AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION, JOHN BELOFF

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Autobiographical Introduction
I am an unlikely subject for biography. My life has been uneventful and
inglorious and such adventures as have come my way have been no more than
adventures of the mind. One of the temptations that a biographer must resist
is the use of hindsight to give a spurious continuity to the life in question and
thereby ignoring the part played by sheer chance. Parapsychology is such a de-
viant pursuit in our society that it is nevertheless proper to inquire how some-
one gets drawn into it. Perhaps the two most common explanations, in this
connection, are the following. The individual in question may at some stage
of his or her life have had intimations of the paranormal so impressive or dis-
turbing that thereafter the topic became a consuming passion. Alternatively,
and less dramatically, an interest in the paranormal may have been so strongly
embedded in that person's family background and traditions that the seeds
were sown from an early age.
Neither explanation, however, fits my particular case. Never at any time,
alas, have I been favored with one of those inexplicable incidents which so
many people I have met can recall from their past and which have played their
part in the lives of so many of my fellow parapsychologists (Pilkington 1987).
Indeed, I wonder sometimes whether I might not be specially deprived in this
respect. Am I, perhaps, tone deaf to the promptings of my psyche? Has my
right hemisphere -that half of the brain that is said to mediate our intuitions
and our psychic functioning-become atrophied from neglect? I do not know,
but I remain a stranger to such experiences. Still less can the answer be found
in my family background. My family were all, without exception, stolidly im-
pervious to what my friend, Stanley Krippner, has so aptly called the "song of
the siren" (Krippner 1977). A much simpler, if less charitable, explanation in
my case is my lack of success in any of the conventional pursuits. Deviants, after
all, are generally misfits.
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 Approved For Release 2000/08/15 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000701000001Introduction
The Relentless Question
My Family Background
My parents were Russian Jews who settled in London shortly before the
First World War. It was a time when Jews were leaving Russia in large numbers
to escape discrimination and conscription into the Tsarist army. Most of them
settled in the United States. As readers of the stories by Bashevis Singer will
know, there was a rich vein of supernatural and mystical beliefs among the
small Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. My parents, however, could be
described as assimilated Jews. Their links with traditional Judaism were of a
sentimental rather than pious nature. Indeed they prided themselves on their
modern emancipated outlook-this was especially so with my mother, the
more educated of the two. We children were given a mildly conventional
Jewish upbringing but it never went very deep with any of us. I went through
a typical phase of adolescent piety but before I was out of my teens I had lost
completely my faith in a deity and nothing that has happened to me since has
caused me to change my mind. Hence I was cut off thereafter from one tradi-
tional avenue to the supernatural, one that has meant a great deal to many of
my friends and contemporaries.
It was our good fortune that my father prospered. He started an export
business in the City of London trading in chemicals and sundry products with
Eastern Europe and was in fact one of the first to do business with the newly
established Soviet Union. We were thus brought up in comfortable cir-
cumstances in a large house near Hampstead Heath. I was born in 1920, the
fourth of five children. We were a boisterous bunch and it was an invigorating
nursery in which to grow up. Each of us, one could say, eventually made some
mark on the world in our very different ways but, in the best Jewish tradition,
we have remained a fairly closely knit family. My brother, Max (now Lord
Beloff), is the eldest and I have three sisters whom I love dearly: Renee, Nora
and Anne.
Max, ever since I can remember, was scholastically brilliant. He became
an historian and later an authority on comparative government and interna-
tional affairs. He attained the heights of British academic eminence when he
gained his chair at All Souls, Oxford. Later he became president of Britain's
only independent university at Buckingham, which he helped to found, and
now , in his retirement, has become a Conservative life peer. As can be imag-
ined, it was not easy to grow up in his shadow. My poor parents were fond of
me in their own way and patient enough with my waywardness but there was
no disguising their disappointment in me and they would teasingly call me
their schlemiel or, more charitably, a "dreamer."
