Irreducible Mind

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 Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments Xlll

Introduction
(Edward F Kelly) XVll

Chapter 1: A View from the Mainstream: Contemporary Cognitive

Neuroscience and the Consciousness Debates
(Edward F Kelly) 1
The History of Cognitive Psychology: A Thumbnail Sketch 2
From James B. Watson to the Cognitive Revolution 2
Problems in Classic Cognitivism 11
The Second Cognitive Revolution: Connectionism and
Dynamic Systems 16
John Searle's Critique of Computational Theories of the Mind 21
Biological Naturalism: The Final Frontier 24
Problems with Biological Naturalism 25
Psi Phenomena 29
Extreme Psychophysical Influence 31
Informational Capacity, Precision, and Depth 32
Memory 34
Psychological Automatisms and Secondary Centers
of Consciousness 35
The Unity of Conscious Experience 37
Genius-Level Creativity 41
Mystical Experience 41
The Heart of the M ind 42
Conclusion 45

Chapter 2: F. W. H. Myers and the Empirical Study of the Mind-Body

Problem
(Emily Williams Kelly) 47
The Historical Context 47
The Roots of Scientific Psychology: Dualism, Mechanistic
Determinism, and the Continuity of Nature 48
Psychology as Science: A Fundamental Conflict 50
The Naturalization of Mind: Limiting Psychology 51
The Unresolved Dilemmas o f Psychology 54
An Attempted Solution: Methodological Parallelism 56
F. W. H. Myers: Purposes and Principles 59
Tertium Quid 62
Continuity 63
Empiricism 63
Expanding Psychology 64
Psychophysiological Concomitance 65
v
vi-Table of Contents

The Study of Subliminal Phenomena 66

The New Physics 68
Mind and Matter 69
An Expanded Naturalism 70
Myers's Theory of Human Personality 72
The Unity-Multiplicity Problem: "Unitary" versus "Colonial"
Views of Mind 74
An Expanded View of Consciousness 75
A Jacksonian Model of Mind 76
An Evolutionary View of Mind 78
The Subliminal Self: A "Tertium Quid" Theory of
Consciousness 80
The Permeable Boundary: A Psychological Mechanism 83
Evolutive and Dissolutive Phenomena 84
Automatisms and the Expression of Subliminal Functioning 87
A Law of Mental Causality 89
Methods for Psychology 90
Empirical Phenomena for the Study of Mind: An Introduction
to Human Personality 95
Chapters 2 and 3: Hysteria and Genius 97
Chapter 4: Sleep 101
Chapter 5: Hypnotism 104
Chapters 6 and 7: Hallucinations-Sensory Automatisms and
Phantasms of the Dead 108
Chapters 8, 9, and the Epilogue: Motor Automatisms, Trance,
Possession, and Ecstasy 111
Conclusion 1 14

Chapter 3: Psychophysiological Influence

(Emily Williams Kelly) 1 17
Psychosomatic Medicine 119
Psychoneuroimmunology 1 22
Mind and Disease 123
Bereavement and Mortality 124
Sudden and "Voodoo" Death 124
Possible Mechanisms Behind Psychological Factors
in Mortality 128
Mind and Health 129
Postponement of Death 1 29
Religion and Health 130
Meditation and Healing 131
Faith Healing 132
Placebo and Nocebo 139
Specific Physiological Changes Appearing Spontaneously 148
Sudden Whitening of Hair or Skin 148
False Pregnancy 149
Stigmata 1 52
 Table of Contents-vii

Phenomena Related to Stigmata 156

Specificity of the Wounds 1 59
Predisposing Characteristics 160
Hysteria 162
Multiple Personality and Dissociative Disorders 167
Specific Physiological Effects Induced Deliberately 175
Yogis 177
Specific Physiological Changes Induced by Hypnosis 179
Autonomic Effects 181
Sensory Effects 1 83
Hypnotic Analgesia 1 85
Skin Conditions: Healing 190
Allergies 190
Bleeding 191
Burns 192
Warts 193
Other Skin Diseases 196
Skin Conditions: Induction of Bleeding, Blisters,
and Markings 199
Attempted Explanations of Hypnotic Skin Marking
and Related Phenomena 209
Changes in Another Person's Body 218
Spontaneously Occurring Phenomena 219
Sympathetic Symptoms 219
Maternal Impressions 221
Distant Mental Influence on Living Systems 225
Community of Sensation 225
Suggestion at a Distance 226
Distant Intentionality Studies: Clinical 227
Distant Intentionality Studies: Experimental 230
Birthmarks and Birth Defects in Cases of the
Reincarnation Type 232
Conclusion 236

