Psychic mediumship By Lea Donovan

What is psychic mediumship? Where a medium (someone who has the ability to communicate with the dead) uses psychic abilities (process of gaining information that cannot be acquired through the use of a human’s basic senses) to carry out readings.

What do psychic mediums do? They carry out psychic readings; where they specifically attempt to detect information (for example from a spirit) through the use of supernatural perceptive abilities; heightened basic human senses of sight, sound, touch, taste etc. What is a spirit? Also known as ghosts, spectres, phantoms and spooks, spirits are the soul of a dead person or animal that an manifest itself into a physical form. It is debated by many whether they exist or not but it is widely accepted that they do only exist in folklore/myths.

What are the two types of psychic mediumship? Psychic mediumship can be classified into either physical mediumship (moving or materialising of objects) or mental mediumship (obtaining seemingly inaccessible information from living or dead people).

Physical mediumship Physical Mediumship is the moving or materialising of objects. It is rarer than mental mediumship and can be how spirits materialise into our world. They do this by taking substances from the physical body to create an ectoplasm (a supernatural half-liquid half-solid substance that supposedly comes out of a medium’s body during a spiritualistic trance). It can also be taken from other physical objects such as clothes or furniture. Once the ectoplasm has formed the spirit can cover itself in the material so as to be seen in our world. This usually occurs during séances (a meeting in which people try to communicate with the dead, usually through a medium).

Mental mediumship Mental mediumship is where spirits communicate with a medium by telepathy. In this type the medium is the only one who can see/hear/feel what the spirit is communicating, and it is the mediums job to relate this information to the ‘sitter’ (the person visiting the medium), by relaying what the spirit is saying.

EXAMPLES OF MEDIUMSHIP IN ACTION https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64UDDPzXW9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8aYTQ6Kgko These are two video clip from two different TV shows; one is ‘Long Island Medium’ in which a medium visits people at their home to do a reading about someone they have lost. The second is from ‘Psychic Sally ‘where Sally does readings to large audiences and tries to connect with one of them about the spirit she can ‘see’.

What is the barnum effect? The tendency of people to accept vague descriptions as being applicable/specific to themselves, due to underestimating the extent that our lives can overlap with others. For example in psychic mediumship the medium may give a vague statement about a spirit, and the sitter may believe it to be their loved one/someone they have lost in their life. Cold reading is the technique of how psychic mediums convince others that they possess their paranormal ability (communicating with the dead).

AO1 – STUDY PROVIDING EVIDENCE FOR PSYCHIC MEDIUMSHIP BEISCHEL and SCHWARTZ (2007) Participants: 8 American university students (the sitters); four of which had experienced the death of a peer and four a parent, plus 8 mediums Procedure: The mediums each gave readings for two of the 8 anonymous sitters who were absent from the room. A triple blind technique was employed; so the experimenters, mediums and sitters all knew nothing about anything or each other. The two readings given were transcribed and afterwards the sitters had to choose which of the two readings was most applicable to them. Findings: The mediums readings were rated by the sitters as extremely accurate, so this study gives evidence for psychic mediumship being real.

Ao2 – evaluation of beischel and Schwartz (2007) Trial runs carried out beforehand to eliminate methodological issues Use of a triple blind is a major methodological advantage as it eliminates investigator bias and other demand characteristics. It also eliminates the notion of fraud Small sample size of only eight mediums used, so findings may not apply to all mediums Unclear how an accurate reading was defined and so lowers the validity of conclusions

Ao1 – study providing evidence against psychic mediumship O’KEEFE and WISEMAN Participants: 5 mediums and 5 sitters Procedure: Repeated Beischel and Schwartz’s (2007) study, but this time the mediums read for all five sitters, and the sitters rated how accurate each reading was to themselves. Findings: Overall the researchers found the sitters rated lowest accuracy for the readings that were supposed to be for themselves! This provides evidence against psychic healing and suggests it may just be a fraud.

Ao2 – evaluation of o’keefe and wiseman Use of a triple blind is a major methodological advantage as it eliminates investigator bias and other demand characteristics. It also eliminates the notion of fraud -Hard to operationalise accuracy as the readings judged on an ordinal scale so it gives us limited understanding -Sample size was very small, hard to generalize findings *Some could argue the negative results were due to Psi Blockage (jealous phenomena)

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answers

Exam question: Discuss what research into exceptional experience has shown us about psychic mediumship. (4 marks + 6 marks)