My eldest sister, Renee, after an abortive attempt at a career on the stage,
settled for school teaching where she specialized in dramatic art. She married
young and proved the most fruitful of the family by producing six children in
a
B the time my
fairly rapid succession. U;&hpa~roved or eiease5 0 die > /1 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000701000001-9
they were still young and, as she never remarried, she had to bear the burdei
of bringing them up on her own. A woman of exceptional energy, she ha
never truly retired and now runs her own school in Milton Keynes in Bed
fordshire.
Anne, the baby of the family, was our one real scientist. It was to be he
fate to marry Ernst Chain whom she met at Oxford when he was busy with th
research that was to win him the Nobel Prize for his part in the discovery c
penicillin. But she was a good biochemist in her own right and, after Chain
death, she was promoted to a chair at Imperial College, London.
It was my middle sister, Nora, however, with whom I had my closest tie
This was partly due to the fact that she did not marry until very late in lif
but, more, to the fact that she was such good company. She served as forei?
correspondent of the Observer newspaper in Paris, Moscow, Washington at
elsewhere and won for herself an international reputation as a political jou
nalist. Although a small person, she was surprisingly tough and combative ai
was often feared by politicians for her outspokenness. Since retiring from t
Observer her main interest has been Eastern Europe. She published one bo
about her travels in the Soviet Union and another about the situation
Yugoslavia with a strong anti-Titoist slant. She has the proud distinction
having been expelled from both countries by the security police for spreadi
hostile propaganda.
Such, then, in brief, was my family but I can say that neither my pare
nor my siblings nor their spouses shared my increasing interest in the paran
mal and my brother, like most of his fellow Oxford academics, was ope
dismissive.
My Career
It was obvious from an early age that I was not the bookish type. I am
a very slow reader-an immense handicap for someone in academic life.
the other hand I have always taken a keen interest in art. My parents, theref
decided that a career in architecture might be the answer for my future. It
to prove a costly mistake. I never showed much skill even for drawing
painting, in which I liked to dabble, but I certainly lacked the concrete im
nation, practical sense and grasp of detail that is so essential to the makin
an architect. However, as I approached the age of leaving school, I still had
led and so had nothin
the least idea as to what I wanted to do with ylife
at the A chitin
counter my parents' wishes. And so, in 1937, I enrolled
School of Architecture in Bedford Square, London. My stt
there did nothing to allay my own misgivings but, after two years, war b
out and I went into the army.
unkirkhadfa
b
roa
ttalion was ready to be sent a
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Later I fell ill and was invalided out of the army after two and a half years
without ever having gone into action. It turned out that I had contracted
Crohn's disease, a rare abdominal disorder whose etiology is, I gather,
unknown but which can be cured by surgery as mine eventually was. I regard
it as one of the many ironies of my life that the only time I have had a serious
bout of illness in my adult life, which has been mercifully free from medical
complications, it was, in all probability, my salvation since I learned later that
my battalion had been sent to join the Allied campaign in Italy where
casualties were very heavy. But my providential escape from the horrors of war
exacted a price and left me with permanent feelings of inferiority towards those
of my contemporaries who had a good war record to their credit.
I had managed to get through a good deal of reading while still in the
army - there was always so much waiting around - including a fair amount of
psychology. I had also picked up at a local library a copy of Rhine's Extra-
Sensory Perception, which left a strong impression on me. When, therefore,
I was fit enough to resume my education I wanted to make a clean break with
architecture although I was still very vague as to my alternative. My mother
pleaded with me to complete my architectural studies, warning me that, other-
wise, I would become a drifter all my life (what today we would call a "drop-
out"). I was still too docile and too dependent to thwart my parents' wishes
so I stuck it out and, by 1946, had completed my professional qualifications.
There followed a number of menial jobs in architectural offices which, owing
to my incompetence, I could never hold for very long and which are among
the unhappiest memories of my life. Eventually I decided that there was
nothing for it but to go back to square one and I enrolled as a student of
psychology at London University, at first at evening classes at Birkbeck College
and, later, full time at University College.
