Charles Anthony Selby McCreery (born 30 June 1942) is a British
psychologist
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and explanation, interpretatio ...
, best known for his collaboration with
Celia Green on work on hallucinatory states in normal people.
Biography
Charles McCreery was born at
Stanton St. John in Oxfordshire. He is the son of General Sir
Richard McCreery and Lettice, daughter of Major Lord Percy St. Maur and granddaughter of
Algernon St Maur, 14th Duke of Somerset.
During the
Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 Charles McCreery was a page to Field Marshal Viscount
Alanbrooke, and took part in the ceremony in
Westminster Abbey.
McCreery was educated at
Eton College
Eton College ( ) is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school providing boarding school, boarding education for boys aged 13–18, in the small town of Eton, Berkshire, Eton, in Berkshire, in the United Kingdom. It has educated Prime Mini ...
(1955–60) and
New College, Oxford
New College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1379 by Bishop William of Wykeham in conjunction with Winchester College as New College's feeder school, New College was one of the first col ...
(1961–64), where he read Philosophy and Psychology.
Since 1964 he has collaborated with
Celia Green on a series of studies of hallucinatory experiences in ostensibly normal people, including studies of
out-of-body experiences, in which people seem to perceive their own physical body ‘from outside’. From 1987 to 2000 he also collaborated with the Oxford psychologist
Gordon Claridge on work on the theoretical construct of
schizotypy.
In 1993 he was awarded a doctorate by the
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...
for work relating out-of-body experiences to schizotypy.
From 1996 to 2000 McCreery was Lecturer in Experimental Psychology at
Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College ( ) is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by Bishop of Winchester William of Waynflete. It is one of the wealthiest Oxford colleges, as of 2022, and ...
.
Since 1998 he has been a Research Director at Oxford Forum.
McCreery is also a composer, having published "Fourteen Tolkien Songs for Children's Voices". In 1996 his "Elegy for violin and piano" was shortlisted for the Match Composition Prize.
Research
The three main areas of McCreery's work with Celia Green have been the types of hallucinatory experience known as
lucid dreams (dreams in which the subject is aware that he or she is dreaming), out-of-body experiences, and
apparitional experience
In parapsychology, an apparitional experience is an anomalous experience characterized by the apparent perception of either a living being or an inanimate object without there being any material stimulus for such a perception.
In academic discus ...
s.
McCreery was the co-author with Celia Green of a book entitled ''Apparitions'' (1975). According to a survey they conducted most apparitions appear visually within three metres of the person, and the experience is usually short, lasting less than a minute in many cases. They put forward the hypothesis that not only was the figure of the apparition hallucinatory, but the rest of the field of perception at the time as well.
Green and McCreery proposed the term metachoric experience to denote experiences of this kind, in which the subject’s entire field of perception is replaced with a hallucinatory one. This enabled them to relate apparitional experiences to lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences, which they argued also meet this definition.
McCreery later collaborated with Green on a book on lucid dreaming, which discussed further the concept of metachoric experience, and added
false awakenings to the category.
In addition to books co-authored with Green, McCreery has published two accounts of a proposed theory of
psychosis
In psychopathology, psychosis is a condition in which a person is unable to distinguish, in their experience of life, between what is and is not real. Examples of psychotic symptoms are delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized or inco ...
, linking the phenomena of psychosis, such as
hallucinations
A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the compelling sense of reality. They are distinguishable from several related phenomena, such as dreaming ( REM sleep), which does not involve wakefulness; pse ...
and
delusions
A delusion is a fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some other m ...
, to arousability, Stage 1 sleep and dreams. The first of these accounts appeared in a collection of papers edited by Gordon Claridge. A fuller account appeared subsequently as a standalone paper: ‘’Dreams and Psychosis, A New Look at an Old Hypothesis.’’
In 2006 McCreery published a paper on the implications of hallucinatory experiences of the sane for the
philosophy of perception
The philosophy of perception is concerned with the nature of Perception, perceptual experience and the status of sense data, perceptual data, in particular how they relate to beliefs about, or knowledge of, the world.cf. http://plato.stanford.ed ...
. This argues that the phenomena provide empirical support for the theory of
representationalism
In the philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, direct or naïve realism, as opposed to indirect or representational realism, are differing models that describe the nature of conscious experiences.Lehar, Steve. (2000)The Function of Con ...
as against that of
direct realism
Direct may refer to:
Mathematics
* Directed set, in order theory
* Direct limit of (pre), sheaves
* Direct sum of modules, a construction in abstract algebra which combines several vector spaces
Computing
* Direct access (disambiguation), ...
.
McCreery has also published a series of online tutorials on statistics for first-year psychology students.
McCreery’s most recent book is a study of the psychology of genius, with particular reference to the economic conditions which have favoured the development of genius in the historical past, notably the role of private patronage.
Books
* ''Science, Philosophy and ESP''. Foreword by Professor
H.H. Price. London: Faber and Faber, 1967.
* ''Psychical Phenomena and the Physical World''. Foreword by Sir
George Joy. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1973.
* ''Apparitions'' (with Celia Green). London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975.
* ''Lucid Dreaming: the Paradox of Consciousness During Sleep'' (with Celia Green). London: Routledge, 1994.
[Reviews of ''Lucid Dreaming''
*
* ]
* ''The Abolition of Genius''. Foreword by Professor
Hans Eysenck. Oxford: Oxford Forum, 2012.
* ''Out-of-the-Body Experiences: Implications for a Theory of Psychosis''. Oxford: Oxford Forum, 2023.
Selected papers
* McCreery, C., and Claridge, G., ‘A study of hallucination in normal subjects – I. Self-report data’ (1996). ''Personality and Individual Differences'', 21, 739–747.
* McCreery, C., and Claridge, G., ‘A study of hallucination in normal subjects – II. Electrophysiological data’ (1996). ''Personality and Individual Differences'', 21, 749–758.
* ‘Hallucinations and arousability: pointers to a theory of psychosis’ (1997). In Claridge, G. (ed.): ''Schizotypy, Implications for Illness and Health''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
* McCreery, C., and Claridge, G., ‘Healthy schizotypy: the case of out-of-the-body experiences’ (2002). ''Personality and Individual Differences'', 32, 141–154.
* ‘Perception and hallucination: the case for continuity’. ''Philosophical Paper No. 2006-1'', Oxford: Oxford Forum.
* ’Dreams and psychosis: a new look at an old hypothesis’. ''Philosophical Paper No. 2008-1'', Oxford: Oxford Forum.
Online statistics tutorials
'Probability and Bayes' Theorem''Mean, median, mode and skewness''The Chi-square test''The t-test and the Mann-Whitney U test' ‘The Matched Pairs t-Test and the Wilcoxon Signed-Ranks Test’'Analysis of Variance'
References
External links
McCreery's paper on the philosophical implications of hallucinatory experiences'Dreams and psychosis, a new look at an old hypothesis'An online version of McCreery's theory of psychosis.
See also
*
Hallucinations in the sane
{{DEFAULTSORT:McCreery, Charles
1942 births
Living people
People educated at Eton College
Alumni of New College, Oxford
English psychologists
20th-century British psychologists