DApproved For Release 2000/08/15: CIA-RDP96-00792ROO0701000001-9 Autobiographical Introduction I am an unlikely subject for biography. My life has been uneventful and inglorious and such adventures as have come my way have been no more than adventures of the mind. One of the temptations that a biographer must resist is the use of hindsight to give a spurious continuity to the life in question and thereby ignoring the part played by sheer chance. Parapsychology is such a de- viant pursuit in our society that it is nevertheless proper to inquire how some- one gets drawn into it. Perhaps the two most common explanations, in this connection, are the following. The individual in question may at some stage of his or her life have had intimations of the paranormal so impressive or dis- turbing that thereafter the topic became a consuming passion. Alternatively, and less dramatically, an interest in the paranormal may have been so strongly embedded in that person's family background and traditions that the seeds were sown from an early age. Neither explanation, however, fits my particular case. Never at any time, alas, have I been favored with one of those inexplicable incidents which so many people I have met can recall from their past and which have played their part in the lives of so many of my fellow parapsychologists (Pilkington 1987). Indeed, I wonder sometimes whether I might not be specially deprived in this respect. Am I, perhaps, tone deaf to the promptings of my psyche? Has my right hemisphere- that half of the brain that is said to mediate our intuitions and our psychic functioning - become atrophied from neglect? I do not know, but I remain a stranger to such experiences. Still less can the answer be found in my family background. My family were all, without exception, stolidly im- pervious to what my friend, Stanley Krippner, has so aptly called the "song of the siren" (Krippner 1977). A much simpler, if less charitable, explanation in my case is my lack of success in any of the conventional pursuits. Deviants, after all, are generally misfits. Approved For Release 2000/08/15: CIA-RDP96-00792ROO0701000001-9 Approved For Release 2000/08/15: CIA-RDP96-00792ROO0701000001-pt, Wi, The Relentless Question Aly Family Background they were still young and, as she never remarried, she had to bear the burdei of bringing them up on her own. A woman of exceptional energy, she ho My parents were Russian Jews who settled in LondonKeynes in Bed shortly before the never truly retired and now runs her own school in Milton First World War. It was a time whenjews were leaving. Russia in large numbers fordshire - to escape discrimination and conscription into Anne, the baby of the family, was our one real the Tsaxist army. Most of them scientist. it was to be he settled in the United States. As readers of the fate to marry Ernst Chain whom she met at oxford stories by Bashevis Singer will when he was busy with th know, there was a rich vein of supernatural and research that was to win him the Nobel Prize for mystical beliefs among the his part in the discovery ( small Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. My penicillin. But she was a good biochemist in her parents, however, could be own right and, after Chain described as assimilated Jews. Their links with death, she was promoted to a chair at Imperial traditional Judaism were of a College, London. sentimental rat-her than pious nature. Indeed theyIt was my middle sister, Nora, however, with whom prided themselves on their I had my closest tie modern emancipated outlook-this was especially This was partly due to the fact that she did not so with my mother, the marry until very late in lif more educated of the two. We children were given but, more, to the fact that she was such good a mildly conventional company. She served as foreig Jewish upbringing but it never went very deep withcorrespondent of the Observer newspaper in Paris, any of us. I went through Moscow, Washington ai a typical phase of adolescent piety but before elsewhere and won for herself an international I was out of my teens I had lost reputation as a political jou completely my faith in a deity and nothing that nalist. Although a small person, she was surprisingly has happened to me since has tough and combative ai caused me to change my mind. Hence I was cut off was often feared by politicians for her outspokenness. thereafter from one tradi- Since retiring from t tional avenue to the supernatural, one that has Observer her main interest has been Eastern Europe. meant a great deal to many of She published one bo my friends and contemporaries. about her travels in the Soviet Union and another about the situation It was our good fortune that my father prospered. yugoslavia with a strong anti-Titoist slant. She