One of the attractions of University College at that time was the weekly
philosophy seminar I could attend under the late A.J. Ayer. Although I never
succumbed to his logical positivism that was then much in vogue, his acute and
trenchant intellect made a lasting impression on me and to this day I always
strive to model my own writing on his taut prose style. By the time I graduated
from University College in 1952 I had reached the advanced age of 32 with no
firm prospects as yet of being able to make a living. However, the very first
thing I did on graduating was to marry a fellow student of psychology, Halla,
who was ten years my junior. Her parents, like mine, were immigrants though
of a more recent vintage. They were refugees from Hitler who had managed
to get out of Germany only just in time before the war came.
Halla soon became the most important person in my life and we have
stayed together ever since. She was the better psychologist of the two, social
psychology was her area of expertise. She eventually became active in the affairs
of the British Psychological Society and served as president one year. She is the
h r of Camera Culture study of the part which photography plays in our
t ?
Halla and John Beloff in 1953, a year after their marriage.
lives (H. Beloff 1985)- Our marriage produced two children, a girl in 1958 anc
then, five years later, a boy. Both have chosen their own path in life which the-
are now busily pursuing. My son, Bruno, is a computer scientist who alread
o
earns more than I ever did and whose facility with machines andg twin
technology is something that I can only envy. My daughter, is
toward a career as a filmmaker in New York and is endowed with the artisti
abilities which the gods denied to me. Although our marriage was, in man
respects, a marriage of minds-we are both devotees of the arts-I think I ca
truthfully say that neither my wife nor our children nor any of my mar.
nephews and nieces were ever troubled by my "relentless question."
Straight after graduating we both went to work for Raymond Cattell
the University of Illinois. His main claim to fame was to have devised what
still one of the most widely used tests of personality. It was an exciting ne
experience for us as well as being our introduction to the American way of lif
But, after a year, we had had enough and we returned to Britain wherie I h
been offered a job in the Department of Psychology of Queen's Unversit
under George Seth. Neither of us had ever set foot in Ireland befc
but we found Belfast a pleasant enough place in which to make our home. T
1950s were the halcyon days before the advent of terrorism and, when t
au
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6 The Relentless Question
troubles did eventually erupt, in 1969, we had long since moved on to Edin-
burgh. In those more carefree days one could still get a job as a lecturer without
having a Ph.D. I was able to work for it while doing my teaching and so, by
1956, I had managed to obtain my doctorate from Queen's University, as did
Halla at the same time. Visual perception was the area of psychology that then
interested me. It had grown naturally out of my interest in the visual arts which
had led me into the byways of experimental esthetics and psychophysics, but
I never had the patience one needs to become a first rate experimentalist.
By this time I was well acquainted with the literature of psychical research
and I made a point of trying to find out all I could about one very famous
episode that had taken place in Belfast during the First World War. It involved
Dr. W .J. Crawford, a lecturer in mechanical engineering, and the young
physical medium, Kathleen Goligher (Barham 1988). But I still never thought
that I might take an active role in experimental parapsychology unless I were
to be lucky enough to encounter a gifted subject. My initiation eventually
came about as the result of a talk I gave to the student physics society at
Queen's. A bright young physics student, Leonard Evans, persuaded me that
it might be possible to demonstrate PK using the emission of particles from
a radioactive source. I liked the idea and was taken with his youthful en-
thusiasm and we devised an experiment using equipment made available to
us in the Department of Chemistry with volunteers drawn from the local
spiritualist society. Alas, we obtained only null results (Beloff & Evans 1961) - a
presage of things to come- but we somehow had contrived to anticipate a new
development in PK research that was soon to reach fruition, thanks to the
genius of Helmut Schmidt, with the result that our paper has been cited more
often than any other experimental paper that I have published.
