PF Congratulates Dr. Etzel Cardeña on an Important Article on Parapsychology

One of the PF’s most valued friends and colleagues in Europe is the PF International Affiliate for Sweden, Dr. Etzel Cardeña, Thorsen Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Research on Consciousness and Anomalous Psychology at Lund University in Sweden. Etzel won the 1985 Eileen J. Garrett Scholarship Award of the PF when he was a graduate student in psychology and has been in constant contact with us ever since. He is internationally known for his contributions to the literature of hypnosis and dissociation, not to mention to parapsychology, among which is included an important collection of essays: E. Cardeña, J. Palmer, and D. Marcusson-Clavertz (Eds.). Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015; For an overview of the volume click here.). Ten years ago this month, Etzel was one of the most important speakers at Utrecht II: Charting the Future of Parapsychology where he gave a paper called “Towards a Science of Alterations of Consciousness”.  (For more information on the conference co-hosted by the Parapsychology Foundation and the Johan Borgman Funds in October of 2008 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, click here.) More recently, he has published what we consider to be the most important discussion of modern experimental parapsychology in recent times.

I am referring to “The Experimental Evidence for Parapsychological Phenomena: A Review” (American Psychologist, 2018, 73[5], 663-677). The article is important because its author presents an excellent summary of the experimental evidence for psi processes and concludes that the studies in question support the existence of the phenomena, something not commonly seen in psychology journals. Furthermore, Etzel also covers theoretical ideas, an area he correctly says needs much further development. Finally, and most importantly, the article appeared in the American Psychologist, the official journal of the American Psychological Association, which is one of the most prestigious journals of psychology in the United States. Here is the abstract included in the article:

“This article presents a comprehensive integration of current experimental evidence and theories about so-called parapsychological (psi) phenomena. Throughout history, people have reported events that seem to violate the common sense view of space and time. Some psychologists have been at the forefront of investigating these phenomena with sophisticated research protocols and theory, while others have devoted much of their careers to criticizing the field. Both stances can be explained by psychologists’ expertise on relevant processes such as perception, memory, belief, and conscious and nonconscious processes. This article clarifies the domain of psi, summarizes recent theories from physics and psychology that present psi phenomena as at least plausible, and then provides an overview of recent/updated meta-analyses. The evidence provides cumulative support for the reality of psi, which cannot be readily explained away by the quality of the studies, fraud, selective reporting, experimental or analytical incompetence, or other frequent criticisms. The evidence for psi is comparable to that for established phenomena in psychology and other disciplines, although there is no consensual understanding of them. The article concludes with recommendations for further progress in the field including the use of project and data repositories, conducting multidisciplinary studies with enough power, developing further nonconscious measures of psi and falsifiable theories, analyzing the characteristics of successful sessions and participants, improving the ecological validity of studies, testing how to increase effect sizes, recruiting more researchers at least open to the possibility of psi, and situating psi phenomena within larger domains such as the study of consciousness.”

The Parapsychology Foundation congratulates Etzel for this accomplishment and valuable contribution to bring serious attention to parapsychology, particularly from psychologists.