Parapsychology: The Controversial Science

This is a good comprehensive and easy-to-read book on Parapsychology. This book covers key areas to understanding the field of parapsychology such as the important historical areas of Parapsychology, the methods of parapsychologists in history up to the present, various psi or paranormal topics such as ESP, PK, OBEs, NDEs, apparitions, etc. It also covers ideas and theories regarding some of these psi phenomena (i.e ESP, PK, etc.), and even points that skeptics bring up and most of these objections/points were answered for definitively. I must say though this book is not up-to-date as far as current results from research goes. There have been many experiments like the Ganzfeld experiments which have been done between the release of this book ca. 1991 up to now 2007 with new results and views; other than that the other information is still relevant to parapsychology today. And this is still the best comprehensive introduction to parapsychology I've read thus far. Now this book does not conclusively or strongly prove psi phenomena such as ESP and PK, but only to a small degree at most. This book does prove that parapsychologists are improving their experiments and understanding of psi and are trying new things that would work to prove psi. Based upon reading this book I'm convinced that the future of psi research looks good and reasonable.

This is an excellent book that never seems to go out of date. The information is just as current and pertinent to learning about the field of parapsychology as it was when first published. It is a great book for an over-all foundation in parapsychology.

I think Broughton's book is a wonderfully interesting and crafted introduction to this science. He provides fascinating examples of case studies and clearly explains the scientific approach paraspychologists take in studying anomalies. It has changed my viewpoints about many areas I had previously shunned, before being educated by Broughton. Bravo!

It was the first book I ever read about parapsychology and I read it through and learned many things that I never would have bothered reading about had it not been written so comprehensively. I enjoyed the references to the relativity theory in relation to psi phenomena, the history of parapsychology,the names of prominent people in parapsychology,the different experimental methods used through the history of parapsychology,and that the book was so contemporary. The thing I disagreed with about the book is the fact that it talked of telepathic experiances as ocurring as non-continuous, as in, being isolated experiances, whereas I know that tele-pathic experiances can occur moment-by-moment,day-by-day, week-by-week,month-by-month,i.e. continuously. Thank-you

My general impression for the book as a psychology graduate student is that it provides the reader with a scientificly oriented, but easy-to-understand general knowledge about the field. There is only one point that seems irrelevant to me which is the application topic. As a controversial science, parapsychology should seek and maintain a more pure-scientific orientation. My idea is that by being so, parapsychology may lead the scientific endeavor of discovering human nature more deeply and in a more multi-facet fashion.Kürsad Demirutku, Middle East Technical University