ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author concentrates on parapsychology and the paranormal. He discusses some aspects of the relationship between the paranormal and the uncanny. The paranormal is no more a space, or arena, within which certain kinds of things are supposed to happen than is the unconscious; and no more an alternative world with its own idiosyncratic and sporadic regularities—or irregularities—than is the magical. Every seemingly paranormal occurrence is described in terms which apparently transgress one or more of these principles. The psychoanalyst's drive to redescribe, whatever its credentials, might be expected to find a ready target in talk of the paranormal. S. Freud's marvellous essay on the uncanny deserves acknowledgement and brief discussion—brief because in effect it leads away from paranormal concerns towards those with horror and the occult, ideas which are linked only sporadically and incidentally to that of paranormality.
