Anti-survival/pro-ESP book of 1965

[Alexander1304]

I'm attaching the book of Frederick C.Dommeyer "Body ,Mind ,Death"(1965), physolopher and parapsychologist.The book was written with clear aim to critisize survival hypothesis, and to demonstrate,that ESP hypothesis is more probable. I don't know if the author succeds in his point, but he appears to be knowledgable on the subject.Though book doesn't seem to become as popular,a s of Almeder,Broad and Gauld. dommeyer states that neither OBE nore appaaritions(even collective ones) constitue evidence for survival, and especially critisize the evidence from mental/trance mediumship.Finally, he mostly focues on critisizing cross-correspondence. He mentions that such cases as "sudden intrusion" of communicators also cited as support for spirit hypothesis("drop-in") ,but later doesn't comment such cases.Anyway, the book is attached here,it is short(76 pages),and I'd particulary like to hear opinions about his critisizm of mediumship.

http://www.2shared.com/document/FscO0tG ... Death.html

Any thougts?

[NinjaPuppy]

[Alexander1304]

Hmmm...I'm not so new and the book is of 76 pages, but I'll try:

Other difficulties connected with the spiritist or survival
hypothesis can now be noted more briefly. They will
serve to counterbalance the previously listed evidences in
favor of the survival hypothesis.
(1) Mediumistic personifications have considerable
likeness to the artificial personalities created in the hypnotic
state.

(2) Despite the great numbers of purported messages
that have come through mediums, these communications
have been generally of the most trivial sort; exceptions to
this statement are rare.

Though mediums have been bringing their messages
to the living for over a century, nothing significant
has been conveyed about "the next world." The references
to the next life made by the "communicators" reflect a
spiritualistic matrix or other body of beliefs characteristic
of "this side."

(4) Though one might not be justified in making a
universal statement about seance messages, it does seem
fair to say that many of them have clearly been products
of the medium's subconscious mind, and ESP if the paranormal
enters them.
(5) Great numbers of messages have been fraudulent—
so many, in fact, that the Seybert Commission
described all of them in that manner.

(6) Mediums themselves will on occasion admit that
they do not know the origin of their "communications." A
very gifted medium, Eileen Garrett, writes:
Speaking as one who has had close contact
with all mental phenomena for a great many
years, and who regards the field of psychic
research as a vaster territory than is even suspected,
I feel the right to question the meaning
of the messages, appearances of the
alleged dead, and all the symbolism relating
to this particular field. Although I have seen
apparitions of thousands of alleged dead, and
have received what appeared to be communications
from them, I do not yet truly know
whence these communications come.
(7) Dr. J. B. Rhine, an undisputed leader in the parapsychological
field, writes: ".. . the more careful and informed
students of the problem seem to agree that no
really scientific evidence of incorporeal personal agency
has yet been reported."

(8) Professor Broad points out that if one considers
"the apparently haphazard way in which men are born and
die," so many being conceived by mistake, accidentally
and in ignorance, then it seems that "the claim to permanence
for creatures whose earthly lives begin and end in
these trivial ways is somewhat ridiculous."54
(9) Evidence against survival comes also through a
consideration of a cultural relativism that Professor E. R.
Dodds notes.55 He points out that, prior to the origin of
the spiritualist movement in the latter half of the nineteenth
century, the "spirits" did not have a monopoly in
controlling mediums. Just as often, the declared source of
communication was a daemon; whereas, in other cases,
no sources other than the seer or "wise woman" were
alleged as the agency.

(10) Professor Dodds also indicates that it is a wellknown
fact that the subconscious mind is "addicted to
dramatisation,"56 and that its dramas are most often in
terms of wish-fulfillments. The hunger for contact with the
dead, along with the spiritualist environment in the last
and early part of this century, can account for the so-called
spirit messages.
(11) The spirits, even though they bring veridical
information on occasion, "seem to be cast in the same general
mold; they are often too much alike, and think and
talk too much like the medium, to convince the general
observer of their autonomy."

