and rejecting all of modern science. In fact, one can make a case that certain developments in modern science make it easier to accept the evidence for the paranormal. And many leading scientists throughout history have had strong mystical or paranormal beliefs.

As far as the Nazis are concerned, their ideology was a confused mishmash of disparate elements, including an attempt to revive the pre-Christian Teutonic religion/mythology of their ancestors for propagandistic purposes (they wanted to make the Fuhrer into a god). Other totalitarian movements, such as Maoism (which killed even more people than Nazism), have eschewed any mystical or paranormal ingredients.

Of course, as a certain carpenter once pointed out, it's easy to see the sawdust in your neighbor's eye, but much harder to see the timber in your own. Believers in the paranormal have their own way of convincing themselves that their belief system is critically important. They often say something like this:

"Materialism is the cause of all the ills of the modern world and is leading us to destruction. It's responsible for war, environmental degradation, rampant consumerism, dehumanizing social conditions, and the prospect of nuclear annihilation. Only by adopting a more spiritual view, which includes the acceptance of paranormal phenomena, can we defeat materialism and attain a higher, nobler, more fulfilling state of being. As long as materialism is the dominant philosophy, the world will continue careening out of control. Our only hope of ensuring humanity's survival is for the forces of anti-materialism to win out. Otherwise we're doomed."

I'm afraid that I would characterize this as a mere rationalization also. While there are certain advantages to a more spiritual outlook, there are also definite hazards. People who are open to "spiritual" guidance may find themselves drawn into cults; they may become overly trusting and therefore gullible; they may become the victims of con artists like fake psychics and fake mediums; they may see world-saving leadership qualities in political figures who are quite unworthy of this acclaim. (Not that anything like this has happened lately...) They may become disconnected from the practical requirements of daily life. They may divide the world into the saved and the unsaved, with themselves and those who agree with them elevated to the former category and everyone else relegated to the latter. They may even develop mental illness, begin to hear voices, become addicted to using a Ouija board or calling a psychic hotline.

Countries around the world with high levels of belief in the supernatural and the paranormal are not necessarily known for a higher standard of living, higher quality of life, or higher level of overall happiness than their more materialistic counterparts. Indeed, quite often the opposite is true. And periods of history characterized by high levels of belief in the paranormal have not been golden ages of universal prosperity and harmony. For the most part, these periods have been no better than other periods -- and perhaps, in some respects, worse.

Those on each side try to convince themselves that the fate of the world depends on having as many people as possible agree with their opinion. But the fact is, they want people to agree with them simply in order to justify and vindicate their own worldview; the stuff about the fate of the world is mere window dressing.

That's just how the mind works. We're all better off if we can at least become aware of it. Richard Carlson's fine little book can help us to do just that.