Durham is a hotbed for exploration into the paranormal for supernatural enthusiasts and researchers.
For the first time since 1995, the Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association is coming back to Durham Aug. 9 through 12. The event, hosted by the Rhine Research Center—a parapsychology research center that was formerly affiliated with the University—will feature Thomas Robisheaux, Fred W. Schaffer professor of history, as the keynote speaker. Robisheaux will examine the historical conditions that fostered modern understandings of parapsychology.
“The study of parapsychology reveals deep historical patterns of how fields of science and scientific models originate, become established communities of research or are marginalized and change over time,” Robisheaux wrote in an email Tuesday. “The most interesting insights about historical phenomena always come from looking at controversies and conflict.”
Robisheaux noted that there are three historical moments that contributed to a modern understanding of the psyche as a dynamic unconscious mental activity. These moments include animal magnetism—a presumed intangible or mysterious force that was said to influence all living organisms and the earth, and in the 1700s was thought to cause ill health when out of balance— arly psychology pioneered by Sigmund Freud, Pierre Janet and William James and contemporary consciousness studies.
“At each juncture researchers and physicians found themselves confronting strange, but fascinating phenomena that were hard to reconcile with established understandings of the psyche: magnetized sleep [or the] hypnotic state, paranormal activity—associated with spiritualism or ‘spirit communication’—and psi, [which includes] clairvoyance, mental telepathy and psychokinetic activity,” he said.
While some scientists ruled certain theories as impossible, researchers such as Duke’s J.B. Rhine, the founder of the Rhine Research Center, attempted to prove them experimentally.
Although Robisheaux, who developed the Duke course, “Magic, Science and Religion,” does not directly participate in the Rhine Center’s research, he became interested in parapsychology when studying early modern European natural philosophy and medicine.
“In this period natural philosophers and physicians made room for a wide variety of hidden or occult connections in nature and the human body,” he said. “[These] understandings helped them explain not only the canonical problems in physics—like motion—but also puzzling phenomena like natural magic, alchemy, astral medicine or even witchcraft.”
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