A crucial step in my career was the publication of my first book, The Ex-
istence ofMind(1962). It was a contribution to the philosophy of mind, rather
than to psychology as such, and it represented my outraged reaction to Gilbert
Ryle's The Concept of Mind (1949). Ryle's book had become enormously
popular and influential but my purpose was to show that it was utterly
misguided. Ryle propounds the doctrine known as "analytical behaviorism,"
that is to say the view that all mental concepts, without exception, can be ex-
plicated without residue in terms either of overt behavior or of the disposition
to behave in a particular way. My book attempted to show that mind was, on
the contrary, a cause of behavior and the subject of conscious experience. More
passionate, perhaps, than profound, it had little effect on the subsequent
course of British philosophy but I drew some comfort from the fact that it
caught the attention of some eminent thinkers who, for one reason or another,
were themselves at loggerheads with the philosophical establishment, in-
cluding Michael Polanyi, Karl Popper, John Eccles and Arthur Koestler. I was
also very gratified to get a fairly favorable review in The New Statesman, by
"Freddie" Ayer (as he was Approved For Release 2000/08/15:
At FRNM, summer 1965; left to right: Cynthia Weaver, Wayne Whitfield, Betty
Newton, J.B. Rhine, Fay David (back with glasses), B. Kanthamani (woman, front),
John Freeman (back with glasses), John Beloff (front), Rex Stanford (glasses, rear
center), Martin Johnson (bow tie), Harold Avery (glasses), Louisa Rhine (front, holding
glasses), Charles Honorton (back), Dorothy Pope (middle, with glasses), Lynne Guyor,
James Carpenter, Marie Avery (striped dress), David Rogers, Reid Creech.
More important, however, for the direction my career was later to assume,
wasJ.B. Rhine's somehow getting wind of my book, the final chapter of which
is devoted to "the paranormal," and inviting me to visit his laboratory in
Durham, North Carolina. This I gladly did in the summer of 1965. I had
argued in my book that parapsychology alone provides the empirical evidence
needed to vindicate the autonomy and efficacy of mind, a view that I have
adhered to ever since. Gaither Pratt, then Rhine's right hand man (Pratt 1987)
also befriended me and it was he who invited me to give the banquet address
when the Parapsychological Association met in Oxford, in 1964, for their an
nual convention. (Beloff 1964). I was further patronized by that other domi
nant figure of the parapsychology establishment, Eileen Garrett, and was it
due course rewarded with invitations to her fabulous conferences at Le Pic
near St. Paul de Vence in the south of France. I remained persona grata wit]
the Parapsychology Foundation after she died when her daughter, Eileen Coly
became president.
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The Relentless Question
Rhine showed, I think, some perspicacity in urging me to continue
writing about parapsychology rather than practicing it. I was already acquiring
the reputation, which has clung to me ever since, of being a negative or psi-
inhibitory experimenter and Rhine, of course, had no use for anyone who
could not deliver positive results.* I did not heed his advice because I did not
wish to become a mere commentator from the sidelines nor was I a sufficient
scholar ever to become one of the historians of the field. Nevertheless, I would
have to agree that experimentation was never my strong suit whereas I do
believe that I have an ability to write, an ability that has stood me in good stead
ever since my schooldays.
In 1962 James Drever II offered me a jobs' in the Department of
Psychology of the University of Edinburgh although he made no secret of the
fact that he was an avowed skeptic with regard to parapsychology. We moved
there in the winter of 1963 and Edinburgh has been my home ever since. At
Edinburgh I was required to teach psychology on a broad front but no objec-
tion was ever raised, either by my superiors or by my colleagues, to my making
parapsychology my primary research area, a fact which, I think, speaks well for
British tolerance. Moreover, Drever's successor, the late David Vowles, though
himself a neuropsychologist, took a benign attitude towards the paranormal.
I was lucky in obtaining some private funding that enabled me to hire a
research assistant.
