Psychic Mediums

The existence of psychic mediums as an observable and provable phenomenon in the world is a contentious issue for modern science, which has difficulty adapting its principles of scientific methodology and data analysis to the claims made on the behalf of purported psychic medium abilities. In the scientific community today, some journals and laboratories exist for the testing of people who claim to be psychic mediums, but there is not broad based support for such efforts mainly due to the issuing of general reports from scientists and researchers over time that disputed the effectiveness and ability of research methods devised for the field to determine that a psychic medium might actually be able to accomplish what he or she claimed. Psychic mediums generally refer less to scientific consensus or research than to beliefs that are widely held and are essentially rooted in the modern folk culture of urban myth, which does not derive its authority from the officially sanctioned pronouncements of peer-reviewed papers or speeches at academic conferences but rather from the anecdotal incidents and general beliefs that are spread through the social cultures that profess a belief in the existence of the powers of a psychic medium.
The essential belief that lies behind the existence and practice of psychic mediums is the idea of an ability on the part of the psychic medium to make contact with spiritual entities of conscious perception from some plane of existence defined as being placed apart from that of humans and allowing access to esoteric forms of knowledge. The cultures and mythologies of early recorded history have to be seen to manifest on a general basis a belief in the existence of such people as could now be understood to represent examples of psychic mediums, with such beliefs on the part of cultures organized according to a tribal structure generally being referred to as shamanism. In such cultures the shaman generally assumed a primary role of providing leadership, knowledge and advice, and was revered throughout the social structure. In societies organized according to more recent models, the role of the psychic medium has become more marginal, sometimes due to the disapproval expressed on the part of the dominant mode of religion or because of disbelief expressed by commonly accepted authorities for the transmission of scientific knowledge. In the Western cultures that toward the end of the second millennia A.D. were providing much of the leadership in development of scientific knowledge and methods, scientific mediums had no widely accepted role as sources of information, though folk cultures continued to express belief in their abilities. The idea of the scientific medium experienced a revival, however, in powerful Western nations such as England, where intellectuals and other educated members of upper and middle class society sought an alternative to the perceived excesses of the new scientifically and industrially based world by pursuing an interest in the possible existence of the powers purported to be shown by the scientific medium, leading to new research in that field.

Psychics

The proposition that individuals exist who possess what are popularly referred to as psychic abilities has constituted a tantalizing but difficult subject for investigation by scientific researchers and individuals. Though the kinds of abilities manifested by psychics might be properly supposed to constitute a kind of supernatural activity, the scientists who have worked in this field have sought to determine if psychic phenomena could ever be subjected to rigorous testing as determined by the precepts of the scientific method. One important component of this field that has preceded the performance of theoretical speculation as to the possible basis of psychic abilities in nature has been the conducting of tests of self-claimed or otherwise identified psychics. A well known example of this technique that has long been in use for research into the existence of psychics is referred to as the Ganzfeld experiment. The main principle of this psychic research method is the inducement of a condition resembling sensory deprivation, a technique which has been in common use since the 1930s.

To be officially considered a psychic for the purposes of scientific codification, an individual must be proven to possess the ability to gain access to the mental processes of another person through paranormal means. The hypothesis that the Ganzfeld experiment could yield verifiable results pointing to the conclusive judgment that a test subject possessed psychic powers was first formed in the early nineteen seventies, an era in scientific research and thought that was marked by widespread interest in the possible existence of paranormal powers that could manifest long speculated abilities in terms of “reading” other people’s thoughts without their knowledge or permission. A researcher who had been conducting research on dreams and extra sensory perception through the Maimonides Medical Center named Charles Honorton realized that the state of sensory deprivation which was thought to be a possible means for enabling the existence of psychic powers could be created through the employment of the technique of the Ganzfeld experiment. The results of this research was then published in 1974 in a medical journal, establishing the ganzfeld experiment as a central criterion for evaluating psychics.
gGanzfeld experiments have been conducted at a steady rate in the decades since the research methodology for evaluating psychics was first established. Surveys of this field of experimental inquiry have found that eight-eight tests were held between 1974 and 2004. After first formulating and vocally advocating for this kind of research as a means for evaluating the possible existence of psychic abilities, Charles Honorton has continued to hold up the experimental method as a reliable and effective procedure, sometimes arriving at vocal disagreements with his fellow researchers over the high claims he makes for the Ganzfeld procedure. He presented a paper at a conference on the field of psychic research in 1982 that asserted that thus far analysis of the results of Ganzfeld experiments suggested that psychics really could use the powers they claimed to have, a finding which was countered by another participant’s paper.