Parapsychology

Do we Know it When we See it? A Review of ‘Pseudoscience’ Patterns of Usage

“…To some, it is a short list of special mental abilities: ‘Parapsychology is the study of extrasensory perception (ESP), precognition or clairvoyance (the ability to see into the future), and psychokinesis (the ability to move or influence objects with psychic powers)’ (Hines 2003: 113). To others it also includes studies of paranormal phenomena involving a human consciousness that exists independently of a body, such as ‘mystical experiences, survival of consciousness or the personality after death, and reincarnation … along with out-of-body and near-death experiences’ (Crabtree 2012: 755). And: Its wide interpretation of psychic and irregular phenomena has been characterized in many ways, as one or more of the following: anomalous experiences, psi powers, déjà vu, apparitions, intuitiveness, auras, altered states of consciousness, psychokinesis, telepathy, elusivity, automatism, bilocations, clairvoyance, premonitions, precognition, postcognition, crystal gazing, unorthodox healing, channeling, mediumship, past-life recalls and reincarnation.…”