In Search of the Light: The Adventures of a Parapsychologist

Rating:
Summary: One More Reason why Psi doesn't Fly
Review: Blackmore's autobiography provides a great deal of insight into the motivations of psi researchers. Inspired by a drug induced OBE at Oxford, and encouraged by the occult interpretations given to such phenomenon by an earlier generation of parapsychologists and spiritualists, it becomes understandable that she began a search for the Holy Grail of psi, even earning a doctorate on the subject. Personal experience, however explicable by reference to the material world, still carries a strong emotive weight, engendering hopes for transcendent explanations. Despite a continuing stream of negative results, using a wide variety of methods, Blackmore continued for several years to research psi, until the dishonesty of some researchers, and the flaws in psi's definition caused her faith to erode. Thankfully, she takes with her an insider's understanding of the parapsychology movement that helps explain how a pseudo-science can perpetuate itself after a hundred or more years with undetectable progress.

Rating:
Summary: One More Reason why Psi doesn't Fly
Review: Blackmore's autobiography provides a great deal of insight into the motivations of psi researchers. Inspired by a drug induced OBE at Oxford, and encouraged by the occult interpretations given to such phenomenon by an earlier generation of parapsychologists and spiritualists, it becomes understandable that she began a search for the Holy Grail of psi, even earning a doctorate on the subject. Personal experience, however explicable by reference to the material world, still carries a strong emotive weight, engendering hopes for transcendent explanations. Despite a continuing stream of negative results, using a wide variety of methods, Blackmore continued for several years to research psi, until the dishonesty of some researchers, and the flaws in psi's definition caused her faith to erode. Thankfully, she takes with her an insider's understanding of the parapsychology movement that helps explain how a pseudo-science can perpetuate itself after a hundred or more years with undetectable progress.

Rating:
Summary: This book changed my view of the world forever
Review: I have not read this second edition, but I read the first edition in college back in 1991 or so. It changed my outlook on psychic abilities completely. It's pretty engagingly written, and profound too. I'd heard so much about the existance of psychic abilities but had never seen any scientific studies of it. This book is not only a great introduction to psychic phenomena, but a great introduction to the power of the scientific method. This book may be part of the reason I'm a scientist today. Thanks, Susan!

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, but suffers from being a "second edition"
Review: This is an intriguing book, and I was impressed by the sincerity of the author. She began her academic career determined to scientifically prove the paranormal, but over time became disenchanted when her experiments repeatedly failed to find "psi", and she found flaws in the experimental methods used by researchers who reported success. The book was originally published in 1986 or so, and has been updated with a few chapters added to the end. The book is valuable because the author is not a traditional debunker. I get the feeling she thinks there is something valuable to be discovered in studying "altered states", but she believes they are a construct of your mind, and doesn't think that psi is involved in them. I would have greatly appreciated a chapter trying to summarize all her ideas--There are a number of intriguing thoughts scattered through the book.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, but suffers from being a "second edition"
Review: This is an intriguing book, and I was impressed by the sincerity of the author. She began her academic career determined to scientifically prove the paranormal, but over time became disenchanted when her experiments repeatedly failed to find "psi", and she found flaws in the experimental methods used by researchers who reported success. The book was originally published in 1986 or so, and has been updated with a few chapters added to the end. The book is valuable because the author is not a traditional debunker. I get the feeling she thinks there is something valuable to be discovered in studying "altered states", but she believes they are a construct of your mind, and doesn't think that psi is involved in them. I would have greatly appreciated a chapter trying to summarize all her ideas--There are a number of intriguing thoughts scattered through the book.

Rating:
Summary: In Search Of the Light
Review: Unlike other reviewers, I find her scientific technique distinctly flawed and lacking in any creative lateral analysis. The presentation of her book shows a deeply personal and emotive approach to the material that she is handling.

But what I found particularly disappointing in this book was the philosophically materialistic arguments which seemed to be exacerbated by her overwhelming inability to see the whole picture and by her being totally lost in the minutiae of the mundane. Some of her arguments reminded me of a story told concerning an early Soviet cosmonaut who proclaimed that he now knew for sure that there was no God because he had looked out the window of his spacecraft and had seen that there was no 'god' outside - only empty space.

There is no doubt, indeed as Dr Blackmore eloquently points out in the book, that much PSI research is flawed and unscientific but this, in itself, proves nothing except that the research methods need to re-evaluated. Many traditional medical practices and treatments in the past have been equally unscientific and arbitrary (e.g. electric shock therapy), that does not mean that certain diseases don't exist (as many have claimed hitherto regarding ME and depression) or that proper methods of diagnosis and treatment cannot be procured.

Certainly, stylistically the arguments are written well and Dr Blackmore has the ability to hold the reader's attention. However, the book is, in my opinion, as fatally flawed as are the PSI researchers whom Dr Blackmore so rigorously denounces in her book.