He started an export has the proud distinction business in the City of London trading in chemicalshaving been expelled from both countries by the and sundry products with security police for spreadi Eastern Europe an~ was in fact one of the first hostile propaganda. to do business with the newly established Soviet Union. We were thus brought Such, then, in brief, was my family but I can up in comfortable cir- say that neither my pare cumstances in a large house near Hampstead Heath. nor my siblings nor their spouses shared my increasing I was bom in 1920, the interest in the paran fourth of five children. We were a boisterous bunchmal and my brother, like most of his fellow oxford and it was an invigorating academics, was ope nursery in which to grow up. Each of us, one coulddismissive. say, eventually made some mark on the world in our very different ways but, in the best Jewish tradition, we have remained a fairly closely knit family. My brother, Max (now Lord Beloff'), is the eldest and I have three sisters My Career whom I love dearly: Ren6e, Nora and Anne. Max, ever since I can remember, was scholasticallyit was obvious from an early age that I was not brilliant. He became the bookish type am an historian and later an authority on comparativea very slow reader -an immense handicap for someone government and interna- in academic life. tional affairs. He attained the heights of Britishthe other hand I have always taken a keen interest academic eminence when he in art - My parents, theref gained his chair at All Souls, Oxford. Later he decided that a career in architecture might be became president of Britain's the answer for my future. It only independent university at Buckingham, which to prove a costly mistake. I never showed much he helped to found, and skill even for drawing ai now, in his retirement, has become a Conservative vainting, in which I liked to dabble, but I cen life peer. As can be imag- inly lacked the concrete irn ined, it was not easy to grow up in his shadow. nation, practical sense and grasp of detail that My poor parents were fond of is so essential to the makin me in their own way and patient enough with my an architect. However, as I approached the age waywardness but there was of leaving school, I still had no disguising their disappointment in me and they the least idea as to what I wanted to do with would teasingly call me my life and so had nothir) their schlemiel or, more charitably, a "dreamer." counter my parents' wishes. And so, in 1937, 1 enrolled at the Architeci My eldest sister, Reri6e, after an abortive attemptAssociation School of Architecture in Bedford at a career of, the stage, Square, London. My sti. settled for school teaching where she specialized there did nothing to allay my own misgivings but, in dramatic art. She married after -two years, war b young and proved the most fruitful of the family out and I went into the army- by producing six children in Dunkirk had fa fairly rapid succession. U h 'I her sba,~, ~j busine Tjjile By the time my battalion was ready to be sent abroad r Arowvedltor e ease'lb& /15: CIA-RDP96-00792ROO0701000 001.9 Approved For Release 2000/08/15: CIA-RDP96-00792ROO0701000OOtLgducion The Relentless Question Later I fell ill and was invalided out of the army after two and a half years without ever having gone into action. it turned out that I had contracted Crohn's disease, a rare abdominal disorder whose etiology is, I gather, unknown but which can be cured by surgery as mine eventually was. I regard it as one of the many ironies of my life that the only time I have had a serious bout of illness in my adult life, which has been mercifully free from medical complications, it was, in all probability, my salvation since I learned later that my battalion had been sent to join the Allied campaign in Italy where casualties were very heavy. But my providential escape from the horrors of war exacted a price and left me with permanent feelings of inferiority towards those of my contemporaries who had a good war record to their credit. I had managed to get through a good deal of reading while still in the army - there was always so much waiting around - including a fair amount of psychology. I had also picked up at a local library a copy of Rhine's Extra- Senso;,y Perception, which left a strong impression on me. When, therefore, I was fit enough to resume my education I wanted to make a clean break with architecture although I was still very vague as to my alternative. My mother pleaded with me to complete my architectural studies, warning me that, other- wise, I would become a drifter all my life (what today we would call a "drop- out"). I was still too docile and too dependent to thwart my parents' wishes so I stuck it out and, by 1946, had completed my