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BOOK REVIEWS
THE TRICKSTER AND THE PARANORMAL by George P. Hansen. Philadelphia: Xlibris Corporation, 2001. Pp. 564. $22.94 (paperback). ISBN 1-4010-0082-7.
This book is an ambitious examination of the sociology of the paranormal. It is an accomplished effort to situate the problematic of psi in the context of some leading currents of modern thought, drawing liber-ally on the ideas of Max Weber, Victor Turner, structuralists, deconstructionists, anthropology, philosophy, and a good deal more. For Weber, social evolution is the product of two converging, though antithetical, forces: charisma and rationalization. The direction is toward greater rationalization, in which charisma and supernatural power are progressively institutionalized and domesticated. History is a trend toward disenchantment-away from magic, miracle, and the supernatural. This bodes ill for parapsychology, which we might characterize as an attempt to make a science of enchantment, an oxymoronic venture by Weber's lights, which therefore can only draw the quixotic few to its ranks.
Even in its least reputable guises, the paranormal is intellectually very provocative stuff and deserves to be looked at against a wide theoretical canvas. Others have sought a wider canvas, and I will mention a few examples. Krippner (2002) has attempted to situate psi in the postmodern world; so has Griffin (1997), who in particular tried to establish links with the process philosophy of Whitehead; Braude (1986) has done various analytic and reconstructive services for psi, for example, its connections with the multiple personality (a trickster-related motif), the importance of spontaneous cases, its destructive (and therefore trickster) machinations, and so on. F. W. H. Myers perhaps was the most daring and comprehensive conceptualizer of psi.
George Hansen's focus is on the sociophilosophical dimensions of the paranormal. As I interpret it, one of the most interesting implications of his analysis is that the dream of parapsychology one day join the respectable ranks of the great normal sciences is most likely doomed to disappointment. If Hansen is right, the fate of parapsychology is to remain forever a marginal enterprise. The reason is that psi, and all those who get too close to its subversive effects, are apt to fall under the spell of the trickster archetype. As the title indicates, the trickster is key in this massive 564-page study. The trickster is an archetypal...