I recently came across within the pages of the Parapsychology Foundation’s Newletter of January-February 1960 a recap of an article penned by the famed psychologist and PF colleague, Dr. Gardner Murphy, which bears the test of time and I believe remains relevant for present day academicians and researchers. The article was published in The Journal of the American Psychological Association, entitled “Trends in the Study of Extrasensory Perception”. Although Dr. Murphy addressed himself primarily to psychologists, his points have significance to physicists, chemists and many other scientists; they have meaning to medicine, theology and philosophy as well as presenting a challenge to serious scholars in many fields our own included.
He writes that ‘very fundamental questions regarding the structure and the assumptions of psychology are involved when the reality of paranormal phenomena is the issue.’ After summarizing parapsychological activities during the past decade, he states: ‘The chief problem is to develop intelligent interest in the field, from which alone could spring the sustained training of psychologists to a point sufficiently advanced, sufficiently professional to permit the individual to take in stride a specific and well focused parapsychological investigation. Our greatest need today is man power. It is not the conversion of doubters to believers, but the conversion of listeners to active investigators, sensitive to the enormous challenge and resolute in the application of the best modern research methods, that makes up the real heart of the problem of turning parapsychology into a science.’
PF’s President, Eileen J. Garrett adds ‘I feel that Dr. Murphy can speak with authority and from long experience when he emphasizes that parapsychology is not looking for “believers”. Our work is not missionary, it is designed to stimulate serious interest in a frontier area of science; it is set up to make the most of the minds and the data available to us today, and to advance the cause of serious and dispassionate study. There is no doubt, of course, that parapsychology can benefit from sincere devotion, just as it can be—and has been—endangered by unsupported claims or by experiments that are lacking in careful controls. It is encouraging, I feel that even occasional errors may now be taken in stride; indeed parapsychologists are forever critical of each other’s criteria, methodology or hypotheses. This, of course, is all to the good. It can only result in improved methods, increasingly careful techniques and more effective scientific safeguards. We are thus arriving at a mixture of caution and enthusiasm which I welcome greatly. One without the other would not be adequate; it would lead either to negation, or to a lowering of critical standards. But a combination of these two qualities, of which we see more and more these days in parapsychology, gives us the confidence to look toward future work with hopeful anticipation.’
Not speaking for Murphy or Garrett I am fairly certain that the enthusiasm they felt some 63 years ago for the future of what is now firmly established as the science of parapsychology was well warranted. They made their mark, drew their conclusions to “push the ball down the court” to gain greater understanding of the psychic elements in our lives as we ourselves must do now in our time. So who is game? I see so many fine minds still toiling in parapsychology’s fields so as you hear me repeat so often Garrett’s mantra of her spinning PF spiral “Onwards and Upwards”!