Materialism and psychical research are often viewed as antithetical. But psychic phenomena and the occult have been with us all throughout our development of science, and—like it or not—they have their place in modern science, according to Andreas Sommer.
Sommer is a junior research fellow in the department of history and philosophy of science at Churchill College at Cambridge University in the UK. In April 2016, his article “Are you afraid of the dark? Notes on the psychology of belief in histories of science and the occult,” was published in the European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling.
He started out addressing psychotherapists. He asked them to imagine hypothetical situations in which their patients report paranormal experiences—maybe a telepathic connection with a loved one or a profound out-of-body experience.
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