(12) The "communicators" often display, as Gardner
Murphy says, a "moral flabbiness," a willingness to have
it both ways. The Hodgson personality well illustrated this,
as James pointed out after studying 69 sittings in which
Hodgson ostensibly appeared. Such vacillation and irre-
sponsibility as Gardner Murphy notes are characteristic of
the dissociated mind, i.e., the subconscious mind out of
which these mediumistic automatisms arise.58
I would submit, at the conclusion of this Chapter, that
none of the evidences for survival come up to the standards
set by Mr. Roll. He writes:

We can now say what type of finding will indicate
an incorporeal personal agent. It
would consist in records which have motivational
and personality factors foreign to the
subject but typical of the deceased personality
in question, as well as intellectual or cognitive
characteristics that are not part of the
furnishings of the subject's mind but were
possessed by the supposed communicator.
This type of material should be obtained in
experiments in which there is no close linkage
with living persons who have the personality
traits or the technical knowledge shown in
the record.

[NinjaPuppy]

That's pro-ESP? It sounds like a description of a person who is in it for the money and may or may not have any 'talents'.

[NinjaPuppy]

[Alexander1304]

It's pretty impossible to download the whole book...now you know me you can go the link, but I'll copy the next part:
T IS clear from the foregoing that there exists a mass of
parapsychological data for which there are competing
explanations. We are concerned here only with those data
for which the survival hypothesis is a possible explanation.
With respect to such data, the question must be: is the
survival (spiritist) hypothesis more or less probable than
its strongest competitor, the ESP hypothesis.
The ESP hypothesis holds that prima facie mediumistic
communications, out-of-the-body experiences, apparitions,
etc., can be explained entirely by reference to living
human beings, their subconscious minds and the parapsychological
capacities grounded in man's subliminal nature—
i.e., no discarnate spirits need be supposed to exist.
What kinds of evidence support the ESP hypothesis?
We have already noted some evidences along the way.
More generally, however, the evidences for ESP are found
in two areas of research. (1) Laboratory studies, usually
statistical, of telepathy, of clairvoyance, of precognition,
of psychokinesis, etc. Such researches have been carried
on at Duke University, Harvard, Stanford, City College
(N. Y.), University of Utrecht, Oxford, Cambridge, etc.
(2) Case studies of such spontaneous manifestations of psi
as those associated with Mrs. Leonora Piper, Edgar Cayce,
Peter Hurkos, Eileen Garrett, etc. With regard to both
(1) and (2), it is not possible to do more here than barely
suggest what has been done in these areas.

Dr. Rhine views ESP phenomena as "nonphysical."
Neither distance nor time is a factor in psi occurrences.
The basic process productive of psi occurrences is unconscious.
60 But especially interesting in relation to the ESP
hypothesis is a subject's tendency on occasion to miss a
specific symbol in a consistent way, i.e., substitute another
for it. Also interesting for the same reason is a tendency
occasionally for a subject to displace, i.e., to call consistently
the target adjacent to the intended one. Such occurrences
in the laboratory are the analogues of the symbolical
and allegorical tendencies found as manifestations of
the subconscious mind in many cases of spontaneous
mediumship.

[NinjaPuppy]

[NinjaPuppy]

But I don't want to download that thing on my computer.

[Alexander1304]

It seems that the only 2 books mentioned this one: Robert Almeder states that Dommeyer's ESP explanations of Butler's apparition is "ad hoc". Michael Grosso seems to concur. I think this "ad hocness" can be extended itno his treatment of mediumship

[NinjaPuppy]

I looked for this book on Amazon and B&N but both are out of stock. It sounds like a good NOOK read for me.

[Alexander1304]

First - fon't try to download - it asks to dowload some .exe, not just pdf. What is the best portal to share file? Moreover, somebody already pointed out ,that since this book was writted in 1965 - and to popular,by the way, and sicne then other good POPULAR books we writter,such as of A.Gauld, R.Almeder, S.Braude - this tells a lot

[NinjaPuppy]

[Alexander1304]

I uploaded file,here no need to download it,just read:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/117386058/Bod ... and-Ddeath

[NinjaPuppy]

Most excellent! Thanks!

Give me a day or two to get into this one. It's a busy week, with only two days left 'till the end of the world and all. I've crammed in as much as I can before Friday.

[NinjaPuppy]

OK, I'm hooked. I'm up to Chapter III.