Month: March 2009

Parapsychology and Popular Culture

Shirley Jackson and J. B. Rhine

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The end of this passage from my book sounds very melodramatic, I know, but if you read the book and see what happens next, I think you’ll agree that I did not over-state it.  I’m describing an example of the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory work filtering out into art and popular culture:

A main character in Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House, Theodora, is portrayed as a Hubert Pearce ESP card-guessing star [Hubert Pearce was one of the lab’s star subjects]. “The name of Theodora shone in the records of the laboratory,” one passage reads.  But in the next sentence Jackson writes, “perhaps the wakened knowledge in Theodora which told her the names of symbols on cards held out of sight urged her on her way toward Hill House …” implying greater ESP abilities than had been so far demonstrated.  It was a leap into magical ESP territory, indicating that Shirley Jackson and the general public didn’t really understand what ESP was or what it could do, a misunderstanding that would soon have tragic consequences.

By the way, I learned that Rhine was offered a huge amount of money from the people promoting the 1963 movie version of the book, if they could film him saying at the beginning of the movie that these were like the kinds of things they studied at the Duke Laboratory.  Rhine refused. 

I found this clip from the movie on YouTube.  The main character, a scientist named Dr. John Markway, is explaining psychokinesis.  I wonder how many time paranormal investigators were portrayed as scientists before Rhine and the Duke Parapsychology Lab?

[Video removed because the link no longer works.]

People in Parapsychology

J. B. Rhine and Carl Jung

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“I quite agree with you that once we are in possession of all facts science will look very peculiar indeed.” — Carl Jung to J. B. Rhine, November 5, 1942.  Oh yeah.  I didn’t write a lot about Rhine and Jung, there’s already a lot out there about their relationship, but I enjoyed reading their letters.

They first met over lunch in New York in October, 1937.  They had the same publisher, who arranged the meeting, and it was described by their mutual editor, William Sloane.  “It was exciting to watch him [Jung] and Rhine together … Jung the cosmopolite, the man of enormous erudition,” and Rhine, “a man whom only America could have produced—quiet, low-spoken, intense, with that slow-burning fuse of humor innate in his speech, gravely deferential to Jung, putting his problems before Jung without any plea for help, any servility, any expectation of praise, with the obvious feeling that the problem of man and his nature was so sacrosanct and vital a one that Jung was obliged to help him, as he was to tell Jung what he knew.”

Before she died though, Rhea White told me that she left the lab because she was interested in Jung, and Rhine had said that when it came to parapsychology, Jung “was not helpful.”  Which seemed odd to me since Jung was very open about parapsychology, but Rhea said it was a just a difference in approach.  Rhine was more focused on lab experiments.  I found out about a video interview of Jung where he talks about Rhine, and I’m trying to get a hold of it.  In the meantime, here’s a YouTube video of Jung talking about the extra-physical aspects of the psyche.