The Trickster and the Paranormal

by George P. Hansen

  Why did so many of the U.S. government’s psychic spies become interested in UFOs?

  Funding for scientific investigation of the paranormal has come almost entirely from wealthy individuals. Virtually no large philanthropic organizations or government bureaucracies have provided substantial, long-term support for the research. The only exceptions are the intelligence agencies—the only section of government formally allowed to use deception. Why does the money come from these sources?

  Today some liberal Christian Protestant denominations downplay miracles, seeing them as embarrassments, relics from a primitive, superstitious past. Likewise, they view prayer as having only psychological benefits for those who pray, but nothing more. What caused this dramatic shift in beliefs?

  Conservatives still see miracles and answers to prayer as God’s intervention in the world. Are these beliefs intellectually backward, superstitious, delusional, and mal-adapted to the modern world? The conservative denominations are flourishing while the liberal churches decline. Why?

  The above points are known to anyone with a moderate familiarity with the paranormal. The questions prove that there is something very odd about it, and similar queries could be generated endlessly. The controversies have swirled for hundreds, even thousands, of years, and they show no sign of being resolved any time soon.

  Many of the above questions seem totally unrelated, or at best, only vaguely so. What do the funding sources for psi research have in common with liberal churches downplaying miracles? What is the connection between the MUFON headquarters and mysticism? Why discuss tabloids’ front pages along with controversies within religion? These questions seem to be a random hodgepodge, unsuited for any single book or reasonable discussion. It appears preposterous to lump them together. They are out of place, and I will show that this is indeed the nature of the phenomena. They do not fit in our logical world.

  The topics of this book resist simple categorization, and there is no way to give a succinct, comprehensive overview. I suspect that virtually all readers will find that substantial portions of the book cover material unfamiliar to them. As such, this introduction will only touch on a few ideas that will give some orientation. Many of the names, terms, and ideas in this introduction are mentioned only briefly and for the benefit of those already knowledgeable in specialized areas. I will fully explain them in later chapters.

  In times past, the word “supernatural” designated the phenomena of interest here. That term hints at something ominous, dangerous, and unsettling. More recently the word “paranormal” came into vogue. It suggests that the phenomena are more mundane, odd perhaps, but not worrisome for most people. In the last two decades, a few scientists have begun referring to them as “anomalous,” indicating that they are merely minor curiosities, without threat or of much immediate import. The new labeling makes the topic slightly more acceptable in academe, and the term “anomalous” is not incorrect, because the phenomena do not fit within mainstream scientific theories. However, such labeling divorces the phenomena of today from their historical predecessors, and previous knowledge about them is disregarded. In earlier cultures, the supernatural was known to be dangerous and was surrounded by taboos. Today’s scientists have no comprehension why, and with their naive terminology, they become vulnerable to the phenomena.

  I will use the terms paranormal and supernatural interchangeably. Dictionaries are clear that the two words refer to the same phenomena. I will sometimes use the terms together, although that is redundant. But I wish to emphasize the paranormal’s frequent association with religion.

  The primary data of this book concern side effects of using psychic abilities and engaging supernatural phenomena. Those effects can be discovered by analyzing the social milieu around the phenomena. Of particular interest are the repercussions to groups and institutions, including families, academe, governments, science, religion, and industry. There is a pattern, and generally the phenomena either provoke or accompany some kind of destructuring—a concept discussed at length in this book. For instance, the phenomena do not flourish within stable institutions, and endless examples illustrate this. Fortunately, two theoretical perspectives are already developed that connect the supernatural to ideas about social order and structure. The first is Victor Turner’s work on liminality and anti-structure. The second is Max Weber’s theory of rationalization. Both have profound implications for understanding psychic phenomena.

  Some of the theoretical models presented here are formulated quite abstractly, and they address psi in relation to the concepts of category, classification, representation, and reflexivity. These are issues important in semiotics, French structuralism, and literary theory, but I am not aware of any prior significant attempt to integrate parapsychology with these topics. The matters concern fundamental limits of logic, rationality, and science. Parapsychology’s critics have long decried psi as irrational and have made an important contribution in doing so. The critics are partly right; psi is irrational, but it is also real.

  The central theme developed in this book is that psi, the paranormal, and the supernatural are fundamentally linked to destructuring, change, transition, disorder, marginality, the ephemeral, fluidity, ambiguity, and blurring of boundaries. In contrast, the phenomena are repressed or excluded with order, structure, routine, stasis, regularity, precision, rigidity, and clear demarcation. I hesitate to offer this very general statement because, by itself, it will almost certainly be misinterpreted; much of the book is devoted to explaining it. I will present some brief examples here.

  When entire cultures undergo profound change, there is often an upsurge of interest in the paranormal. During the breakup of the former U.S.S.R. there was an explosion of paranormal activity throughout eastern Europe. Healers and psychics featured prominently in the media. This should not have been a surprise because anthropologists have shown that the supernatural has figured in thousands of cultural revitalization movements.

