How Our Minds Use Psi: The First Sight Theory with Jim Carpenter

Critics of parapsychology have complained that even if phenomena like ESP and PK and Mental Healing are real, we have no way of understanding them since there are no scientific theories to help us think about them, integrate them into other mainstream knowledge, and guide our research as we try to understand more about them. Actually, some good theories have been proposed, although they are not widely known. First Sight Theory is an especially useful and broadly inclusive one. Developed by Dr. James Carpenter, it was first presented fully in a text over 10 years ago: "First Sight: ESP and Parapsychology in Everyday Life" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012).

In this presentation, Dr. Carpenter will summarize the basic propositions in First Sight Theory and show how they help us understand the way the mind uses psi implicitly in forming all of our basic kinds of experience--our perceptions, preferences, decisions, actions. He will explore what the theory says about how these implicit processes occasionally become available to our awareness, and why they usually are not.

Jim will also illustrate the theory's explanatory usefulness by showing how it can integrate parapsychological findings with mainstream research in areas such as negative affective arousal, personality, and memory. He'll describe some studies that help illuminate how psi is used to help form such everyday experiences as the flow of social conversation and the formation of preferences.

Participants will gain the most from this presentation if they acquire the text and read at least the first half before attending. Questions and reactions from such prepared participants will help the experience be more useful for all attending.

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James Carpenter, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, experimental psychologist/parapsychologist, and writer. He received his PhD from Ohio State University, and did advanced clinical training at Langley Porter Clinic (U. CA Medical Center) in San Francisco. He is Board Certified in Clinical Psychology, American Board of Professional Psychology. Formerly a professor of psychology at UNC Chapel Hill, he has maintained a private practice, carried out psychological and parapsychological research, and written many research papers and professional essays, along with literary publications (poetry and fiction). He is a past president of the Parapsychological Association and past Board President of the Rhine Research Center, and is also a past board Director and Secretary of the American Academy of Clinical Psychology. He lives in the country between Hillsborough and Chapel Hill, NC.