What is paranormal: some implications for the psychological therapies?

Whilst writing this editorial, I went to examine a Doctorate in Psychotherapy and Counselling. As I started to go up the stairs to the university room used for such vivas, the person coming down asked, pleasantly but firmly, if I would mind going back down ‘so we don’t pass on the stairs’. Was this an example of widespread belief in the paranormal? The doctorate itself was awarded, but it was an empirical study. Had it been only the development of theory, would it have failed as such non-evidence-based scholarly writings previously considered academically appropriate would now be regarded as at best also paranormal?

So what is meant by the term ‘paranormal’? And what, if anything, has it to do with psychological therapists’ interests in such concepts as the uncanny (Freud, 1919), synchronicity (Jung, 1960), transpersonal (Daniels, 2005), mindfulness (Clarke, 2014) and anomalous experiences (e.g. Sollod, 1992)? For more than some, ‘paranormal’ is when there is not a scientific explanation. This might lead to three further questions, the first being ‘what is taken as science?’ the second, ‘how do we distinguish this from pseudo-science?’ and the third, ‘are the psychological therapies more an art than a science?’

In our current culture, we seem to have become obsessed with very narrow notions of evidence-based practice, where for example, randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are spoken of as the gold standard. Yet, RCTs in the case of psychological therapies can be seen as more a form of ritual magic covering up both their scientific absurdity and that we are unable to have an appropriate scientific approach to evaluating the therapies.

Another question is, will we one day have an appropriate science as indeed Freud had hoped? A related contribution to this argument was given in the seminal work of Roth and Fonagy’s What works for whom? (2006), where they point out that just because there isn’t the scientific evidence available for a particular approach, this doesn’t mean to say that it isn’t necessarily effective. So, should we be saying that those psychological therapists and clients/patients who take part in practices that do not lend themselves to the magical thinking of RCT-type voodoo, believe in the paranormal?

What then should be the ‘normal’ practices of psychological therapies? In previous editorials, I have been fond of quoting Merleau-Ponty (1962/2002) who suggests that sometimes if we attempt to take away the mystery, we take away the thing itself. Elsewhere, I have often done the equivalent of retweeting Levinas’s (1961) argument that we should accept people, rather than attempt, the potential violence of, trying to know them. This last point has some similarity with Rogers (1957/1990) notion of stressing the importance of the therapist’s non-judgemental acceptance of the client. Furthermore, some of those, for example Laplanche (1989), who are interested in theory nevertheless warn us against filling in what we don’t know with, for example, simple transference interpretations that no longer leave open other possibilities. (Interestingly, as Borch-Jacobsen (1988) points out, the word ‘transference’ refers to a trance state.)

I, for one, have been involved with others in stressing the importance of the therapist being able to stay with unknowns (Cayne & Loewenthal, 2006). So a scientific underpinning of the notion of paranormal as a basis for evidence-based practice might classify Merleau-Ponty (1962/2002), Levinas (1961), let alone Kristeva’s subversive trinity of ‘madness, holiness and poetry’ (1984), as perhaps at best being ‘paranormal’.

I recently attending a christening where to my amazement, people I thought I had known for many years were crossing themselves, splashing themselves with water and seemingly unquestionably speaking of keeping Satan at bay. Should I now reconsider these people as paranormal, if not psychiatric?

However, to return to the consulting room, we may see a client who experiences sexuality in every encounter, which might be there but the rest of us ‘normally’ repress it. There again, this client may be imagining that we are asking him or her to carry out specific sexual acts which therapeutically, one might see more as a type of projection by the client. I find myself writing the above two sentences as if I can more readily accept the first sentence as a possibility, i.e. something that is actually happening, whereas the second sentence, as a delusion of the client/patient. Yet, how do I know any of this? Why do I not just accept that both may be beyond my and others explanations and just term them as part of the paranormal? To take a final example: a client states that anything she does that gives her pleasure will lead to punishment, even to the extent that to speak of this to another could lead to something terrible happening to, in this instance, her therapist. How much am I able to enter the possibility that this is not just her experience but true? Could it be that it’s beyond my cause and effect thinking, in this case being that such magical thinking was a way that the person as a child attempted to safeguard herself against something that actually happened or she imagined happened?