Chapter 4: Memory
(Alan Gauld) 241
Memory and the Brain 242
Trace Theories: General Issues 242
Modern Approaches: Cognitive 248
Modern Approaches: Neuroscientific 260
The Problem of Survival 281
Myers's Approach to the Problem of Survival 284
Problems of Personal Identity 286
Myers's "Broad Canvas" Revisited 293
Myers, Memory, and the Evidence for Survival 295
Conclusion 299
viii-Table of Contents

Chapter 5: Automatism and Secondary Centers of Consciousness

(Adam Crabtree) 301
Historical Background 302
The Views of F. W. H. Myers 305
Related Views of Some Major Contemporaries 309
Pierre Janet 309
William James 312
Morton Prince 317
T. W. Mitchell 319
William McDougall 322
Sigmund Freud 327
Carl Jung 332
Psychological Automatism: More Recent Work 334
Ernest Hilgard 334
Stephen Braude 337
Unconscious Cerebration Revisited 340
Sociocognitive Theorists 341
The Cognitive Unconscious 345
Neurobiological Research 348
Automatism and Supernormal Phenomena 353
Automatism and Creativity 354
Sensory and Motor Automatisms and Mediumship 354
Automatism and Experimental Psi Research 361
Conclusion 363

Chapter 6: Unusual Experiences Near Death and Related Phenomena

(Emily Williams Kelly, Bruce Greyson, and Edward F Kelly) 367
Near-Death Experiences: An Introduction 369
Explanatory Models of Near-Death Experiences 374
Psychological and Cultural Theories 374
Expectation 374
Birth Models 376
Depersonalization 377
Personality Factors 377
Physiological Theories 378
Blood Gases 379
Neurochemical Theories 380
Neuroanatomical Models 381
"Transcendent" Aspects 385
Enhanced Mentation 386
Veridical Out-of-Body Perceptions 387
Visions of Deceased Acquaintances 390
Converging Lines of Evidence 391
The Larger Context 394
Out-of-Body Experiences 394
Autoscopy 403
 Table of Contents-ix

Lucid Dreams 404

Apparitions 405
Veridical Apparitions 406
Collective Apparitions 407
Deathbed Visions 408
Mystical and Conversion Experiences 41 1
A Psychological Theory? 413
The Challenge of Near-Death Experiences 415
General Anesthesia 416
Cardiac Arrest 417
Conclusion 421

Chapter 7: Genius
(Edward F Kelly and Michael Grosso) 423
Myers's Theory of Genius: General Features and Scope 425
The Creative Process: A Descriptive Model 427
Myers's Psychology of Creative Inspiration 429
Continuity 430
Automatism 432
Calculating Prodigies 432
"Organic" Senses 433
Hallucinatory Syndromes 435
Automatisms in Genius 440
Genius in Automatists 447
Incommensurability 45 1
Non-Linguistic Symbolisms 45 1
Associationism and Its Limits 452
Coleridge and the Theory of Imagination 454
Psychoanalytic Theory: Primary and Secondary Process 457
The Crucial Role of Analogy and Metaphor 459
The Failure of Computational Theories of Analogy 460
Implications for Cognitive Theory 466
Summary 469
The Creative Personality 470
Genius and Mental Illness 470
Genius as Personality in Transformation 476
The Creative Nisus: A Drive Toward Wholeness 477
Art as Transformative 481
Transpersonal Roots of Genius 482
Creativity and Psi 483
Genius and Mysticism 484
Conclusion 492

Chapter 8: Mystical Experience

(Edward F Kelly and Michael Grosso) 495
Phenomenology of Mystical Experience: An Introduction 497
x-Table of Contents

The Problem of the Universal Core 503

Steven Katz and the Contructivist Backlash 511
The Problem o f Objective Significance 51 8
Stace's Philosophical Argument for Objective Significance 519
Empirical Arguments for Objective Significance 521
Mysticism and Genius 521
Mysticism and Supernormal Phenomena 525
Neurobiological Approaches to Mysticism 531
Mysticism and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy 531
Gellhorn and Ergotropic/Trophotropic Systems 534
The Model of d'Aquili and Newberg 537
James Austin's Zen and the Brain ( 1999) 539
Mysticism and Psychedelics 542
Psychodynamic Approaches to Mysticism: Toward a
Working Model 553
Freud and Jung 554
Myers and James 558
Opportunities for Further Research 563
General Considerations 563
Sources of Relevant Phenomena 565
Further Guidelines for Future Research and Theory 572
Conclusion 573