professional qualifications. There followed a number of menial jobs in architectural offices which, owing to my incompetence, I could never hold for very long and which are among the unhappiest memories of my life. Eventually I decided that there was nothing for it but to go back to square one and I enrolled as a student of psychology at London University, at first at evening classes at Birkbeck College and, later, full time at University College. One of the attractions of University College -at that time was the weekly philosophy seminar I could attend under the late AJ. Ayer. Although I never succumbed to his logical positivism that was then much in vogue, his acute and trenchant intellect made a lasting impression on me and to this day I always strive to model my own writing on his taut prose style. By the time I graduated from University College in 1952 1 had reached the advanced age of 32 with no firm prospects as yet of being able to make a living. However, the very first thing I did on graduating was to marry a fellow student of psychology, Halla, who was ten years my junior. Her parents, like mine, were immigrants though of a more recent vintage. They were refugees from Hitler who had managed to get out of Germany only just in time before the war came. Halla soon became the most important person in my life and we have stayed together ever since. She was the better psychologist of the two, social psychology was her area of expertise. She eventually became active in the affairs of the British Psychological Society and served as president one year. She is the author of Camera Calture study of the part which photography plays in our 'Approved For Release 2000/08/15 lives (H. Beloff 1985). Our marriage produced two children, a girl in 1958 anc then, five years later, a boy. Both have chosen their own path in life which the-. are now busily pursuing. My son, Bruno, is a computer scientist who alread earns more than I ever did and whose facility with machines and grasp 0 technology is something that I can only envy. My daughter, Zoe, is strivin toward a career as a filmmaker in New York and is endowed with the artisti abilities which the gods denied to me. Although our marriage was, in man respects, a marriage of minds - we are both devotees of the arts - I think I ca truthfully say that neither my wife nor our children nor any of my mar. nephews and nieces were ever troubled by my "relentless question." Straight after graduating we both went to work for Raymond Carrell the University of Illinois. His main claim to fairic was to have devised what still one of the most widely used tests of personality. it was an exciting ne experience for us as well as being our introduction to the American way of lif But, after a year, we had had enough and we returned to Britain where I h-, been offered a job in the Department of Psychology of Queen's Universit Belfast, under George Seth. Neither of us had ever set foot in Ireland befc, but we found Belfast a pleasant enough place in which to make our home. T' 1950s were the halcyon days before the advent of terrorism and, when t CIA-RDP96-00792ROO0701000001-9 a year after their marriage. Halla and John Beloff in 1953, Approved For Release 2000/08/15: CIA-RDP96-00792RO00701000001;pd,,ti,, The Relentless Question troubles did eventually erupt, in 1969, we had long since moved on to Edin- burgh. In those more carefree days one could still get a job as a lecturer without having a Ph.D. I was able to work for it while doing my teaching and so, by 1956, 1 had managed to obtain my doctorate from Queen's University, as did Halla at the same time. Visual perception was the area of psychology that then interested me. It had grown naturally out of my interest in the visual arts which had led me into the byways of experimental esthetics and psychophysics, but I never had the patience one needs to become a first rate experimentalist. By this time I was well acquainted with the literature of psychical research and I made a point of trying to find out all I could about one very famous episode that had taken place in Belfast during the First World War. It involved Dr. W.J. Crawford, a lecturer in mechanical engineering, and the young physical medium, Kathleen Goligher (Barham 1988). But I still never thought that I might take an active role in experimental parapsychology unless I were to be lucky enough to encounter a gifted subject. My initiation eventually came about as the result of a talk I gave to the student physics society at Queen's. A bright young physics student, Leonard Evans, persuaded me that it might be possible to demonstrate PK using the emission of particles from a radioactive source. I liked the idea and was taken with his youthful en- thusiasm and we devised an experiment using equipment