  Numerous mystics have displayed extraordinary paranormal powers, but many of them were outsiders, marginal characters whose lives were exceedingly odd. St. Francis of Assisi performed many miracles, but he was mistrusted by church authorities and caused them many headaches.

  Groups that attempt to use paranormal abilities, such as those in modern-day witchcraft and spiritualism, typically have a transitory, ephemeral existence. The few that manage some measure of institutionalizing (with buildings and paid staff) become marginalized, and often are accused of fraud and deception. Likewise psychical research organizations have always had a tenuous existence, and parapsychology has never been truly integrated into the academic establishment.

  Magicians (performers of magic tricks) have played central roles in paranormal controversies, not only recently, but for hundreds of years. Magicians on both sides of the dispute have faked psychic phenomena, thereby contributing to the ambiguity surrounding them.

  Skeptics understand that frauds and hoaxes plague the paranormal, but parapsychologists naively consider them only a minor problem. Parapsychologists have amassed overwhelming evidence for the reality of psi; skeptics ignore it and even deny that such evidence exists.

  Many aspects of the paranormal (e.g., ghosts, UFO abductions, Bigfoot) have temporarily captured intense popular interest, but that has never been translated into financially viable, stable institutions that directly elicit or engage the phenomena. Instead the researchers use their own funds and are given no support from institutions.

  In contrast, science has uninhibitedly ventured into virtually all other areas once considered taboo. The study of sexuality, in all its forms, is established in universities and medical schools. Sizeable industries and well-funded research labs are organized around cloning, artificial insemination, and genetic manipulation, despite ethical qualms. The lowly ghost researcher receives only sneers.

  Many religions display an ambivalent, wary attitude toward supernatural phenomena. The 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church shows this clearly. It
acknowledges that “God can reveal the future to his prophets or to other saints,” but in the very next paragraph it states that “interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums … contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.” The following paragraph says “All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers … even if this were for the sake of restoring health—are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion.” Catholicism is not alone in these views, and many other diverse religious and spiritual traditions also acknowledge the existence of such phenomena but warn against seeking that power.

  In short, the paranormal and supernatural are ambiguous and marginal in virtually all ways: socially, intellectually, academically, religiously, scientifically, and conceptually. They don’t fit in the rational world.

  Some may see no pattern to the above examples; they do appear chaotic. But there is a pattern, and it has enormous implications. The theories of anti-structure and rationalization, which will be described later, provide remarkable insight.

  One of the implications of the pattern is that there are subtle but pervasive pressures that conspire to keep the paranormal marginalized and scientific investigation at a minimum. This does not require a consciously organized human conspiracy. It is a direct property of the phenomena. Psi interacts with our physical world, with our thoughts, and with our social institutions. Even contemplating certain ideas has consequences. The phenomena are not to be tamed by mere logic and rationality, and attempts to do so are doomed to failure. These notions are undoubtedly anathema to my scientific colleagues in parapsychology. To their chagrin, I will demonstrate that deception and the irrational are keys to understanding psi.

  To give some additional orientation, it may help to briefly mention some people whose work I’ve drawn upon. Psychiatrist Ernest Hartmann is known for his research on mental boundaries. I found many commonalities between his concept of thin boundaries and the Greek trickster Hermes, whose personality has been admirably described by Jean Bolen, a psychiatrist with a Jungian orientation.

  In anthropology, Michael Winkelman studied statuses of magico-religious practitioners in conjunction with societal complexity. He demonstrated that as cultures become more complex, there is a decline in status of those who directly engage the supernatural. Sociologist James McClenon surveyed scientists’ opinions of psychic phenomena, and he found the lowest level of belief among the highest status scientists. Anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace analyzed cultural revitalization movements and demonstrated a clear relationship between societal destructuring and the supernatural.

  In the UFO field, John Keel and Jacques Vallee showed the extraordinary prevalence of mythological motifs in that phenomenon, as well as the equally pervasive deception.

  In literature, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., chairman of Harvard’s Afro-American studies department, developed a theory of literary criticism based on the trickster. African Americans have long been marginalized, and they have an astute perception of what that entails.

  Most of the people mentioned above have been active in the last two decades. But there was important earlier work. In fact, the first two decades of the twentieth century were a watershed for theories of the supernatural. Leading figures included: Arnold van Gennep, Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Max Weber, Lucien Levy-Bruhl, Sigmund Freud, and Rudolf Otto. Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure was also significant. These men’s insights on the supernatural have been largely forgotten.

  An enormous number of people have influenced my thinking, but three were particularly important: William Braud, Barbara Babcock, and Edmund Leach. Parapsychologist William Braud integrated an enormous range of findings with his model of lability and inertia in psi processes. Barbara Babcock is the most significant interpreter of the trickster figure. She was a student of Victor Turner and extended his work by recognizing the importance of liminality, anti-structure, and reflexivity for the trickster. Her work is frequently cited by women and minority scholars, but the brilliance of her trickster analysis is largely lost on white male academics. British anthropologist Edmund Leach explained and developed structuralism for English-language audiences. He extended the work of Claude Levi-Strauss, but he has not yet received the credit he deserves.

