Co-Creation and Psychosocial Theories of the Paranormal: Part I

Introduction

Co-creation and psychosocial theories are two approaches that have been suggested to explain paranormal phenomena like UFO sightings or other unusual experiences. Of the two, psychosocial theories have a bit more of an established pedigree and cachet of scientific legitimacy. Co-creation has been less explicitly articulated and can in some ways be seen as a subset of psychosocial theory. Part One is a critique of psychosocial theories. Part Two will push on into the unknown territory of co-creation theory.

Part I

Psychosocial theories hold that paranormal phenomena can be explained by individual psychological and social context variables operating in various combinations. However, as Jerome Clark notes, paranormal phenomena usually involve two different things: an event and then someone’s experience of that event. Often psychosocial theories are used to explain away events by explaining a person’s experience of the event in terms of psychological and social variables. However, psychosocial explanations are not required to be so hardline. For example, one can remain a materialist, posit the reality of some sort of anomalistic event and then focus one’s study on people’s experiences of the event. This kind of psychosocial agnosticism can be a quite scientific way of going about things; it is a good path for people who may be unsure about the nature of anomalistic events or who downright believe in psi, ghosts, UFOs or whatever but want whatever research they do to be valid.

The problem is that while psychosocial approaches can leads to a better understanding of how variables like personality and culture shape our experience of anomalistic events, they leave unaddressed the anomalistic event itself, which tends to be what we want to know about. On the other hand, when faced with truly bizarre stuff going on, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to separate out the effects of our own shocked perceptions and activated cultural filters from what the “real” event is? The long and the short is that while psychosocial theories are often invoked to dismiss the reality of an actual anomalous event, that’s due to the predilection of the researcher, not the logic of the theoretical approach.

Psychosocial theory is a sort of abbreviated multidimensional or multiphasic theoretical construct that is often invoked when people struggle with conceptualizing complex system phenomena. (1) It’s in this sense I say that co-creation is a kind of subset of psychosocial theory. With respect to hardline psychosocial theory, co-creation of an event/experience might be shaped, for example, by interactions between individuals or conflicts within an individual between their sense of personhood, status and/or role. They may operate by means or mechanisms that are not always well understood or visible (e.g., emerging social tensions expressed as witchcraft accusations) but are ultimately knowable. However, a non-material, ontological Other (2) is not involved.

On the other hand, with the agnostic flavor of psychosocial theory an ontological Other might or might not come into play. If it does come into play, it will be stipulated on the basis of individual or sociocultural beliefs. In these cases the Other is not thought of as having agency, existence, or identity. It will be thought of as something that people believe has agency, existence and identity and by so believing make real in human terms – hence the idea of co-creation. We’re now much closer to admitting the reality of our beliefs, at least as they affect this life, but still on comfortable enough terrain for science, that delicate flower, to grow.

However, the theoretical notion of co-creation, at least as far as I understand it, goes a bit beyond where psychosocial theories go. I will make an analogy to the difference between the academic fields of anomalistic psychology versus parapsychology. Both study the same phenomena; anomalistic psychology studies paranormal experiences assuming paranormal forces do not exist, while parapsychology assumes the existence of something called psi and tries to understand how it operates.(3)

Co-creation theory, as articulated by Greg Bishop and several other interesting thinkers, assumes the veridicality of anomalous events and of ontological Others as individual actors involved in such events. This will be discussed briefly in Part II.

 NOTES

(1) I’m thinking specifically of Showalter’s book Hystories, a paper by Vallee and someone else that I’m too lazy to dig out right now, and the Marwaha and May presentation at the 2015 Parapsychology MOOC.

(2)  i.e., Alien. In my opinion, the word alien is increasingly being used to mean ontological Other rather than any specific entities associated with the extraterrestrial UFO hypothesis and/ or Stan Romanek.

(3) Simmonds-Moore PowerPoint from 2015 Parapsychology MOOC