Talking about Psychical Research

Mary Rose Barrington is a retired lawyer and vice president of the Society for Psychical Research who has given many lectures to the Society and which make up the bulk of this collection. She is open-minded, well-informed and eminently reasonable in her assessments of wide range of psi phenomena. In the second lecture on repeatable psi experiments as a contradiction in terms, she comments that psychical research could be defined as 'the study of unpredictable events and uncontrollable effects' on the basis that psi means effects without an apparent cause. i.e. outside sequential causality, as Jung also observed. One lecture considers more specifically the question of proof and validation of singular events. Here she brings a historical and legal approach to bear, pointing out that there is a great deal more to reality can can be known or proved scientifically. Real-life events, including paranormal ones, are not susceptible to scientific proof or mathematical certainty, but can be approached in terms of observation, evidence and testimony as is customary in history and law.

A number of lectures cite incontrovertible phenomena produced by Stefan Ossowiecki and Alexis Didier, so with respect to the demonstrated clairvoyance of the former in the presence of numerous witnesses, 'we can be sure that these things happened on the same reasonable grounds, namely, that evidence compels acceptance.' (p. 129) However, this is not always the case, as the author explains in a lecture on dishonest disbelief explaining the 1847 case of Alexis Didier who knew the cards held by Robert Houdin under the table, as a result of which the latter came away 'as amazed as it is possible to be, and convinced that it is absolutely impossible that either chance or sleight of hand could ever produce such wonderful effects.' Despite this unequivocal statement, a 1971 book published by Michel Seldow tries to argue that Houdin did not mean what he said. The author comments that (in spite of sceptics trumpeting their defence of science and reason) 'once you are committed to a fundamentalist faith then reason melts away. No faith seems to unseat reason more thoroughly than the wilder shores of psi-denial.' This is all very refreshing and pertinent, as is her discussion of evidence for survival and description of minor events with major implications. I think she is right to contend that 'our minds are in an oceanic sort of telepathic linkage' within a universal mind, on the basis of which many experiences she described make sense, along with her postulation of the persistence of the past. The book can be thoroughly recommended to specialists and non-specialists alike.