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(Interview by Maria Grazia, Parapsychology Information Portal)
J.B. Rhine was responsible for the creation of the field of parapsychology. He adopted the term in order to give legitimacy to the field as a science. He brought the study of psychical research to the laboratory and set-up rigorous methods and concepts to further develop the understanding of what was considered at the time “uncommon human knowledge.”
In 1934, after several years of rigorous lab research and statistical analysis, Rhine published Extra Sensory Perception, which in various editions was read for decades to come. Rhine also founded the institutions that were necessary for the further development and legitimacy of parapsychology in the U.S. — including the creation of the Journal of Parapsychology and the formation of the Parapsychological Association, and also the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man (FRNM) (what is today known as the Rhine Research Center).
As the eldest daughter of JB and Louisa Rhine, Dr. Sally Feather-Rhine grew up in the world of parapsychology in Durham NC. She worked as a research assistant at the Duke Lab before and after a B.A. from the College of Wooster (1951) and as a researcher at FRNM after a doctorate in psychology (Duke University, 1967). Dr. Feather then worked over 30+ years as a clinical psychologist in mental health and psychiatric clinics and in private practice in North Carolina and New Jersey. Since 1995 she has been active at the RRC in various administrative roles, serving on two different occasions as volunteer Executive Director. Currently she is working on a research grant on the phenomenology of spontaneous PK experiencers. In 2005 she co-authored a book The Gift (St. Martins Press) that is an update of Louisa E. Rhine’s books on spontaneous ESP experiences.
Join us today for an interview with Dr. Sally Feather-Rhine.
What was it like growing up the daughter of Joseph B. and Louisa Rhine?
JB seemed nearly always busy or preoccupied with his work. It was the major preoccupation of his daily life. He shared this interest with our mother. They were often totally absorbed in related discussions, and many times to the frustration of us kids who were in our own world of childhood. We definitely learned to give deference to that, our mother saw to that, which often meant tiptoeing around the house if he was working in his study, or waiting on him to come home to finish his work on the campus, or missing him in the evening due to the evening seminars or frequent out of town business trips.
But other than that it was a really good life, mainly because our parents were basically caring people, both of us and of each other. They read to us, paid attention to our school work or music lessons, saw to it we had evening meals and Sunday dinners together, and had a yard that was child-friendly to which our friends were encouraged to come. We would go off on hikes or to swimming holes on weekends -- although those usually involved some regular folks from the Lab coming along, and that too was part of our parents’ devotion to their work.
Basically it was our mother who saw to it that we had a normal family life. She handled most of the domestic matters and kept her finger on the pulse of things. She was a remarkably sensible and balanced person. She was an older mother who herself had been the eldest of nine children so she was good at management. She was generally loved by everyone who knew her and she kept close correspondence with dozens of relatives, soldiers she had befriended as a Gray Lady during WWII, and she was the person that folks came to when they had a problem. However, it was very clear that our parents were a team that got along well together both as parents and as co-workers.
What were your earliest memories of the Rhine Research Lab?
My earliest memories in the early 1930’s were of that period when the Duke Lab was really getting going with major discoveries being made on a daily basis. The excitement of this spilled over to our home where there frequently were many Lab staff and students present reporting new findings and excitedly talking about things they were studying. My mother encouraged this I’m sure, so that she too could keep involved. Otherwise she would miss a lot, staying home with four young children. She never seemed to mind providing the extra food or labor, although these folks all joined in to help. In spite of all else she had on her hands, my mother did the first ESP experiment published with ordinary children and that was conducted around the kitchen table at our house with our neighborhood friends joining us as subjects.
Your father has been called the "Einstein" of Parapsychology? What was your reaction when you first realized this to be true?
I recall once, I probably was only about 6 or 7 when Mrs. MacDougall, the wife of my father’s great mentor and head of the psychology department, came over to a group of us who were probably making too much noise and said something like, “Children, you must settle down and keep quiet. Don’t you know that your father is a famous man?”
I don’t think that made much impression then, but the most significant memory was when I was about 15, a memory that still gives me a chill. It was an evening when my father who became deathly ill from menningitis and old Dr. Stokes came over to the house. The doctor made a house call, then left my mother upstairs with my father, and hastened downstairs to the phone where I, hiding behind the door, heard him pleading with the hospital people to admit my father. Those were the days when the beds were almost completely full, and I heard him say, “But you don’t understand. This is Dr. Rhine, and he’s a world-famous researcher and scientist.” I never again minded!
What do you believe was his most significant contribution to the field?
He brought legitimacy to the field of psychical research (that he renamed parapsychology) at a time when it was getting a fairly bad reputation because of the various scandals involving popular mediums of the day, one of whom he helped to expose.