made available to us in the Department of Chemistry with volunteers drawn from the local spiritualist society. Alas, we obtained only null results (Beloff & Evans 1961) - a presage of things to come - but we somehow had contrived to anticipate a new development In PK research that was soon to reach fruition, thanks to the genius of Helmut Schmidt, with the result that our paper has been cited more often than any other experimental paper that I have published. A crucial step in my career was the publication of my first book, The Ex- istence ofMind(1962). It was a contribution to the philosophy of mind, rather than to psychology as such, and it represented my outraged reaction to Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind (1949). Ryle's book had become enormously popular and influential but my purpose was to show that it was utterly misguided. Ryle propounds the doctrine known as "analytical behaviorism," that is to say the view that all mental concepts, without exception, can be ex- plicated without residue in terms either of overt behavior or of the disposition to behave in a particular way. My book attempted to show that mind was, on the contrary, a cause of behavior and the subject of conscious experience. More passionate, perhaps, than profound, it had little effect on the subsequent course of British philosophy but I drew some comfort from the fact that it caught the attention of some eminent thinkers who, for one reason or another, were themselves at loggerheads with the philosophical establishment, in- cluding Michael Polanyi, Karl Popper, John Eccles and Arthur Koestler. I was also very gratified to get a fairly favorable review in The New Statesman, by "Freddie" Ayer (as he was known). Approved For Release 2000/08/15: light. Cynthia Weaver, Wayne Whitfield, Betty At FRNM, summer 1965; left to. thamani (woman, front), Newton, J.B. Rhine, Fay David (back with glasses), B. Kan John Freeman (back with glasses), John Beloff (front), Rex Stanford (glasses, rear center), Martinjohnson (bow tie), Harold Avery (glasses), Louisa Rhine (front, holding glasses), Charles Honorton (back), Dorothy Pope (middle, with glasses), Lynne Guyor, James Carpenter, Marie Avery (striped dress), David Rogers, Reid Creech. More important, however, for the direction my career was later to assume, wasJ.B. Rhine's somehow getting wind of my book, the final chapter of which is devoted to "the paranormal," and inviting me to visit his laboratory in Durham, North Carolina. This I gladly did in the summer of 1965. 1 had argued in my book that parapsychology alone provides the empirical evidence needed to vindicate the autonomy and efficacy of mind, a view that I havc adhered to ever since. Gaither Pratt, then Rhine's right hand man (Pratt 1987) tiq, also befriended me and it was he who invited me to give the bat uet address when the Parapsychological Association met in oxford, in 1964, for their an nual convention. (Beloff 1964). 1 was further patronized by that other domi nant figure of the parapsychology establishment, Eileen Garrett, and was ii due course rewarded with invitations to her fabulous conferences at Le PIC. near St. Paul de Vence in the south of France. I remained persona grata wit! the Parapsychology Foundation after she died when her daughter, Eileen Coly became president. CIA-RDP96-00792ROO0701000001-9 Approved For Release 2000/08/15: CIA-RDP96-00792RO00701000001,;g The Relentless Question troduction Rhine showed, I think, some perspicacity in urging me to continue writing about parapsychology rather than practicing it. I was already acquiring the reputation, which has clung to me ever since, of being a negative or psi- inhibitory experimenter and Rhine, of course, had no use for anyone who could not deliver positive results.* I did not heed his advice because I did not wish to become a mere commentator from the sidelines nor was I a sufficient scholar ever to become one of the historians of the field. Nevertheless, I would have to agree that experimentation was never my strong suit whereas I do believe that I have an ability to write, an ability that has stood me in good stead ever since my schooldays. In 1962 James Drever 11 offered me a jobt in the Department Psychology of the University of Edinburgh although he made no secret of the fact that he was an avowed skeptic with regard to parapsychology. We moved there in the winter of 1963 and Edinburgh has been my home ever since. At Edinburgh I was required to teach psychology on a broad front but no objec- tion was ever raised, either by my superiors or by my colleagues, to my making parapsychology my primary research area, a fact which, I think, speaks well for British tolerance, Moreover, Drever's successor, the late David Vowles, though himself a neuropsychologist, took