from Elsevier’s Dictionary of Psychological Theories
= extra-sensory perception = parapsychology = psi phenomena. The paranormal class of effects refers to supernatural events/results (“beyond the normal”) that are inexplicable by the usual laws of science and/or reason. The related terms extra-sensory perception (ESP) (including clairvoyance, precogni-tion, and telepathy) and psychokinesis (PK) are generic terms for various hypothetical paranormal phenomena that involve experiences having no direct sensory contact, or refer to perception without the use of sense organs (cf., concordant twin theory – the proposition that identical twins will be able to communicate via ESP to a higher degree than concordant twins, and that – even if separated either at birth or soon after – such twins in the future will have similar preferences and lifestyles as well as identical physical ailments). The American parapsychologist Joseph B. Rhine (1895-1980) claimed to have coined the term extra-sensory perception in 1934, but the Haitian-born German physician/psychical researcher Gustav Pagenstecher (1855-1942) anticipated the notion in his book published in 1924 [cf., the German ophthalmologist and psychical researcher Rudolf Tischner (1879-1961) who studied the ESP phenomena of telepathy and clairvoyance in the 1920s; the term ESP was used, also, by the adventurer/scholar Sir Richard Burton (1821-1890) in 1870; and the French psychical researcher Paul Joire (1856-1931) used the term ESP in 1892 to describe the ability of persons who have been hypnotized to externally sense things without using their ordinary senses; the phenomena of ESP may even have been indicated in Biblical times]. The first systematic study of ESP was conducted in 1882 when the Society for Psychical Research was founded in London, England (the American Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1885). However, the first ESP studies were rarely experimental in nature, and consisted mostly of researchers merely bombarding “sensitives/psychics” with questions under conditions that resembled prosecuting lawyers questioning a defendant in a court of law. The following paranormal phenomena have received the most attention: clairvoyance or remote viewing – the extra-sensory visual perception of events/objects; clairaudience – the ability to sense sounds that are beyond the range of normal hearing; pre-cognition – the perception of events/objects in the future (or of another person’s future mental processes) without the use of the sense organs (cf., pre-recognition hypothesis – posits that an expectation of an event occurs as the result of previous experiences in similar situations, and that future events “cast their shadow” before they happen, allowing certain “sensitive” people with psychic abilities to predict disasters and catastrophes); psychokinesis/telekinesis/parakinesis – the movement or change of physical objects simply by mental processes without the use of physical force or direct intervention;
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