Has the field always interested you and why?
I have always been interested in the field out of my larger interest in psychology, or in understanding human nature, how the mind works, and basically the relationship between mind and body---at one time believed to be two separate aspects of human nature although I now think are more likely intertwined.
Have you had any personal experiences with the paranormal?
I have only had a few significant experiences of my own, and I detail a couple of these in my popular book The Gift (St. Martin's Paperbacks, 2006).
Your father has been linked to many notable people such as Carl Jung and Einstein himself. Did you ever have the opportunity to meet them in person?
I never met either of these two gentlemen and in fact JB only met Carl Jung once at a noisy restaurant in NYC arranged by Jung’s publisher. I did get to meet Sir John Eccles, the Nobel prize winning neuropsychiatrist, when he visited our home in late 1949 and he and my father discussed Eccles work in looking into the neurological aspects of how body and mind might connect.
You have worked for 30+ years as a clinical psychologist in mental health and psychiatric clinics and in private practice. Did the field of Parapsychology ever inform your practice or benefit your understanding of your patient's struggles or lead to innovative solutions?
On a few occasions I would use this kind of knowledge to help acknowledge or normalize this aspect of reality or to help someone place some possible ability in perspective. Recently, for instance, a young man now in his 30’s contacted me to say that my sharing ESP cards with him as a child had a significant positive effect on his life. I think I was trying to help validate some aspect of his experience while helping him look at it rationally and not as a big deal or as some kind of supernatural experience.
What is some of your favorite current research in the field?
I’m very much interested in the presentiment work in parapsychology that seems to confirm some of the so-called telesomatic cases of spontaneous ESP, where there are bodily indications of an emotional target BEFORE it is physically presented. This seems to demonstrate clearly the unconscious nature of psi, how it pre-cedes cognitive awareness or operates entirely underneath the level of consciousness.
Do you believe we have come a long way in the past 50 years, in terms of people's acceptance of the field and in terms of the method and analysis of data?
On the one hand, the general public, including the most educated segment of the population are accepting psi as an established fact in increasing numbers. And yet paradoxically, where it matters the most there is still incredible resistance. I am referring to US medical schools, psychology departments or even in the departments of religious studies. So progress may be relatively unimportant if the field disappears from serious study because of the politics involved in the funding process of research.
There have definitely been advances in methodology and data analysis of course parallel to advances in all other fields of science over these decades. Statistics as a field were enormously moved along by the very issues raised by the early Duke ESP tests, as were all of the technological aspects, thereby, allowing safeguards to be employed more easily.
Would you describe the goals and vision of the Centre today?
The goals and vision of the Center continue to be those of our founders but broadened now, as is reflected in our subtitle “An Institute for the Study of Consciousness.” We seek to obtain a better understanding of the nature, breadth and depth of human consciousness— its reach, its reality, its durability, its healing capacity, and its spiritual dimension.
Would you describe any current research that the Rhine Centre is currently completing?
I have basically noted three main lines of work from descriptions on our website, which incidentally is the best resource for information that one can find.
IMPLICIT PSI : A STUDY ON THE HIDDEN PART THAT EXTRASENSORY PROCESSES PLAY IN EVERYDAY EXPERIENCES, by Jim Carpenter Ph.D.. Or whether/how unconscious processes affect our esthetic preferences. This study examines how both extrasensory and subliminal influences act upon our experience of liking or disliking things, and looks at how these two sources of potential influence work together in the unconscious mind. The expectations of the study are drawn from the author's First Sight model of psi functioning, and represent an attempt to elaborate that model empirically.
A STUDY OF HUMAN BIOFIELDS by Steve Baumann, Ph.D. and Bill Joines, Ph.D A variety of detectors, including those that can measure charge accumulation and electromagnetic emissions, are being used to study bio-energy healers, meditators and people who claim unusual effects on electrical equipment .and electromagnetic emissions. This is a continuation of work originally begun at Duke University that is now being performed at The Rhine Center.
MIND OVER MATTER STUDY – by Christine Simmonds-Moore Ph.D., Sally Rhine Feather, Ph.D. and Jean Hamilton M.D. This study is designed to learn more about the broad general range of possible spontaneous PK experiences. In the current phase the focus is on those unexplained physical events that seem to occur specifically around the time of crisis, death or near-death. Typical reports in this collection include the falling or breaking of objects, unusual noises, unexplained behavior of animals, or the malfunctioning of electronic equipment that occur around the time of a crisis, near-death, or death of a family member or loved one.
Visit the Rhine Research Centre at http://www.rhine.org
(Copyright © 2009, Parapsychology Information Portal) |
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