10 replies to this topic

[EllJay]

Quote

Skeptical Psychologist takes class in mediums, communicates with the dead, is stunned by the accuracy of a reading he gave, becomes open to the possibility that “there is an unseen reality".

Is it possible for the living to contact the dead?
Capilano University psychologist Leonard George was determined to find out.


I wondered what it would feel like to be a medium. What better way to find out than to sign up (for a course),” said George, a former clinical psychologist at Vancouver General Hospital who has a PhD from the University of Western Ontario.

George, a self-described skeptical psychologist, is also aware spiritualism has often been linked with fakery and fraud. So he wanted to get to the bottom of things.

Since he retains a scientific mindset, George seeks evidence for the unexplained. He teaches courses on abnormal psychology (for example, mental illness) and biological psychology (e.g.: neuroscience). His office is jammed with conventional books on psychology.

*Snip*

http://blogs.vancouv...cting-the-dead/


EDIT: I saw a bit to late that this might have fitted better in the Spiritualism & Mediumship-subsection of the forum. Maybe it can be moved.

Edited by Still Waters, 04 November 2012 - 10:25 PM.
Shortened length of copied text

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

Well they should now take a class in "cold reading" and stage magic.
Just so they can see the same "unseen reality" again,

[EllJay]

Wearer of Hats, on 04 November 2012 - 09:23 PM, said:

Well they should now take a class in "cold reading" and stage magic.
Just so they can see the same "unseen reality" again,

How do you cold-read - "a short dark woman in a storm-tossed house covered with Christmas ornaments, whose name may have been Mabel"

Edited by EllJay, 04 November 2012 - 09:33 PM.

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

Was that done all at once or "I'm getting a feeling of a house (nods from audience members) in a storm (nods from audience) ..." etc?
And what's the chance the person they read so well was a plant?

Edited by Wearer of Hats, 04 November 2012 - 09:58 PM.

[Hilander]

If your a physiologist you should know something about that area and be able to teach it.  Then when you students become doctors and they run across someone that thinks they have demons after them as doctors they might be more of a help to these people even if its all in their head.

[Lava_Lady]

Call it clairvoyance or intuition or just a hunch... We all have the ability to "know" things.  If this psychologists image was real then it's pretty uncanny.  I think he got a clear impression because he was making an effort to connect.

[Still Waters]

EllJay, on 04 November 2012 - 09:14 PM, said:

EDIT: I saw a bit to late that this might have fitted better in the Spiritualism & Mediumship-subsection of the forum. Maybe it can be moved.

Moved

[eight bits]

(Thank you, Still Waters, for your help.)

I share the OP's feeling that the subject of the story is sincere, who in turn appreciates the sincerity of his teachers in that community. I am surprised that a PhD psychologist doesn't see a series of Jungian "active imagination" exercises in all of this, and doing so would leave open to interpretation what the nature of the "psychologically real" actually is.

"There is something that is of us – and not of us. It’s impossible to disengage the two. I think, ... we should be humbled by it.”

would pass for a quote from Uncle Carl himself.

Quote

How do you cold-read - "a short dark woman in a storm-tossed house covered with Christmas ornaments, whose name may have been Mabel"

You can cold read unconsciously. As you'll recall it was "Mabel or Annabel." Maybe. Would Anna Mae Bell have been a hit? How about Anne Marie Something-like-Bell-or-with-Bell-in-it?

What about the short dark woman, who turned out to be African-American? Was she short, too?

Quote

So the woman would walk through the forest to obtain water from a black woman named Mabel, who decorated her house year-round with Christmas ornaments.

Nope. Or to be precise, "no comment." So is two out of three good? Would one out of three have been OK? What about "storm tossed?" Evidently Mabel's house, the one with the ornaments, was just fine in a storm - she's got water to share with her less fortunate neighbors. The subject of the reading never saw Mabel's house "storm tossed;" she went there afterwards.

Somebody being named Mabel or Annabel isn't rare, especially somebody maybe named one of those. Storms aren't rare. Short dark people aren't rare, especially not people who need only be either short or dark (skin? hair? mood?). Houses with Christmas ornaments all year aren't that rare, either. The Reader tosses out some likely ideas, the Readee rearranges them to fit something in her life, and hey, who cares if there are parts left over?

That's how you cold read. Unintentionally, sincerely, but no less effectively than somebody who might deliberately mislead. Stay sharp.

[EllJay]

Wearer of Hats, on 04 November 2012 - 09:57 PM, said:

Was that done all at once or "I'm getting a feeling of a house (nods from audience members) in a storm (nods from audience) ..." etc?
And what's the chance the person they read so well was a plant?

As it said in the article, he got the impression, of this women who he had never seen before and got the images of: -"a short dark woman in a storm-tossed house covered with Christmas ornaments, whose name may have been Mabel"

The women then responded: "that when she had been a child in the poor rural U.S., high winds would often knock out the family’s water supply.
So the woman would walk through the forest to obtain water from a black woman named Mabel, who decorated her house year-round with Christmas ornaments"

All in one stroke, so it wasnt fishing, like: "I see someone black" "Yes, I knew a black women when I was a child" "I get the beginning of a name... M, N or maybe F,T, R, L E or something like that, is that connecting?" etc.

The man was an professional physiologist so I think he is smarter than that.

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

"A woman he's never seen before" - did he actually say something as cliched as that?

[eight bits]

Quote

The man was an professional physiologist [psychologist, wasn't it?] so I think he is smarter than that

Smarter than what, exactly? His own unconscious?

Not bloody likely.

He cold read her and didn't notice, just as he did Jungian active imagination exercises and didn't notice. That's what "his unconscious" means, things that are true and which he could have realized to be true, based on his training and knowledge, but that he didn't notice.

That doesn't make him a bad guy, and it doesn't mean ghosts do or don't exist. But we're talking about this guy and his approach to the problem. It needs work.

Edited by eight bits, 05 November 2012 - 12:14 AM.