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What is paranormal: some implications for the psychological therapies?

Whilst writing this editorial, I went to examine a Doctorate in Psychotherapy and Counselling. As I started to go up the stairs to the university room used for such vivas, the person coming down asked, pleasantly but firmly, if I would mind going back down ‘so we don’t pass on the stairs’. Was this an example of widespread belief in the paranormal? The doctorate itself was awarded, but it was an empirical study. Had it been only the development of theory, would it have failed as such non-evidence-based scholarly writings previously considered academically appropriate would now be regarded as at best also paranormal? So what is meant by the term ‘paranormal’? And what, if anything, has it to do with psychological therapists’ interests in such concepts as the uncanny (Freud, 1919), synchronicity (Jung, 1960), transpersonal (Daniels, 2005), mindfulness (Clarke, 2014) and anomalous experiences (e.g. Sollod, 1992)? For more than some, ‘paranormal’ is when there is not a scientific explanation. This might lead to three further questions, the first being ‘what is taken as science?’ the second, ‘how do we distinguish this from pseudo-science?’ and the third, ‘are the psychological therapies more an art than a science?’ In our current culture, we seem to have become obsessed with very narrow notions of evidence-based practice, where for example, randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are spoken of as the gold standard. Yet, RCTs in the case of psychological therapies can be seen as more a form of ritual magic covering up both their scientific absurdity and that we are unable to have an appropriate scientific approach to evaluating the therapies. Another question is, will we one day have an appropriate science as indeed Freud had hoped? A related contribution to this argument was given in the seminal work of Roth and Fonagy’s What works for whom? (2006), where they point out that just because there isn’t the scientific evidence available for a particular approach, this doesn’t mean to say that it isn’t necessarily effective. So, should we be saying that those psychological therapists and clients/patients who take part in practices that do not lend themselves to the magical thinking of RCT-type voodoo, believe in the paranormal? What then should be the ‘normal’ practices of psychological therapies? In previous editorials, I have been fond of quoting Merleau-Ponty (1962/2002) who suggests that sometimes if we attempt to take away the mystery, we take away the thing itself. Elsewhere, I have often done the equivalent of retweeting Levinas’s (1961)