PSI SEARCH: The Comprehensive Consumer Guide to Psychic Phenomena

The authors' interest in ESP grew out of theft developing an exhibition, called Psi Search, for the California Museum of Science and Industry. In this state-of-the-art report, they divide theft account into laboratory findings, which they feel establish the existence of psi phenomena, and the diverse data--personal anecdotes, Kirlian photography, psychic healing, and the like--which require further ""search"" or research. Thus the general reader, who may remain totally skeptical, comes away knowing the consensus of accepted findings among a number of well-established psi researchers (as opposed to suspect or moot reports). The authors' survey covers the rise of the psychical research societies in England and America and the early work of the Rhines as well as the more recent studies of Charles Tart, Targ and Puthoff, and others. Without a particular, restricted point of view (such as Ehrenwald's, reviewed below), they provide a straightforward and lively exposition, excellent in terms of clarity and brevity. To carry out theft ""guide"" mission, they have added words of counsel about psi groups, provided self-questions for personal psi experience or means of judging other accounts, and compiled an extensive bibliography, notes and glossary. Such works, as well as the acceptance of psi research at universities outside Duke, may point to a growing reasoned approach toward psi, which, if not a contradiction in terms, could indeed prove fruitful.