ABSTRACT
As the word 'para-psychology' suggests, psychology plays a significant role in paranormal experiences and research. Where psychology studies behaviour and mental processes, parapsychology studies the apparent ability to interact with one's environment through means other than the currently understood sensory channels. The umbrella term 'psi' is used to denote extrasensory perception and psychokinesis. The definition of para-psychology encompasses both 'what's not psychic but looks like it' – that is, pseudo-psi – and 'genuine' psi. Some cases are of 'crisis telepathy', where one individual receives a strong feeling or mental impression that someone else is in danger. The ambiguity and incompleteness of information that often characterises spontaneous paranormal experiences suggests that these experiences are likely to provide a fertile ground for the operation of psychological factors that may contribute to pseudo-psi. Psychology may benefit from the expertise parapsychologists have developed to deal with questions of replication and statistical analysis.
