Lately I've been reading a very interesting book, Guided By Spirit: A Journey into the Mind of the Medium, which was self-published by two authors: Charles F. Emmons, a professor of sociology and anthropology at Gettysburg College, and his wife Penelope Emmons, a psychotherapist with a master's degree in social work who also works as a medium and has had a variety of paranormal experiences.
What's fascinating about the book is the way it intertwines the dual perspectives of its authors. Charles Emmons takes a somewhat more analytical approach, often viewing mediumship as a social phenomenon with important psychological benefits, while his wife has a more overtly "spiritual" perspective. I'm oversimplifying a great deal, since Charles Emmons clearly has an excellent grasp of the spiritual issues involved, and Penelope Emmons keenly appreciates the social and scientific aspects. But each author offers his or her own particular emphasis. The two approaches complement each other very nicely and show that there need not be any irreconcilable differences between a properly "scientific" study of this subject and a more personal experience of it.
Both authors are well-educated, sophisticated, and highly intelligent, and strike me as impeccably honest and straightforward.
Although I enjoyed both perspectives, I identified somewhat more with the viewpoint of Charles Emmons, who came at mediumship, at least initially, as something of an outsider. Later, to deepen his understanding of the phenomenon, he took classes in mediumship and did some informal demonstrations in which he scored his share of "hits" as well as "misses." He also investigated mediumship in Hong Kong, where it is a thriving part of the culture, and wrote a book about it called Chinese Ghosts and ESP: A Study of Paranormal Beliefs and Experiences, which sounds very worthwhile in its own right.
Near the end of Guided By Spirit, the two authors sum up their particular viewpoints. I found Charles Emmons's summary especially congenial to my own way of thinking, so I am reproducing a large part of it below.
The chapter is titled "Charlie's View."
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Let me begin by saying that I find some "truth" or usefulness in all of these perspectives: social/behavioral scientific, debunking, parapsychological, and spiritual. I do not think that this represents a "relativization of knowledge," in which anything can be true if you believe in it. I just mean that taken literally each perspective offers interesting possible explanations, some of which may be valid at certain times.
Taken at a deeper level, each of these perspectives tends to become a dogmatic, competitive belief system conducive neither to science nor spirituality. Practitioners of them tend to lose sight of the alleged purposes of systems: to explain reality and to enrich our lives. Every organized belief system is really a social construct created in part to serve the political ends of the group, or at least of the elite members of the group.
What I would like to do is to extract some wisdom from each perspective (giving it a sympathetic reading), and leave the competitive interests and dogmatic structures behind. This (ideally) approaches a multifaceted or pluralistic (and not merely relativized) approach.
I feel good about having played the role of practitioner in each of these systems, so that I can use each without being overly committed to any. The one I have least experience with is debunking, because I cannot accept the narrow view of debunking and its attempt to demolish "ignorance" rather than to engage in open-ended inquiry. If members of CSICOP should hasten to claim that I have an incorrect view of their purpose, which is actually to be skeptical, providing a counterbalance to uncritical belief, then I would happily concur that I have been a "skeptic" in this sense too. And in fact some pieces in Skeptical Inquirer and by members of CSICOP published elsewhere have been fair. Susan Blackmore is my favorite example of such fairness.
I anticipate that some of my colleagues in sociology and anthropology will say that I have taken participant observation too far and have "gone native" by actually learning to do a spirit mediumship. I was supposed to study spirit mediums, not become one. This is a valid criticism that must be considered, but I see what I have done as "participatory science," becoming involved fully in the phenomenon itself, which has made it more understandable to me on a personal level. Of course this becomes more controversial when the phenomenon is considered deviant or dubious by the scientific community.
I say that I have become fully involved, but actually I have not become a registered medium or done mediumship for personal financial gain. I have joined a Spiritualist Church and done "student" mediumship.
Having said all of that, let me now reflect on each of these perspectives and share what I think about spirit mediumship as a phenomenon.
First, there cannot be much doubt about spirit mediumship having social and psychological functions…. Traditional Chinese ancestor worship culture requires mediums to facilitate the communication between ancestors and descendents who are supposed to help each other. Going deeper, ancestor worship has held together large kinship groups who worship common ancestors going back several generations….
As for psychological functions (and dysfunctions), mediumship certainly has a psychological base in terms of altered states of consciousness (which I have also experienced myself), even for mediums today who tend to go into only a light trance. There is no strong general correlation between mediumship and mental illness, although this has been an issue in the literature. Some mediums quite apparently have multiple personality or experience other dissociative states. I think that labeling all of these as pathological is problematic and prematurely judgmental….
I think that scientists who see the connection between brain patterns and anomalous experience as an obvious refutation of the "reality" of the paranormal, and the psychospiritual folks who are upset with this research are both mistaken.
Just because such experiences have a brain component doesn't mean that they don't have "evidential" (containing evidence of paranormal knowledge or experience) aspects as well. If people do have a spiritual or surviving-consciousness component, they also need a physical component in order to experience life on the physical plane and to make connections between the two. Although it seems plausible to claim that a spirit medium, for example, is merely dissociating when he/she experiences a spirit message, it could also be that the brain needs to disconnect from normal patterns in order to get the information more clearly….
Now I am ready for my most difficult task: finding useful elements in the debunking perspective to help understand spirit mediumship. I recall when I was doing my book on UFO researchers how some of them pointed out that UFO debunkers were good for keeping serious ufologists on their toes. Even if some debunkers often were scornful and disrespectful of UFO experiencer claims and often refused to look at the evidence, there were also times when some of them came up with good alternative theories for sightings, such as radar malfunctioning and earthquake lights. Most UFO researchers recognize that the bulk of UFO reports in fact can be "explained away" through mundane explanations. Therefore their own scientific skepticism about any particular report actually coincides with the perspective assumed by debunkers.
