''The Psychology of the Occult'' is a 1952 skeptical book on the

paranormal Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Not ...

by psychologist D. H. Rawcliffe. It was later published as ''Illusions and Delusions of the Supernatural and the Occult'' (1959) and ''Occult and Supernatural Phenomena'' (1988) by

Dover Publications Dover Publications, also known as Dover Books, is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward and Blanche Cirker. It primarily reissues books that are out of print from their original publishers. These are often, but not always, book ...

. Biologist Julian Huxley wrote a foreword to the book.

Content

The book takes influence from the works of

Frank Podmore Frank Podmore (5 February 1856 – 14 August 1910) was an English author, and founding member of the Fabian Society. He is best known as an influential member of the Society for Psychical Research and for his sceptical writings on spiritualism. ...

Joseph Jastrow Joseph Jastrow (January 30, 1863 – January 8, 1944) was a Polish-born American psychologist, noted for inventions in experimental psychology, design of experiments, and psychophysics. He also worked on the phenomena of optical illusions, ...

and

Ivor Lloyd Tuckett Ivor Lloyd Tuckett (1 February 1873 – 28 November 1942) was a British professor of physiology, physician, and skeptic. Career Tuckett was born at Cleveland Gardens, London. He studied natural science and physiology at Trinity College, Cambridg ...

dealing with the "fallacies underlying psychical research". Rawcliffe critically examines claims of the occult,

parapsychology Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena (extrasensory perception, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis (also called telekinesis), and psychometry) and other paranormal claims, for example, those related to near ...

and

spiritualism Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and Mind-body dualism, dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century, Spiritualism (w ...

concluding that they are best explained by psychological factors such as

hallucination A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the qualities of a real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space. Hallucination is a combinati ...

, hysteria,

neurosis Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving chronic distress, but neither delusions nor hallucinations. The term is no longer used by the professional psychiatric community in the United States, having been eliminated from th ...

and suggestion as well as "delusion, fraud, prestidigitation, and limitless credulity." Rawcliffe found possible naturalistic explanations for all parapsychological experiments he investigated, noting that there is no scientific evidence for any paranormal power. He suggested that many of the results from

ESP ESP most commonly refers to: * Extrasensory perception, a paranormal ability ESP may also refer to: Arts, entertainment Music * ESP Guitars, a manufacturer of electric guitars * E.S. Posthumus, an independent music group formed in 2000, ...

experiments can be explained by what he termed ''endophasic enneurosis'' (unconscious

whispering Whispering is an unvoiced mode of phonation in which the vocal cords are abducted so that they do not vibrate; air passes between the arytenoid cartilages to create audible turbulence during speech. Supralaryngeal articulation remains th ...

). The book offers rational explanations for diverse phenomena such as

automatic writing Automatic writing, also called psychography, is a claimed psychic ability allowing a person to produce written words without consciously writing. Practitioners engage in automatic writing by holding a writing instrument and allowing alleged spir ...

dowsing Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, claimed radiations ( radiesthesia),As translated from one preface of the Kassel experiments, "roughly 10,000 active dowsers in ...

, fire-walking, lycanthropy and

stigmata Stigmata ( grc, στίγματα, plural of , 'mark, spot, brand'), in Roman Catholicism, are bodily wounds, scars and pain which appear in locations corresponding to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ: the hands, wrists, and feet. Sti ...

Reception

Daniel Loxton Daniel Loxton (born 1975) is a Canadian writer, illustrator, and skeptic. He wrote or co-wrote several books including ''Tales of Prehistoric Life,'' a children's science trilogy, and '' Abominable Science!'', a scientific look at cryptozoology. A ...

has described the book as an important skeptical work written many years before the founding of

CSICOP The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), formerly known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), is a program within the US non-profit organization Center for Inquiry (CFI), which seeks to "prom ...

. He noted that "Much as

Michael Shermer Michael Brant Shermer (born September 8, 1954) is an American science writer, historian of science, executive director of The Skeptics Society, and founding publisher of ''Skeptic'' magazine, a publication focused on investigating pseudoscientifi ...

has done in recent decades, Rawcliffe attempted not merely to debunk these claims, but to explain the underlying psychology of why people believe weird things." Loxton, Daniel. (2013)
"Why Is There a Skeptical Movement?"
Retrieved 4 June 2017.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Psychology of the Occult, The 1952 non-fiction books Anomalistic psychology Books about the paranormal Critics of parapsychology Popular psychology books Scientific skepticism mass media

Content

Reception

See also

References