JUST LIKE THAT . . .

Gustav Kuhn. Experiencing the Impossible - The Science of Magic. MIT Press, 2019.

This is a superb title for a book that examines such a fascinating subject. Magic performed for entertainment works when it appears that something impossible has just happened before our very eyes, even at close range. We are delighted and baffled at the same time. Somehow we know that our senses have been deceived but have no idea how it was done. 

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MIND: HOW YOU GO

David E. Presti. Mind Beyond Brain: Buddhism, Science and the Paranormal. Columbia University Press, 2018.

This is a fascinating - if slightly expensive for its size - book that treads the boundaries between science and mysticism in an enlightening way. The author/editor is a professor at Berkeley in California, specialising in neuro-biology and cognitive science, which means he has a grasp of the materialism that underpins any kind of ‘spiritual’ experience.

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THE MAN WHO MADE THE BLOTS

Damion Searls. The Inkblots - Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and the Power of Seeing. Broadway Books, 2018.

When I first took a look at the cover of this book, the title prompted a stray thought to arise in my mind.  Was this not the name of a black American vocal group that was popular in the 1940s and early 50s? An online check quickly confirmed that they were, of course, known as 'The Ink Spots'. Presumably they chose that name to emphasise that they were all black, but they were certainly not making any reference to the famous 'Rorschach Inkblot Test', nor do they have any relevance to this book review. 

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NOT-SO-ORIGINAL SINS

Chris Chambers, The Seven Deadly Sins of Psychology: A Manifesto for Reforming the Culture of Scientific Practice, Princeton University Press.

Chris Chambers is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Cardiff University who has, over the course of his 15-year career, become increasingly disillusioned with the culture that prevails in the psychological sciences. This book is his summation of all that’s wrong with psychology, and what needs to be done to fix it, using the seven deadly sins as a metaphor. 

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EXPLORING THE PARANORMAL

Christopher C. French and Anna Stone. Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Christopher French defines anomalistic psychology as “attempts to explain paranormal and related beliefs and ostensibly paranormal experiences in terms of known (or knowable) psychological and physical factors . . . without assuming there is anything paranormal involved” [p1].

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THINKING ABOUT THINKING

Hans Thomas Hakl. Eranos: An Alternative Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, Equinox, 2013.

"Not all that many people are aware that, over a period of seventy years, men and women enjoying a high academic reputation met regularly at Ascona on Lake Maggiore in order to give scholarly lectures to a relatively small audience about their latest insights in the fields of religion, philosophy, history, art, and science… Their concern was… to locate such knowledge within a universal spiritual stream reaching from antiquity to the present day, from East to West and from North to South, stimulating all humanity."
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HAUNTED MINDS

Stephen Frosh. Hauntings: Psychoanalysis and Ghostly Transmissions Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Let me confess that there are large sections of this book, dealing with the “haunted “ nature of psychoanalysis and its Jewish roots, psychoanalytical interpretations of Old Testament stories, Freud’s ambiguous views on telepathy etc., which I am totally unqualified to review. It does not directly deal with “haunting” as understood by psychical researchers but it does contain some general themes which may be pertinent.
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VISIONS AND DISBELIEF

Oliver Sacks. Hallucinations. Picador, London, 2012

A number of varieties of hallucinatory experience are described, but this is by no means an exhaustive study, as such experiences are more common than is generally realised. Dr Sacks has made extensive use of the experiences of his patients, and of his own experiences. It was not until he was thirty that Dr Sacks started to experiment with drugs.
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FRAGMENTS OF MEMORY

Alison Winter. Memory: Fragments of a Modern History. The University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Memory, remembering, remembrance and forgetting are all political acts as well as scientific, and in this book Alison Winter tracks how popular culture has influenced and been influenced the ‘scientific’ treatment of memory. 

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HYSTERIA AND HYSTERICS

Andrew Scull. Hysteria: The Disturbing History. Oxford University Press, 2011.

Jan Goldstein. Hysteria Complicated by Ecstasy: The Case of Nanette Leroux Princeton University Press, 2011

In April 1602 a teenage London girl, Mary Glover, had a run in with a neighbour, Elizabeth Jackson, after which Mary, developed strange symptoms such as fits, a constriction in the throat, which made eating difficult, paralysis, swelling belly and etc. This led to the conviction of Elizabeth Jackson for witchcraft, for which she had to suffer a year’s imprisonment and several visits to the pillory.

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE PARANORMAL

Tony Jinks. An Introduction to the Psychology of Paranormal Belief and Experience. McFarland, 2011

In this intriguing book, Tony Jinks, a lecturer on neuroscience at the University of Western Sydney, uses a wide definition of the paranormal, encompassing all the various topics covered by Magonia, and takes a detailed examination of the range of psychological explanations, both mainstream and exotic used to "explain" such experiences.
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THE PSYCHOPATH TEST

Jon Ronson. The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry. Picador, 2011.

Journalist Jon Ronson was asked by a neurologist to investigate a truly weird book she had received. While he was able to solve that problem fairly quickly, the search led him into the world of psychiatry, and the anti-psychiatry movement now largely dominated by Scientologists.
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MYSTERIOUS MINDS

Stanley Krippner and Harris L. Friedman. Mysterious Minds: The Neurobiology of Psychics, Mediums and Other Extraordinary People. Praeger/ABC CLIO, 2010.

Neurobiology and the ability of modern technology to investigate the living human brain provide exciting new possibilities and it is no surprise that parapsychologists are now attempting to apply them to their own field, with mixed results.

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LISTEN TO THE RAINBOW

Jamie Ward. The Frog Who Croaked Blue: Synesthesia and the Mixing of the Senses. Routledge, 2009

In this fascinating book, psychologist Jamie Ward takes us on a tour of synesthesia, the confusion of senses which allows some people to see sounds, experience numbers and letters as having colours, hear lights and taste thunder. There are several areas in which this should be of interest to Magonians. 

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BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

Marie D Jones and Larry Flaxman. The Deja-Vu Enigma: A Journey Through the Anomalies of Mind, Memory and Time. New Page Books, 2010.

If you start reading this review and suddenly think that you have read it all before, then you are having an experience of deja-vu. If you start reading this review and suddenly think that you have read it all before, then you are having an experience of deja-vu. 

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