Chapter 9: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century

(Edward F Kelly) 577
Contemporary Reviews of Human Personality 577
A Re-assessment of Myers's Theory of Personality 581
Myers's Methodological Principles 582
Myers's Natural History of the Mind 584
Myers's General Theory of the Psyche: The Subliminal Self 585
Post-Mortem Survival 595
Myers's Generalized Concept of Evolution 599
Myers/James Filter Theory and Contemporary Science:
Toward Reconciliation 603
Non-Cartesian Dualist-Interactionist Models 607
Neutral-Monist Models 630
Summary and Prospectus 639

Appendix: An Introductory Bibliography

of Psychical Research 645
Introductory and General Scientific Literature 645
Spontaneous Case Studies 647
Philosophical Literature 648
Survival and Mediumship 648
Reincarnation 650
History of Psychical Research 651
 Table of Contents-xi

Meta-Analyses, Reviews and Selected Journal Articles on

Experimental Studies 652
DMILS (Distant Mental Influence on Living Systems) 652
Ganzfeld 652
Hypnosis and Psi 653
Statistics and Meta-analyses 653
The Psi Controversy 653

References 657

Index 759

About the Authors 800

 Preface and Acknowledgments

This book originated from a seminar directed to theoretical foundations of

scientific psychology, initiated in 1998 by Michael Murphy under the aus­
pices of the Center for Theory and Research of Esalen Institute. By the year
2000 our discussions had advanced to the point where we believed we could
demonstrate, empirically, that the materialistic consensus which undergirds
practically all of current mainstream psychology, neuroscience, and philos­
ophy of mind is fundamentally flawed. We therefore committed ourselves to
developing a book-length presentation which would systematically articu­
late and defend this point of view.
Our general strategy was to assess the overall state of psychology, as
it exists here at the beginning of the 21st century, from a perspective that
deliberately but selectively takes into account its first hundred-plus years of
organized scientific effort. The essential driving idea was to step backward,
the better to jump forward -" reculer pour mieux sauter." The tactical oppor­
tunity for this exercise was to be provided by the centennial of the publica­
tion in 1903 of an extraordinary book by a largely forgotten genius, F. W.
H. Myers, titled Human Personality. Deeply admired by William James and
other leading scholars of that period, this two-volume work is unquestion­
ably a great but neglected classic of our science. It advances an elaborate but
empirically supported theory of the constitution and functioning of human
beings, one that in many ways is sharply at odds with current mainstream
thinking, but one that we believe penetrates far closer to the empirical truths
of the matter. By framing the relevant issues in the context of Myers's work,
we thought, we would be able to justify and to some extent foreshadow what
we anticipate will become a major and vitally necessary reworking of cen­
tral parts of scientific psychology.
The basic plan of the book was to be threefold. First, we would provide
an exposition of Myers's theoretical and empirical contributions. Second,
we would systematically and critically examine subsequent research on a
variety of empirical topics that were central to the theoretical position he
developed. Finally, we would attempt to assess, in light of this review, where
things now stand in psychology and where we need to go. The goal through­
out would be not simply to celebrate Myers's project as he himself left it, but

XlII
xiv-Preface and Acknowledgments

to carry it forward in the context of relevant substantive and methodologi­

cal achievements of the intervening century.
The large book you hold in your hands realizes these intentions, to the
extent permitted by our collective capacities and knowledge. We missed our
original deadline, which seemed at first to lie in a far-distant future, by a full
three years. This was due not to lack of effort on our part but to the dimen­
sions of the task, which we seriously underestimated. The book could eas­
ily have become larger still. The subjects we discuss are individually com­
plex and deeply intertwined, with ramifications that proliferate endlessly in
interesting directions. Most chapters and even parts of some chapters could
easily become books in themselves, and some probably will. Many chapters
also deal with issues that lie at or beyond the currently recognized boundar­
ies of "accepted" science, and therefore pose special challenges for respon­
sible presentation. Despite their intrinsic difficulties, however, these diverse
materials combine to produce what we think is a compelling demonstration
that current mainstream opinion in psychology must change, and in direc­
tions that are both theoretically fundamental and humanly momentous. In
a nutshell, we are arguing for abandonment of the current materialistic syn­
thesis, and for the restoration of causally efficacious conscious mental life to
its proper place at the center of our science. We hope to catalyze the emer­
gence of an enlarged and reunified mainstream psychology, one that does
not systematically ignore-as the present-day mainstream does-many
large bodies of evidence deeply relevant to our most central and abiding
human concerns.
In the interest of effectively promoting this sea-change we have delib­
erately crafted our book for a primary audience consisting of advanced
undergraduate and early-stage graduate students, particularly students in
disciplines such as psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy. These are the
future leaders of our field, and we want to reach them before they suffer
the "hardening of the categories" that all too often accompanies entry into
these highly specialized professions. To do so required that our material be
presented with a level of currency, detail, and rigor commensurate with that
of the other professional materials such persons are exposed to on a daily
basis, and we have attempted to meet that standard.
This has necessarily involved some difficult tradeoffs, however, for we
also wanted our book to be accessible to anyone of good general education
and intelligence who is seriously interested in its subject matter and willing
to make the necessary effort. We have tried to ease the burden for such per­
sons in various ways-for example by defining obscure or "jargon" terms,
providing interim summaries and abstracts, and relegating many points of
more technical or scholarly interest to parentheses and footnotes. However,
there is no escaping the fact that some parts of the argument, especially
parts of Chapters 1 , 4, 7, and 9, are likely to present difficulties, particularly
on first encounter. We implore such readers to be understanding and patient
with us and persistent in their own efforts, skipping over any particularly
 Preface and Acknowledgments-xv