Moving to the issue of spirit mediumship, the same sort of overlap exists between debunkers and parapsychologists and even spirit mediums. As pointed out earlier in this book, many of the mediums we interviewed, and even many of the famous mediums in history have had considerable skepticism even about their own personal work. Although many late nineteenth-century Spiritualists became impatient with the scientists who studied mediumship, they did share a desire to root out and expose fraudulent mediums.
CSICOP proclaims the worthy objective of promoting scientific literacy and reducing gullibility in the general population. When it comes to mediumship, this would involve pointing out various tricks used by fraudulent mediums. Even mediums who are not intentionally fraudulent can engage in guesswork through observing body language at other cues….
Now I must show some distance from this perspective. First, it is difficult to judge that believing in the reading is a bad thing, even if it is not really from "spirit". Going to a spirit medium or psychic may be very therapeutic….
Next, I think it is very difficult to pass judgment on particular mediums. Partly this is because it is so difficult to establish a probability frame for scoring a medium's accuracy. Even when a medium is rather general, she or he may be very good at identifying the person's personal issues and do a good service….
One thing that I definitely oppose is the unscrupulous gouging of clients. There are stories of mediums or psychics who tell people that they will remove a curse for a $3,000 fee (although I do not have any first-hand evidence of this). There are also a very few mediums to charge very high fees; but this would be a problem if we were talking about doctors or attorneys as well.
At any rate, debunkers help sound a note of caution for those who are ready to believe in anything allegedly miraculous. In my experience I do not think that many of the people who frequent Lily Dale or who attend the Spiritualist churches I have observed are seriously absent of judgment. They are not participating in some cult that is taking away all their worldly goods. Good mediums also remind people that they have free will and should use their common sense.
Moving to parapsychology, which shares a scientific skepticism with the debunkers, especially when it comes to mediumship as noted above, I think that it requires a great deal of reading to sort out the evidence on mediumship. From reading the sources referred to above and many more, I think that the evidence for mediumship is very supportive of a core of truly remarkable phenomenon that cannot be dismissed.
It was often the case that famous mediums mixed legitimate phenomena with cheating (perhaps unconsciously). These tended to be prematurely dismissed by some even though there was good evidence for the nonhoaxed portion. Also, complex cases like that of the Fox Sisters, who at one point admitted cheating but then recanted, should not be dealt with stereotypically and simplistically as they often are popular publications or debunking literature.
From the beginning I realized that this study could not hope to set the validity issues in mediumship straight when a century and a half of research had failed to do so. No one should accept the last two paragraphs above without doing some research. It is not a very efficient way to do things, but in a field that has not been legitimated by mainstream science, one almost has to do one's own study to decide the issue for oneself. I believe that I have done enough research of my own to appreciate the fact that some phenomena in mediumship are genuine (which is not to say that I can explain it). This is apart from my own experiences as a medium. What I'm referring to here is my study of mediums that was part of a larger study Chinese Ghosts and ESP. It was clear to me that some sessions were so accurate that they were markedly beyond what could be reasonably attributed to chance.
What parapsychology contributes is a relatively open-minded exploration of the truth claims of spirit mediumship, something that social scientists and debunkers do not do (if they are performing their expected roles)….
Last I need to comment on a spiritual perspective on spirit mediumship. In part this is where my own "participatory science" belongs, insofar as my attempted to do mediumship represents a direct experience of an allegedly spiritual phenomenon.
Most of my experience is not directly a test of whether spirit mediumship is really a communication with the spirit world. Most of it is learning to understand the role of spirit medium, how one becomes recruited and socialized to it, and how one performs it and feels about it. Previously in this book we have discussed all of that, including the persistent problem of doing something intuitive in a rational culture.
In a larger sense I feel the mediumship in this society is just one piece of a larger spiritual attempt to find meaning in an increasingly meaningless, technologically dominated mass society….
However, I do not want to just get lost in a spiritual subculture to feel good about my place in modern society and to be at peace with my dead relatives. I also have a curiosity addiction fed by the scientific side of me, which is continually laughing at the "spiritual" side of me. On the other hand, my skeptical side is also fair enough to consider the subject of evidence provided through my own experience. The price my spiritual side pays for this tolerance is that it needs to come up with some pretty good evidence to my skeptical side that I'm not just being deluded by wishful thinking….
The parapsychologist in me is very sure that I have received intuitive messages that are correct way beyond any reasonable chance expectations. This satisfies the skeptical side of me, to a point. However, I cannot prove that there isn't some explanation other than spiritual communication. It could be super-ESP, or the one mind, or whenever.
My spiritual side is convinced (sort of) that I really am communicating with my parents and other people, and that my mother is my spirit guide when I do mediumship. How do I know? I just know. But that's not good enough for my skeptical side. I really don't know of a critical experiment that could settle the matter. Right now I'm content to go on marveling at seeking, and acting as if it's true. I think I've already discovered more than I ever expected to.
But there's more. From my observations I think that spirit mediumship is a great mystery, of which we know only a little. I find it both amusing and annoying when people think they have it all figured out. "It's nonsense." "It's real, but you have to do it this way." From interviewing many mediums and from doing it myself, I think that it happens in a great many ways, not just one way. And of course lots of people try to do it without very good results….
In my own mediumship I have learned to be less analytical (difficult for a college professor) and to bring things forth with less editing. I have learned to set a good intention and to worry about it less. I continue to marvel when I get things right, more right than would seem possible by chance. Any more than that I shall probably have to tell you after I die.
[pp. 285-291]
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If you want to read more, you can find Guided By Spirit previewed in Google Books, or you can order it from Amazon.com and other online retailers.