Our first systematic research program was an attempt to replicate the work
of Milan Ryzl of Prague who was then claiming to be able to train ESP using
hypnosis. What gave substance to these claims was the presence of his star sub-
ject, Pavel Stepanek, who, after having undergone.this training, was scoring
consistently in a nonrandom way on a test of clairvoyance to the satisfaction
of parapsychologists from several different countries who went to Prague for
the sake of testing him. Stepanek, I may say, performed in the waking state,
not under hypnosis. In 1964, with help from the British Council, I went to
Prague myself to test Stepanek and make contact with Ryzl. Although the
results I obtained with Stepanek were disappointing (Ryzl and Beloff 1965),
I was favorably impressed with Ryzl himself and we duly went ahead with our
program at Edinburgh. It eventually became clear, however, that, for whatever
reason, we were getting no learning effect (Beloff & Mandleberg 1966). A few
years later Ryzi defected from Czechoslovakia and went to live in the United
States, at first to work for J.B. Rhine, then later settling in California. He has
never subsequently furnished convincing proof that he has found a method of
training ESP which remains one of the supreme unfulfilled goals of the para-
psychologist. Later we tried other training techniques such as the "waiting"
technique, as described by Rhea White (1964) but with no better success
(Beloff & Mandleberg 1967).
At Edinburgh I made the acquaintance of John Smythies, then of the
Department of Psychiatry, now at the University of Alabama. Smythies already
had a long-standing interest in parapsychology and and we even collaborated
on an experiment he wanted to try using his brain-damaged patients (Smythies
& Beloff 1965) but we had no luck here either. Smythies had been commis-
sioned to edit two books for Routledge, Brain and Mind (1965) and Science
and ESP (1967), and I was invited to contribute to both volumes. It was, once
again, Smythies who proposed me for the Council of the Society for Psychical
Research, to which I was elected in 1964 and to which I have been reelected
continuously ever since. Much later, after Smythies had migrated to the United
States, he invited me to coedit with him a volume of solicited articles defend-
ing the dualist position on the mind-body problem, a position to which botl.
of us in our different ways adhered. By then, however, times were harder fo;
the publishing trade and Routledge turned us down. Eventually, however, th(
University Press of Virginia came to our rescue (thanks to the good office
of Ian Stevenson) and our book, The Case for Dualism, has now at las
appeared.
Our first doctoral student to do a dissertation in parapsychology wa
Adrian Parker, who had graduated from our Department but had then don
a clinical training at the Tavistock Institute in London. The title of his dissert2
tion was "The Experimenter Effect in Parapsychology" (Parker 1977). Whil
engaged on it he also managed to write a book dealing with ESP in altere
states of consciousness (Parker 1970), to which I wrote an introduction. Follow
ing Parker we had a succession of graduate students keen to work in par,
psychology. Some of them, such as Richard Broughton, Brian Millar an
Michael Thalbourne have become well known to the parapsychology con
munity. Thalbourne, too, ;nanaged to produce a book while working for h
Ph.D. (Thalbourne 1981), a very useful little glossary of parapsychologic
terms (Thalbourne 1982). More recently Julie Milton and Deborah Delanc
obtained their doctorates from this department on aspects of the ganzfe
technique and they are now employed as research associates by our nc
"Koestler Professor of Parapsychology," Robert Morris. i have always felt rh
I owed a special debt to my graduate students on whom I came increasing
to depend for the experimental output of our parapsychology unit and it is
was, essentially, the end, W.J. proved be his undoing. He could not desist from heaping favors on the them My that I dedicate
, Pthissycboholok.ogical Sciences (1973), Y, a distill
young W.J Levy who o produced positive results, time and again-until he was caught
cheating (Rhine 1974). tion of my lecture courses but, again, I included a chapter on parapsycholo
The title of the book was to convey the message that psychology never was a;
lEven better, he offered both Halla and me jobs. He was powerful enough to ignore the old be a sin le unified science but at most a conglomerate of more
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10 The Relentless Question
less related sciences. Not that the idea was new, indeed my old antagonist,
Gilbert Ryle, had already said as much in his The Concept of Mind but perhaps
not so many psychologists had made the point so explicitly. At all events, I took
the view that parapsychology had the same right to be considered a
"psychological science" as any other even if it seldom figured in the curriculum
at the university or in the standard psychology textbooks. I was also at this time
commissioned by Elek Science, a London publisher, to edit a volume of
solicited papers in parapsychology, which duly appeared in 1974 under the title
New Directions in Parapsychology. Arthur Koestler did me a great favor on
that occasion by contributing an "Afterword" to the volume for which he
demanded no payment. Quite recently this book has resurfaced in a Japanese
edition.