It is questions such as these that I hope this special issue of the EJPC will help open up in our increasingly ‘evidence-based’ suffocating world, where research would seem to have less and less to do with thoughtful practice. I am grateful to our contributors, published respondents and Nick Totton and Edith Steffen who introduced me to some of them in what I hope will open up new possibilities for our practices.

Our first paper for this special issue on the paranormal is ‘Are you afraid of the dark? Notes on the psychology of belief in histories of science and the occult’. Here, the author Andreas Sommer offers a contribution to the debate concerning the tensions between ‘rational’ science, with particular reference to scientific psychology, and the occult, and the roots of these tensions in the development of modern scientific practice. These tensions are placed within a cultural and historical context which provides an insight into why popular understandings of the ‘conflict between science and the occult’ still prevail.

In the second paper, ‘“They daren’t tell people”: Therapists’ experiences of working with clients who report anomalous experiences’, Elizabeth Roxburgh and Rachel Evenden present a qualitative study in which themes were derived from participants’ interviews using an inductive thematic analysis. The findings show that clients were considered apprehensive about disclosing anomalous experiences due to fears about how these might be interpreted and, in particular, being stigmatised as having mental health issues.

The next paper is by Rose Cameron on ‘The Paranormal as An Unhelpful Concept in Psychotherapy and Counselling Research’. The author argues for a phenomenological rather than ‘scientific’ perspective on phenomena in psychotherapy and counselling that might be labelled as paranormal with particular reference to an episode from the author’s therapeutic practice. In this paper, a certain view is implied from the start by the author, in that, the paranormal can be considered as an obtrusive notion within psychotherapy.

Our fourth paper for this special issue is by Samuel Kimbles and is entitled ‘Phantom Narratives and the Uncanny in Cultural Life: Psychic Presences and their Shadows’. In this paper, the author makes a strong case for examining the unconscious or ‘phantom’ dynamics that shape our attitudes, emphasising the importance of the collective experience through ‘Cultural Complexes’. The author puts forward the idea of intergenerational transmission of traumatic group experiences which generate cultural complexes which subsequently, in turn, haunt the individual members of the group in the form of phantomatic experiences and narratives.

We then have our two published responses. The first one is by Jack Hunter and is entitled ‘Engaging the Anomalous: Reflections from the Anthropology of the Paranormal’. Jack’s paper provides us with a useful history of anthropological perspectives into the ‘paranormal’, pointing out that anomalous experiences are not limited to ‘primitive’ cultures but nevertheless they appear to be taboo within Euro-American academia. The author then draws implications of this for psychotherapy.

The second response is from Tony Lawrence who in his paper ‘The Client, The Therapist and The Paranormal: A Response to the Special Edition on Psychotherapy and the Paranormal’ both critically and personally engages with the topic. Tony argues that taking a phenomenological stance is crucial for the therapist/client relationship when working with clients’ presentations of ostensibly paranormal and anomalous experiences.

Finally, this issue ends with our two book reviews. Stuart Morgan-Ayrs reviews Del’s Loewenthal edited book ‘Critical psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and counselling: Implications for practice’ and Tony McSherry reviews Valérie Blanco’s ‘Confessions from the Couch: psychoanalytical notions illustrated with extracts from sessions’.

The hope is that this special issue will help our readers consider the implications of regarding such ‘unscientific’ books, or evidence-based practice or more importantly their and their clients’ experiences as paranormal.

Del Loewenthal
Editor in chief
European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling
Director of the Research Centre for Therapeutic Education
Department of Psychology
University of Roehampton, London, UK
[email protected]