a benign attitude towards the paranormal. I was lucky in obtaining some private funding that enabled me to hire research assistant. Our first systematic research program was an attempt to replicate the work of Milan Ryzl of Prague who was then claiming to be able to train ESP using hypnosis, What gave substance to these claims was the presence of his star sub- ject,iPavel Stepanek, who, after having undergone.this training, was sc6ring consistently in a nonrandom way on a test of clairvoyance to the satisfaction of parapsychologists from several different countries who went to Prague for the sake of testing him. Stepanek, I may say, performed in the waking state, not under hypnosis. In 1964, with help from the British Council, I went Prague myself to test Stepanek and make contact with Ryzl. Although the results I obtained with Stepanek were disappointing (Ryzl and Beloff 1965), I was favorably impressed with RyzI himself and we duly went ahead with our program at Edinburgh. It eventually became clear, however, that, for whatever reason, we were getting no learning effect (Beloff & Mandleberg 1966). A few years iater Ryz1 defected from Czechoslovakia and went to live in the United States, at first to work for B. Rhine, then later settling in California. He has J never subsequently furnished convincing proof that he has found a method of training ESP which remains one of the supreme unfulfilled goals of the para psychologist. Later we tried other training techniques such as the "waiting" technique, as described by Rhea White (1964) but with no better success (Beloff & Mandleberg 1967). At Edinburgh I made the acquaintance of John Smythies, then of the Department of Psychiatry, now at the University of Alabama. Smythies already had a long-standing interest in parapsychology and and we even collaborated on an experiment he wanted to try using his brain-damaged patients (Smythies & Beloff 1965) but we had no luck here either. Smythies had been commis- sioned to edit two books for Routledge, Brain and Mind (1965) and Science of andESP (1967), and I was invited to contribute to both volumes. It was, once again, Smythies who proposed me for the Council of the Society for Psychical Research, to which I was elected in 1964 and to which I have been reelected continuously ever since. Much later, after Smythies had migrated to the United States, he invited me to coedit with him a volume of solicited articles defend- ing the dualist position on the mind-body problem, a position to which bo&, of us in our different ways adhered. By then, however, times were harder fo; the publishing trade and Routledge turned us down. Eventually, however, th( University Press of Virginia came to our rescue (thanks to the good office a of Ian Stevenson) and our book, The Case for Dualism, has now at las appeared. Our first doctoral student to do a dissertation in parapsychology w9 Adrian Parker, who had graduated from our Department but had then don a clinical training -at the Tavistock Institute in London. The title of his dissert2 tion was "The Experimenter Effect in Parapsychology" (Parker 1977). Whil engaged on it he also managed to write a book dealing with ESP in altere states of consciousness (Parker 1970), to which I wrote an introduction. Follov ing Parker we had a succession of graduate students keen to work in par, to psychology. Some of them, such as Richard Broughton, Brian Millar an Michael Thalbourne have become well known to the parapsychology con munity. Thalbourne, too, Managed to produce a book while working for b Ph.D, (Thalbourne 1981), a very useful little glossary of parapsychologic terms (Thalbourne 1982). More recently Julie Milton and Deborah Delan( obtained their doctorates from this department on aspects of the ganzfe technique and they are now employed as research associates by our nc I "Koestler Professor of Parapsychology," Robert Morris. I have always felt tb I owed a special debt to my graduate students on whom I came increasing to depend for the experimental output of our parapsychology unit and it is *In the end, it proved to be his undoing. He could not desistfrom heaping favors on the them that I dedicate this b6ok. young W.J. Levy who Produced Positive results, time and again - until he was caught cheating (Rhine 1974). My second book, Psychological Sciences (197 3), was, essentially, a distil', tion of my lecture courses but, again, I included a chapter on parapsychollog tEven better, he offered both Halla and me jobs. He was Powerful enough to ignore the The title of the book was to convey the message that psychology never was a; anomaly of a husband an _00tf6~juoijld be a single unified science but at most a conglomerate of more 4f0d',1dtffb?AF~Tease 2000/08/15 : CIA-RDP96 R0007010DOO01-9 Approved For Release 