A COMMON THREAD UNDERLYING BELIEF IN THE PARANORMAL, CREATIVE PERSONALITY, MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

Abstract

This study began as an investigation of belief in the paranormal: We collated a battery of pencil-and-paper tests, with the intention of measuring degree of belief in, and ostensible experience of, the paranormal, degree of creative personality, mystical experi- ence, and aspects of psychopathology (magical ideation, hypomania, and extent of experi- ence of symptoms resembling mania and depression). This battery of tests was administered to 241 university students, 86 manic-depressives, and 38 schizophrenics. For the overall measure of belief in the paranormal, there were no differences between groups, but among students (and for the most part in the clinical groups as well) it correlated positively to a significant degree with creative personality, mystical experience, and all the psychopathological variables. We therefore subjected the student data to principal compo- nents analysis. A single factor emerged, which we tentatively name transliminality because we interpret it as measuring the extent to which the contents of some preconscious (or unconscious or subliminal) region of the mind are able to cross the threshold into consciousness (in its sense of awareness). There they may farm the basis of paranormal belief, the experiencing of apparent psychic phenomena, some aspects of creativity, mysti- cal experience, and psychotic-like symptoms. A high degree of transliminality would ap- pear to imply a largely involuntary susceptibility to, and awareness of, large volumes of inwardly generated psychological phenomena of an ideational and affective kind. Its correlates include religious experience, an interest in dream interpretation, and proneness to hallucination. Should subsequent research validate the model implied by this labeling, we might come to see belief in, and ostensible experience of, the paranormal as repre - senting one type of consequence among many of a mind possessing high transliminality. In recent years the term paranormal has been used in an increasingly broad sense-rather too broad, we have argued (Thalbourne & Delin, 1993). For current purposes we take it to refer simply to any of three controversial classes of phenomena that are claimed by some to exist: extrasensory perception (ESP), psychokinesis (PK), and life after death. A good many people believe in such phenomena and even claim to have experienced manifestations of them, whereas others, particularly social scientists, reject any notions of this kind as error or wishful thinking. Though the present questionnaire-based study was set up to explore a We would like to thank Dr. Darryl Bassett, Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists , for his advice regarding various psychiatric aspects of this study, as well as Drs. Harvey Irwin and Adrian Parker for their helpful comments. We are also indebted to the organizations Self-Help (M.D.P.) and the Schizophrenia Fellowship of South Australia for their assistance in obtaining subjects.