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Interview with Sally Rhine
Sally Rhine Feather
long
ago?
I was interested as early as I could talk because
that's what my parents were doing when I was born in 1930. My father JB Rhine
was just beginning the ESP card tests with Duke students (well, he gave his
results the name
Extrasensory Perception), and I and my siblings and
friends were child subjects. My mother Louisa E Rhine published the first ESP
tests with children in 1937 that were tests she conducted around the kitchen
table with
me, my sibs and about a dozen neighborhood children.
In those days you could do research like that---although most of us would go
crazy with that many children trying to do research. But to us kids it was just
a fun game situation and without TV it was even more fun than it would be
today.
The Rhine Research Center is the renaming in 1995 of
what had started out as the Duke Parapsychology Lab officially started in 1934
although the testing had begun as early as 1929 at Duke University. My father
was the founder and the director until retirement age from Duke, then he took
it with him off campus.
at
the center?
I've worked off and on in different ways over all my
lifetime – starting with my first job helping check the data by hand
before computers. All test data had to be rechecked to guard against human
error. Later I worked there after
college, then before and after I got a doctorate in experimental psychology at
Duke University. I left the field
in the 1970's and became a clinical psychologist, now in the last 10 years have
returned to serve in many different capacities, now as the Director of
Development and the Business Manager of our professional journal.
Funding is a major problem for us, because the field
is still considered controversial and we don't' have an academic connection any
more either. It has largely been supported by private donors over all the
years, with research grants from various foundations. Chester Carlson who
invented the Xerox process gave a large amount to my father in the 1960's that
enabled JB to set the lab up independent from Duke Unviersity. Currently we are working on a
revitalization plan to become self-sustaining largely through large educational
conferences and fund-raising drives, and then application for more research
grants. We have a very large
active group of volunteers who provide an incredible amount of support from the
rose garden, cleaning the building, to the website, hosting our programs,
helping editing of our journal, and managing our remarkable library.
on?
Our mission is to research the abilities of living
persons that suggest some ability that cannot be explained by the use of the
conventional sensorimotor system and seems not to be limited by time or space,
and to provide education in this regard.
most?
I'm fascinated by it all but my focus has been on the
continuing collection of the anecdotal reports sent in by the general public. I
have just co-authored a book that summarizes what we have learned from case
studies about ESP, and am now wanting to look more into the spontaneous PK
reports.
place
and community)
We occupy the bottom floor of a large 2-story
building built specifically for psi research with two special sound-proof
research labs (the first ever building of its kind to my knowledge) but
currently it is not fully occupied, and in fact we have rooms for rent.
That's almost like asking a geologist or a chemist
what they have learned in their field of study. We have 4000 books in our library, a professional journal
published since 1937, and that's not counting the several other journals in the
field (Journal of Psychical Research Society, etc.). Graduate degrees are possible in this field in Europe and
the graduates are not nearly aware of all that has been learned. But generally, we can say
that we have ample evidence from thousands of studies
that many aspect of the paranormal are real -- ex. remote viewing,
precognition, to a lesser extent psychokinesis and pure telepathy
I have had a few significant precognitive dreams in
my life, nothing outstanding. I mention these in my book.
Research
Center, can they? What can they
do?
If they live locally, they can talk to me or someone
else like Deana our administrator about being a volunteer---or at a distance
they can email me and help publicize our work. They can definitely join up as a Member that has a number of
advantages, discounts, and supports our work. They can attend some of our
weekend workshops staying at the hotel across the road. And they can very definitely talk to me
our Stephan Schwartz, our Senior Advisor, about helping in making a financial
donation.
The RRC is located off of Highway 15-501 on the
western edge of Durham, NC and about a mile west of the Duke University West
Campus and/or Medical Center.
Right now we don't' have anyone working fulltime but
our Administrator and she's so busy she can hardly see straight. If someone
comes with their own research funding then they would be conducting research
with supervision by our Research Director. I work almost full-time fielding questions from the pubic
and the media, writing books and articles, giving tours, planning our broad
educational program, working on membership and journal production, and
fundraising among other things. Research and education as broadly defined.
Although the paranormal has been with us in all
religions, cultures, and peoples since the beginning of recorded history, there
was a change in the world view that came with Newton so that most academics(or
those who control the resources) want to see a cause-effect physical
relationship and/or a workable theory or explanation before they accept
something unless they have experienced it firsthand themselves. It is easier
not to look at the data than to upset their old beliefs -- "I wouldn't
believe it even if it were true." Scientists are people too. And some people object for other
reasons too -- fear of what it might mean, misguided religious beliefs, etc.
Actually I had not heard that point before and donŐt
know if anyone has studied it in a definitive way---like, is that really the
case, and if so for whom? . ThatŐs the type of question that, were there to be
more university study of psi, would make a great dissertation question. I do know that typically there have
been declines over time back when high-scoring students were specially studied
in the lab setting as if motivation or interest just declined. And the whole
modern movement to get into a more relaxed, dream-like test situation was to
try to avoid that very thing. And even with the old forced-choice tests there
was noted a spontaneity effect where folks just make ŇguessesÓ on the
spur of the moment. Position effects suggested changes in subtle attentional
factors.
But about your question I donŐt have any more
information that any of your bright participants of your group might
have. But speculating, if we accept that psi is a subtle psychologically
affected ability coming through some lower-level of the neurological system,
then we can suppose it is helped by some focusing or intention that is subtle
but fleeting. There is a high correlation with creativity - and highly
imaginative people probably notice a similar effect with their art, music,
acting, writing, etc? Ask around and see. IŐd be interested in what you
all can tell me.
Well, the most recent research this summer was the
Ganzfeld research (telepathy test in which one person "sends" a randomly
selected video clip target to a relaxed receiver in quiet sensory-deprived
room). Jim Carpenter was looking for psychological variables that didn't really
show up but he did find once again that pairs who were emotionally close,
including some biologically close pairs, scored significantly higher than pairs
who were just friends or new acquaintances.
Earlier
findings over the years at the Duke Lab and its successors have been hundreds
of experiments giving evidence for clairvoyance (remote viewing), precognition,
pure telepathy, psychokinesis and all sorts of variations on these -- i.e.
mental intention on dice, random number machines, plants and animals. Lots of
research has been done with the independent variables being personality
factors, beliefs, attitudes, cognitive factors, and on and on.
There have been many case studies based
on the 14,000 cases collected by my mother Louisa E. Rhine from 1948 to 1971.
She wrote four books reporting her findings and many articles pointing out a
lot of things like percentage of negative cases where intervention seemed to
make a difference, how frequent psi dreams compared to waking intuitions,
etc. Like I say, itŐs like asking
a chemist what he has learned. I could bore you for hours.
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