2000/08/15: CIA-RDP96-00792ROO0701000001 721.1duction 10 The Relentless Question less related sciences. Not that the idea was new, indeed my old antagonist, Gilbert Ryle, had already said as much in his The Concept ofMind but perhaps not so many psychologists had made the point so explicitly. At all events, I took the view that parapsychology had the same right to be considered a psychological science" as any other even if it seldom figured in the curriculum at the university or in the standard psychology textbooks. I was also at this time commissioned by Elek Science, a London publisher, to edit a volume of solicited papers in parapsychology, which duly appeared in 1974 under the title New Directions in Parapsychology. Arthur Koestler did me a great favor on that occasion by contributing an "Afterword" to the volume for which he demanded no payment. Quite recently this book has resurfaced in ajapanese edition. Such honors as have come my way in the course of my career I owe entirely to my fellow members of the small but worldwide parapsychological com- munity. I was once even awarded a money prize by a Swiss Society thanks to the recommendation of the late Anita Gregory. I was elected president of the S.P.R. for the period 1974-1976 and I have twice served as president of the Parapsychological Association, in 1972 and again in 1982. It was in 1972 that the P.A. met in Edinburgh for their annual convention. In 1982 it met in Cam- bridge to join forces with the S.P.R. to celebrate the centennial of the latter and the jubilee of the former. My presidential address for the Edinburgh con- vention is included in this volume (see "Belief and Doubt") but my presiden- tial*address for the Cambridge meeting ("Three Open Questions") has been omitted as the themes I touch upon there are dealt with more fully elsewhere, In Edinburgh it was Arthur Koestler who gave the banquet address while in Cambridge it was Hans Eysenck. Although these two intellectual titans dis- agreed on most issues, both were good friends of parapsychology.* One particular honor conferred upon me descended from on high like a bolt from the blue. In March 1983 1 received a telephone call from Koestler's solicitors informing me that I had been nominated in Koestler's will as one of four executors (the others being his solicitor, his publisher and his literary agent). The double suicide of Arthur and Cynthia Koestler that had just taken place had attracted wide publicity throughout the world. As myself a keen sup- Porter of the cause of voluntary euthanasia, I admired Arthur's courage and rationality In deciding to choose the marmer and moment of his death rather than waiting passively for the fatal diseases that were ravaging him to take their toll. But it was, of course, tragic that Cynthia, who was herself in good health, should have decided to die with him rather than go on living without him. Even after reading their joint posthumous autobiography (Koestler & Koestler *Both have shown goodwill towards me. Eysenck wrote a f avorable review of my Psychological Sciences andKoestler citedit in the Observer, that Christmas, as among his choice of books of the y e'Approved For Release 2000/08/15: 1984), it is still hard for me to understand how any woman could love a man to that extent but I may be unduly cynical. Anyway, as far as parapsychology is concerned, the consequences were wholly favorable since Koestler had be- queathed his entire estate for the establishment of a chair of parapsychology at a British university. As the only one of the executors with any knowledge of parapsychology, it thus devolved on me to find a British university that would accept his gift, which many might regard as something of a Trojan horse. 10 The experience brought home to me the distrust and suspid n that stiL surrounds the mete mention of parapsychology in academic circles. In the event, the one university that, from the outset, was fully supportive was m\ own at Edinburgh. This was due very largely to the then principal, Johr Burnett, and the then dean of social sciences, an architect, Barry Wilson Perhaps my example in keeping a low profile all those years had paid off b, convincing my colleagues that parapsychology could not be so scandalous a some averred. Anyway, I was delighted when the Koestler bequest was finall, awarded to Edinburgh. It had saddened me to think, as I was reaching retire ment age, that parapsychology would soon disappear from the Edinburg) scene had it not been for this turn of events. Fortunately I was allowed a plac on the selection committee and could thus use my influence in the choice o a candidate to become the first Koestler professor and I was delighted whei the appointment was conferred on Robert Morris, a youthful American wh had won universal respect