Such honors as have come my way in the course of my career I owe entirely
to my fellow members of the small but worldwide parapsychological com-
munity. I was once even awarded a money prize by a Swiss Society thanks to
the recommendation of the late Anita Gregory. I was elected president of the
S.P.R. for the period 1974-1976 and I have twice served as president of the
Parapsychological Association, in 1972 and again in 1982. It was in 1972 that
the P. A. met in Edinburgh for their annual convention. In 1982 it met in Cam-
bridge to join forces with the S.P.R. to celebrate the centennial of the latter
and the jubilee of the former. My presidential address for the Edinburgh con-
vention is included in this volume (see "Belief and Doubt") but my presiden-
tial address for the Cambridge meeting ("Three Open Questions") has been
omitted as the themes I touch upon there are dealt with more fully elsewhere.
In Edinburgh it was Arthur Koestler who gave the banquet address while in
Cambridge it was Hans Eysenck. Although these two intellectual titans dis-
agreed on most issues, both were good friends of parapsychology.*
One particular honor conferred upon me descended from on high like a
bolt from the blue. In March 1983 I received a telephone call from Koestler's
solicitors informing me that I had been nominated in Koestler's will as one of
four executors (the others being his solicitor, his publisher and his literary
agent). The double suicide of Arthur and Cynthia Koestler that had just taken
place had attracted wide publicity throughout the world. As myself a keen sup-
porter of the cause of voluntary euthanasia, I admired Arthur's courage and
rationality in deciding to choose the manner and moment of his death rather
than waiting passively for the fatal diseases that were ravaging him to take their
toll. But it was, of course, tragic that Cynthia, who was herself in good health,
should have decided to die with him rather than go on living without him.
Even after reading their joint posthumous autobiography (Koestler & Koestler
1984), it is still hard for me to understand how any woman could love a man
to that extent but I may be unduly cynical. Anyway, as far as parapsychology
is concerned, the consequences were wholly favorable since Koestler had be-
queathed his entire estate for the establishment of a chair of parapsychology
at a British university. As the only one of the executors with any knowledge
of parapsychology, it thus devolved on me to find a British university that
would accept his gift, which many might regard as something of a Trojan
horse.
The experience brought home to me the distrust and suspicion that still
surrounds the mere mention of parapsychology in academic circles. In the
event, the one university that, from the outset, was fully supportive was mx
own at Edinburgh. This was due very largely to the then principal, Johr
Burnett, and the then dean of social sciences, an architect, Barry Wilson
Perhaps my example in keeping a low profile all those years had paid off b,
convincing my colleagues that parapsychology could not be so scandalous a
some averred. Anyway, I was delighted when the Koestler bequest was finally
awarded to Edinburgh. It had saddened me to think, as I was reaching retire
ment age, that parapsychology would soon disappear from the Edinburg]
scene had it not been for this turn of events. Fortunately I was allowed a plac
on the selection committee and could thus use my influence in the choice o
a candidate to become the first Koestler professor and I was delighted whe,
the appointment was conferred on Robert Morris, a youthful American wh
had won universal respect in his country from both parapsychologists and the:
critics.