  William Braud’s lability and inertia model states that labile processes are more susceptible to psychic influence than are ones that are more inert. By lability, Braud referred to systems and processes that are easily varied, more fluid than rigid, more fluctuating than steady, more random than ordered. His theory encompasses a wide range of research. As an example, Braud had people try to use PK to influence a flickering candle and an electrically powered lamp. The subjects were in one room and the light sources were monitored electronically in another. A much stronger PK influence was detected on the candle (the labile system) than the lamp. Another example, explained within Braud’s model, is the effect of novelty. Laboratory-based parapsychology studies have found that novelty (a break with previous patterns) facilitates ESP. Research on altered states of consciousness also fits Braud’s model. The cognitive content of many altered states (e.g., dreams) is more fluid, unstable, and quickly varying than in our waking state. Those altered states enhance ESP.

  Victor Turner studied the role of ritual in indigenous societies, particularly rites of passage. Those rites signaled periods of transition, as between childhood and adulthood. They were dangerous periods during which previous statuses and relationships were suspended. The “structure” of society was eliminated temporarily, and those periods are labeled liminal or anti-structural. In liminal times supernatural powers manifested. The properties of liminality were not restricted to rites of passage. Turner had a much more encompassing view; persons could be liminal, some even permanently such as monks and mystics.

  Because of Turner’s writings, the issue of status frequently arises in this book. Statuses define relationships and designate positions in a social structure; they specify required behaviors, expectations, and roles for ourselves and others. Statuses govern a major portion of our lives. The issue of marginality is an issue of status. Periods of liminality and anti-structure are times when statuses are abandoned.

  Braud discussed physical systems and individual psyches; Turner addressed social processes. But their ideas were parallel. Both focused on transition, flux, destructuring, and uncertainty, rather than order, structure, stasis, and stability.

  Max Weber, the eminent sociologist, wrote about social order, and his work complements Victor Turner’s on social transitions. Weber’s concept of rationalization has had a substantial impact on sociology and is a core idea in that discipline. Weber pointed out that for several thousand years, there has been a slow, progressive implementation of rational thought and organization of society. Order was first enforced by tribal chiefs with power centered in their persons; later authority was transformed by feudal arrangements where power was more diffuse and distributed. Today bureaucracies hold power that is impersonal and codified by laws, rules, and regulations. Regulations are interpreted and enforced by people who hold a certain office or status in society; power is independent of the actual person. In the last several hundred years the trend to rationalization has accelerated. Weber’s phrase “the iron cage of modernity” emphasizes the order, structure, and routinization of everyday modern life.

  Charisma is a central concept in Weber’s theory of authority. It is an unusual personal power. In fact pure charisma involves supernatural power, a point Weber made explicit. He saw that rationalization entailed “disenchantment” and specifically stated that it required the elimination of magic from the world. For rationalization, charisma had to be channeled and attenuated. Weber’s concept of pure charisma is virtually identical to Turner’s liminality and anti-structure, and both Weber and Turner used St. Francis of Assisi as an exemplar of the pure forms of charisma and anti-structure, respectively.

  Academe is a primary force for rationalizatio
n, and it is there that we find the greatest incomprehension of, and antagonism to, the paranormal. Many academics who have written on Weber’s concept of charisma seem vaguely puzzled by it, and virtually all have ignored its relation to supernatural phenomena. An amusing, though appalling, example of their incomprehension is that Weber wrote of telepathy as accompanying pure charismatic power; yet I know of no sociologists writing on the paranormal who have ever mentioned this.

  Weber slightly misunderstood magic and rationalization. As I will explain, magic is never really eliminated from the world. Rather it is shunted to the margins of society; it is repressed from the conscious awareness of cultural elites, and for them it is relegated to fiction.

  The concept of rationalization can also be applied to literary theory because magic is directly tied to meaning. In most rational discourse, and especially in science, the problem of meaning is banished from consciousness. It is assumed that, in principle, there can be a clear, unambiguous connection between a word and its referent, between a signifier and signified. However literary theorists understand that meaning is still problematic. In fact, there are even a few vague allusions in deconstructionist writings that suggest that a satisfactory theory of literature may require a theory of telepathy.

  The problem of meaning is central to deconstructionism and other strands of postmodernism. Those movements challenge the notions of rationality and objective reality. The resulting reaction of the establishment is instructive. The furious denunciations of postmodernism in academe by status-conscious, high-verbal, aging white males are exceeded in intensity only by their frantic utterings of rationalistic incantations to ward off the paranormal. Those amusing endeavors provide some of the most important clues to the nature of psi. Both deconstructionism and psi subvert the rational, and there are similar, important consequences to both.