in his country from both parapsychologists and them critics. The fact that I take seriously phenomena that have clearly failed to irr. press most of my contemporaries forces me to ask whether, in all honesty, have some special need to believe? By the laws of cognitive dissonance th longer you commit yourself to some cause and the more effort you devote t it the harder it becomes to renounce it. My friend, Susan Blackmore, is or, of those rare individuals who succeeded in swapping horses in midstreaff Following a prolonged bout of failure to elicit psi she threw her lot in with & skeptical community (Blackmore 1986). But she was still in the early stages ( her career while I am a veteran. Could it be that I no longer dared yield t doubt? There have been times when I have been assailed with the thougl that, perhaps, the whole field had been misconceived from the start and w~ now running into the ground. The Levy scandal (Rhine 1974) was a bitter pi and even more traumatic for me was the final dismemberment of S.G. So (Markwick 1978). Another unsettling episode was when I thought I h~ discovered a remarkable medium on the Isle of Wight. But she turned out,. be fraudulent and it was largely thanks to the help I received from friends, il cluding my sister Nora, that I realized this just in time to prevent my makir a fool of myself in print (Stevenson & Beloff 1980). However, I survived the v-uious shocks and setbacks as did my basic conviction that psi is real. CIA-RDP96-00792ROO0701 000001 -9 Approved For Release 2000/08/15 C'A-RDP96-00792RO0070'00000'7Pt,,,duction 12 The Relentless Question answer may be, it is by no means simple or straightforward. In our commor desire to unravel the truth, I find the skeptics much less ready to see thing,, from our point of view than we are from theirs. I retired in October 1985. Never having occupied a chair, I could not ther become "emeritus" but thanks to the good offices of our new head of depart- ment, Robert Grieve, I have been made an "honorary fellow" of the depart. ment and am allowed to retain a room there and use the university facilities, Hence, though I no longer teach, I am not cut off from my natural communit) of scholars. I still keep a fatherly eye on what goes on in the department anc help, where required, with the supervision of graduate students. I am stil editor of theJournalof the S.P.R. but, more than anything else, I have an urg( to write. Always conscious of the inordinately long time it took me to find m, feet in life, I am anxious to have my say before it is too late. Meanwhile I als( like to keep up with my large international correspondence. Such, then, has been my life, at least as I perceive it. What now follows ar my thoughts about the topic that has occupied me for so long. They offer n revelations and no bold new theories of psi but I am hopeful that they ma strike a chord with readers who share my curiosity and my puzzlement. I woul describe myself as, basically, a conservative thinker. I mean by this not that regard commonsense as sacrosanct but that I demand very good reasons befoi relinquishing a commonsense position. My main aim in these papers has bee to do justice to the evidence while, at the same time, seeking to do the lea violence to our reason and our general knowledge. Whatever the psychodynamics of my own personality, I cannot be accused In this brief introduction it has not been possible to mention the nam of ignoring the skeptical literature. On the contrary I am always anxious to read of all who have helped me or have influenced my outlook. Suffice it to say th what the critics have to say. I subscribe to the Skeptical Inquirer and to the they are not forgotten and that they have my sincere gratitude. Zetetic Scholar. I attended a CSICOP conference, the year it met in London, and I have engaged in lengthy correspondence with the amazingJames Randi and the eminent Martin Gardner. I have come to realize that my own ig- norance of conjuring techniques may have misled me in assessing the veridicality of some of the cases or I strong phenomena. But, when ali that is granted, my impression is still that the skeptics are, for the most part, too facile and too complacent. They dwell too often on the weaker cases while ignoring or glossing over the really awkward evidence. For example, they are far too ready to assume that, if a medium or psychic has been caught cheating, this disposes of their claim, as if it was their character that was at issue rather than the phenomena. Whereas, if K.J. Batcheldor is to be believed, there may be something inherent in the psychodynamics of producing strong phenomena that predisposes one to Al1,VVdT& kW6tA1k t1- dJdg1jVheC C*#PT'O zub IA-RDP96-00792ROO0701000001-9 John Beloff, September 1985 (photo by Sean Hudson).