challenging sections at first and returning to them later with a better sense
of how everything fits into the overall scheme.
Our book has the outward form of an edited volume but is atypical of
that genre. It is united throughout by a single theme, our collective drive
toward a broadly correct, though necessarily incomplete, scientific picture
of the mind as it relates to brain activity. This generalist impulse contrasts
sharply with the extreme specialization that characterizes the sciences and
other modern professions, and that is often especially pronounced in edited
books. Edited volumes in science often address narrow topics and consist
of pieces authored in hermetic isolation for small groups of specialists inter­
ested mainly in talking to each other. That is emphatically not the case with
the present work. The book as a whole and its chapters individually take
on big issues and seek to engage large numbers of readers. Several chapters
include two or more of us as authors, and all were generated not in isolation
but in conformity with an overall plan that emerged through group discus­
sions spanning a period of years.
Our collective professional experience covers a wide range in terms of
education, research, and teaching in psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience,
and philosophy, and all of us have had the opportunity to read and critique
every part of the book, usually in multiple versions. In addition to pooling
our own professional expertise in this way, we have sought critical feedback
on chapter drafts from outside volunteer readers including both professional
colleagues from various disciplines and more general readers representing a
diversity of backgrounds. Their efforts and suggestions have led to numer­
ous improvements throughout the book, for which we are grateful . We are
acutely aware that many gaps and imperfections remain, and we take full
responsibility for these. One of our main points is that what is most urgently
needed for further theoretical progress is more and better data of certain
critical and specified kinds; this, the greater good, seemed better served
by getting the book out now in reasonably finished form than by obsessing
further over potentially endless refinements.
Finally, we wish to acknowledge contributions from individuals who
have supported this project in various special ways. Among our "test-driv­
ers" we give particular thanks to Carlos S. Alvarado, William Barnard,
Frank Benford, Lori Derr, Ross Dunseath, Lorin Hollander, Fritz Klein,
Jeff Kripal, James Lenz, Cory Maxwell, Francis McGlone, Michael Mur­
phy, Margaret Pertzoff, Michael Schaffer, Ben Snyder, Ian Stevenson, Pim
van Lommel, and Ray Westphal. Seminar participants who have contributed
vigorously to the interdisciplinary conversations that helped shape the book
include Richard Baker, John and Alyce Faye Cleese, David Fontana, Owen
Flanagan, Arthur Hastings, Sean Kelly, Antonia Mills, Michael Murphy,
Gary Owens, Frank Poletti, Dean Radin, Will iam Roll, Bob Rosenberg,
Marilyn Schlitz, Charles Tart, Jim Tucker, and Eric Weiss. Frank Poletti
efficiently managed the logistics of our meetings, and Bob Rosenberg skill­
fully oversaw production of our digital version of Human Personality (see
p. xxx of our Introduction). Robert F. Cook provided translations of the
xvi-Preface and Acknowledgments

many French and Italian passages in Human Personality as well as the

translation of Theodore Flournoy's review, for the digital version of Human
Personality. John Cleese rescued us from periodic despondency and finan­
cially supported the mechanics of book production. Faye Joseph and Gary
Owens provided additional financial support for book production, and the
Institute for Noetic Sciences provided support for our meetings. Nancy L.
Zingrone generated our camera-ready copy, including the index. Lori Derr,
Dawn Hunt, and Martha Stockhausen provided invaluable help in track­
ing down references. We thank our associates from Rowman & Littlefield,
especially Stanley Plotnick, Jon Sisk, and our editor Art Pomponio, for
taking strong interest in this project and then sticking with it despite the
many subsequent changes in book content and organization that delayed
its completion. Above all we thank Michael Murphy for initially conceiving
this project, for bringing us together in the spectacularly stimulating envi­
ronment of Esalen, and for his apparently limitless reserves of comradeship,
wit, and wisdom.
 Introduction