The fact that I take seriously phenomena that have clearly failed to in
press most of my contemporaries forces me to ask whether, in all honesty,
have some special need to believe? By the laws of cognitive dissonance th
longer you commit yourself to some cause and the more effort you devote t
it the harder it becomes to renounce it. My friend, Susan Blackmore, is on
of those rare individuals who succeeded in swapping horses in midstrean
Following a prolonged bout of failure to elicit psi she threw her lot in with t1
skeptical community (Blackmore 1986). But she was still in the early stages c
her career while I am a veteran. Could it be that I no longer dared yield t
doubt? There have been times when I have been assailed with the thougl
that, perhaps, the whole field had been misconceived from the start and w;
now running into the ground. The Levy scandal (Rhine 1974) was a bitter pi
and even more traumatic for me was the final dismemberment of S.G. So
(Markwick 1978). Another unsettling episode was when I thought I h~
discovered a remarkable medium on the Isle of Wight. But she turned out
I- f dulent and it was largely thanks to the help I received from friends, is
e rau
eluding my sister Nora, that I realized this just in time to prevent my makir
*B haog shown goodwill towards me. Eysenck wrote a favorable s of my a fool of myself in print (Stevenson & Beloff 1980). However, I survived the
Psychological Sciences and Koestler cited it in n the Observer, that t Christmas, a asa among his various shocks and setbacks as did my basic conviction that psi is real.
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 answer may be, it is by no means simple or straightforward. In our common
desire to unravel the truth, I find the skeptics much less ready to see things
from our point of view than we are from theirs.
I retired in October 1985. Never having occupied a chair, I could not then
become "emeritus" but thanks to the good offices of our new head of depart-
ment, Robert Grieve, I have been made an "honorary fellow" of the depart-
ment and am allowed to retain a room there and use the university facilities.
Hence, though I no longer teach, I am not cut off from my natural community
of scholars. I still keep a fatherly eye on what goes on in the department and
help, where required, with the supervision of graduate students. I am still,
editor of the Journal of the S.P.R. but, more than anything else, I have an urgc
to write. Always conscious of the inordinately long time it took me to find m,
feet in life, I am anxious to have my say before it is too late. Meanwhile I alsc
like to keep up with my large international correspondence.
Such, then, has been my life, at least as I perceive it. What now follows ar
my thoughts about the topic that has occupied me for so long. They offer n
revelations and no bold new theories of psi but I am hopeful that they ma
strike a chord with readers who share my curiosity and my puzzlement. I woul
describe myself as, basically, a conservative thinker. I mean by this not that
regard commonsense as sacrosanct but that I demand very good reasons befoi
relinquishing a commonsense position. My main aim in these papers has bee
to do justice to the evidence while, at the same time, seeking to do the lea
violence to our reason and our general knowledge.
In this brief introduction it has not been possible to mention the nam
of all who have helped me or have influenced my outlook. Suffice it to say th
they are not forgotten and that they have my sincere gratitude.
that predisposes one to c p QvdaF& OwIAV ~s 2ubak jjvheCIA-RDP96-00792R000701000001-9
Approved For Release 2000/08/15: CIA-RDP96-00792R000701000001-9roduction
The Relentless Question
John Beloff, September 1985 (photo by Sean Hudson).
Whatever the psychodynamics of my own personality, I cannot be accused
of ignoring the skeptical literature. On the contrary I am always anxious to read
what the critics have to say. I subscribe to the Skeptical Inquirer and to the
Zetetic Scholar. I attended a CSICOP conference, the year it met in London,
and I have engaged in lengthy correspondence with the amazing James Randi
and the eminent Martin Gardner. I have come to realize that my own ig-
norance of conjuring techniques may have misled me in assessing the
veridicality of some of the cases of strong phenomena. But, when all that is
granted, my impression is still that the skeptics are, for the most part, too facile
and too complacent. They dwell too often on the weaker cases while ignoring
or glossing over the really awkward evidence. For example, they are far too
ready to assume that, if a medium or psychic has been caught cheating, this
disposes of their claim, as if it was their character that was at issue rather than
the phenomena. Whereas, if K.J. Batcheldor is to be believed, there may be
something inherent in the psychodynamics of producing strong phenomena