Psi

Psi is the neutral umbrella term of Parapsychology for extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK). The word also names the subject in the intelligence record: the Defense Intelligence Agency used it in its Soviet-research studies of 1972 to 1978, SRI and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) used it in their contract reports, and the 1995 review of the Stargate Project defined its terms by reference to it.¹³⁶⁷

Origin of the term

The psychologist James E. Alcock wrote in 1987 that the term "psi" was "introduced by Thouless (1942) as a neutral label" to avoid the associations of "psychic phenomena" and "extrasensory perception," and that parapsychologists defined it, citing Stanley Krippner (1977), as "interactions between organisms and their environment (including other organisms) which are not mediated by recognized sensorimotor functions." Alcock argued that this made psi a purely negative definition, in which every normal sensorimotor explanation must first be eliminated.² The SAIC glossary of 1991 attributes the sub-terms "psi gamma" (ESP) and "psi kappa" (PK) to R. H. Thouless and B. P. Wiesner, whose 1947 paper (published in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research) a later author in the same collection called their "classic paper," putting forward the idea that ESP is the "extrasomatic extension" of normal perception and PK the extrasomatic extension of voluntary movement.³⁴ The glossary also defines "psi-hitting" and "psi-missing" as scoring above or below chance at a target, and "psi field hypothesis" as a theory of W. G. Roll that events connected with physical objects produce changes in "psi fields" apprehended by ESP.³

Forms

Writers in the field distinguish several manifestations:

Clairvoyance, perception of objects or events without the known senses, often at a distance or hidden from view; Remote Viewing is the form of it developed at SRI by Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ.¹

Precognition, perception of future events, the basis of Associative Remote Viewing, in which an object or place serves as a surrogate for an abstract outcome. The SAIC glossary defines it as information about an event or target not yet chosen, "accessed without the possibility of a prediction or inference based on currently known clues."¹³

Telepathy, direct mental communication without conventional channels. Jim Schnabel wrote that the 1960 French magazine story of telepathy experiments with the submarine USS Nautilus (see The Nautilus (Telepathy Project)) was a fabrication that Soviet researchers nonetheless cited, with the effect of spurring Soviet telepathy research.¹

Psychokinesis, influence on physical systems without physical interaction, including the metal bending demonstrated by Uri Geller and the effects on pendulums recorded by SRI.¹

Soviet and Czechoslovak vocabulary

A July 1972 DIA report, "Controlled Offensive Behavior - USSR" (ST-CS-01-169-72), prepared for the Army Surgeon General's medical intelligence office, stated that "the Soviets prefer the term biocommunications instead of the term parapsychology" and listed as terms that "normally mean parapsychology" in Soviet writing "psycho-physiology, psychotronics, psychoenergetics, or biophysical effects." Western parapsychologists, it wrote, referred to the same complex as "extrasensory perception (ESP) and psi phenomena." A March 30, 1978 DIA report, "Paraphysics R&D - Warsaw Pact," noted that the Soviet word psychoenergetics had been "gaining popularity" and that the newer terms "tend to lessen or avoid adverse views sometimes associated with the older terminology."⁵⁶

The 1972 report's own summary posed the "strategic threat posed by the current 'explosion' in Soviet parapsychological research": that "Soviet efforts in the field of psi research sooner or later, might enable them" to know the contents of top-secret U.S. documents and the movements of troops and ships, to mold the thoughts of key leaders at a distance, to cause the instant death of any U.S. official at a distance, and to disable U.S. military equipment, including spacecraft, at a distance. The report called these "science fiction" but concluded that "the literature appears to support (b)," the influencing of leaders' thoughts, as the most possible use of psi phenomena in the period studied, drawing on Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder's Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain.⁵

The "psi gap"

The 1972 formulation became the "Psi Gap." Schnabel wrote in the London Independent on Sunday on August 27, 1995, in an article the CIA's files preserve as a wire transcript, that in the Sixties the Soviet Union began to pour resources into "ESP and psychokinesis, phenomena collectively termed 'psi' by researchers in the field," that much of it came under the control of the Soviet military and KGB, and that by the early Seventies American analysts, "formerly concerned about a possible 'missile gap,'" were growing anxious about a "psi gap."⁸ The phrase appeared in the American press in January and February 1984, in Time ("An E.S.P. Gap: Exploring psychic weapons," January 23, 1984) and Discover ("A Psi Gap?"), both listed in a 1988 Air War College research report by Lieutenant Colonel Dolan M. McKelvy, "Psychic Warfare: Exploring the Mind Frontier." McKelvy quoted a source saying the "establishment has apparently gone underground and is using titles other than psi, ESP or parapsychology to contract out research," and another, McRae, that "any CIA report mentioning psi is automatically classified top secret or higher," while Targ wrote that reliable information on psychic functioning should be more easily available.⁹

Program terminology: AMP, AC and AP

SAIC's 1991 "Comprehensive Research Plan for Anomalous Mental Phenomena," by Edwin May and Wanda L. W. Luke, defines "PSI. See Anomalous mental phenomena (AMP)," with anomalous cognition (AC) as the information-gathering form (the older ESP) and anomalous perturbation (AP) as the form that acts on matter (PK).³ The American Institutes for Research report of September 29, 1995 stated that "the investigators use the term 'Anomalous Mental Phenomena' to refer to what the parapsychologists label as psi," including ESP (called Anomalous Cognition) and psychokinesis (called Anomalous Perturbation); the experimenters claimed their results supported anomalous cognition, "especially clairvoyance ... and precognition," and found no evidence for anomalous perturbation.⁷

The two outside reviewers divided. Jessica Utts, a statistician, concluded that "using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established," that the results were "far beyond what is expected by chance" and that arguments from methodological flaws "are soundly refuted." Ray Hyman wrote that Utts's conclusion rested on three claims, that the statistical results of the SAIC and other experiments were far beyond chance, that methodological objections were refuted and that comparable effects had been replicated at several laboratories, and argued against each. The AIR evaluators, Michael Mumford, Andrew Rose and David Goslin, concluded that a "statistically significant laboratory effort has been demonstrated," but that it was unclear whether the effects could be attributed to paranormal ability, and that remote viewing failed to produce actionable intelligence.⁷

Scientific investigation and criticism

Early psychical research, which emerged from the study of hypnosis, became parapsychology as researchers such as J. B. Rhine and the Parapsychological Association applied laboratory methods. Schnabel wrote that psi research stayed largely outside mainstream science, hampered by the "giggle factor" and the absence of repeatable results and applications. Alcock's critique held that parapsychologists had produced no "single reliable demonstration" of the paranormal and that principles such as the experimenter effect made the psi hypothesis unfalsifiable; he argued the field sought to establish a non-material aspect of human existence rather than explain anomalies.¹² Government interest nevertheless led, in Schnabel's account, to covert programs such as the Stargate Project, driven by the concern about a psi gap.¹