Edward F. Kelly

The central subject of this book is the problem of relations between the
inherently private, subjective, "first-person" world of human mental life and
the publicly observable, objective, "third-person" world of physiological
events and processes in the body and brain.
Scientific psychology has been struggling to reconcile these most-basic
dimensions of its subject matter ever since it emerged from philosophy near
the end of the 19th century. Both were fully present in William James's
monumental Principles of Psychology (1 890b), the earliest English-language
survey of the new academic discipline that is still widely cited today. James
explicitly acknowledged the normally intimate association between the men­
tal and the physical, and he systematically and sympathetically rehearsed
what little was then known or surmised about the brain. Unlike many of
his scientific contemporaries, however, James resisted premature and facile
attempts at neural reductionism. When he recognized limitations on the
physiological side, he was content to record his psychological observations
and await further progress in neurophysiology. The bulk of the Principles
therefore consists of masterful expositions, relying heavily on sophisticated
observation of his own inner workings, of central properties of mental life
such as attention, imaginatiori, the stream of consciousness, volition, and­
at the heart of everything-the self (Leary, 1990).
James's person-centered and synoptic approach was soon largely
abandoned, however, in favor of a much narrower conception of scientific
psychology. Deeply rooted in earlier 1 9th-century thought, this approach
advocated deliberate emulation of the presuppositions and methods-and
thus, it was hoped, the stunning success-of the "hard" sciences, especially
physics. James was barely in his grave when J. B. Watson (1913) published
the founding manifesto of radical behaviorism, the logical culmination of
this tradition. Psychology was no longer to be the science of mental life, as
James had defined it. Rather it was to be the science of behavior, "a purely
XVII
xviii-Introduction

objective experimental branch of natural science" (p. 1 58). It should "never

use the terms consciousness, mental states, mind, content, introspectively
verifiable, imagery, and the like" (p. 166). Its task was instead to identify
lawful relationships between stimuli and responses: "In a system of psycho 1-
ogy completely worked out, given the response the stimuli can be predicted;
given the stimuli the response can be predicted" (p. 167).
Watson's doctrine quickly took hold, and for the next half-century
mainstream American psychology deliberately avoided contact with issues
of the sort most important to James. It largely abandoned the first-person
perspective of the investigator trying to understand things from within,
and adopted almost exclusively that of an external observer whose task
it is to predict and control the behavior of a material object, an opaque
"black box," the experiential interior of which psychological science can
and should ignore. Indeed, the success of physical science could be viewed
as resulting in part precisely from its having in a similar way stripped from
its subject matter all traces of purpose and teleology. In hopes of carrying
through Watson's program of discovering units and laws in terms of which
all behavior might ultimately be explained, most psychologists thus turned
to narrowly behaviorist experimental studies-sometimes of humans but
more commonly of simpler organisms, and typically in artificially simpli­
fied environments.
The inward dimension of psychology did not altogether disappear,
however. The old introspectionist schools l ingered on for a while, and intro­
spection continued to play a significant role in areas such as psychophys­
ics and the mainly European movements known as Gestalt psychology and
phenomenology. During the same years in which behaviorism was seizing
control of the American scientific mainstream, people such as Janet, Freud,
Jung, and their followers were elaborating the various schools of depth psy­
chology or "dynamic psychiatry" (Ellenberger, 1 970). Even in the darkest
days of the early behaviorist period-the rabid and monolithic "Age of The­
ory" (Koch & Leary, 1985)-major figures such as Morton Prince, Henry
Murray, Gordon Allport, and Gardner Murphy steadfastly defended the
complexities of human mind and personality against simplistic reduction­
ist onslaughts. More recently, schools of "humanistic" and "transpersonal"
psychology have also emerged which openly aspire to bring the deeper parts
of human personality back within the framework of scientific psychology.
It cannot be denied, however, that for most of psychology's first century
these dissident movements have had to wage an uphill battle at or some­
times beyond the margins of the discipline.
The ascendancy of the behaviorist juggernaut thus essentially frag­
mented the traditional subject-matter of scientific psychology as envisioned
by pioneers such as James, and left the fragments in the care of distinct,
poorly integrated, and sometimes even mutually antagonistic professional
sub-specialties. That the deep divisions it created remain with us even today
is conspicuously exemplified by the 1 989 schism within the American Psy­
chological Association, which reaffirmed a fundamental split between the