Extraordinary Beliefs
A Historical Approach to a Psychological Problem

This book examines the remarkable feats of mesmerists, mediums and mind-readers, and provides a new psychology of extraordinary beliefs.

Peter Lamont (Author)

9781107688025, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 7 February 2013

336 pages
22.6 x 15.1 x 1.5 cm, 0.52 kg

'The attention to historical research in the book is noteworthy, and the writing, especially when discussing historical cases, is engaging … What [Lamont] has accomplished is as good as any conjuring stage performance. Mixing solid historical analysis with the psychology of belief, he has produced an effect both engaging and informative.' Fides et Historia

Since the early nineteenth century, mesmerists, mediums and psychics have exhibited extraordinary phenomena. These have been demonstrated, reported and disputed by every modern generation. We continue to wonder why people believe in such things, while others wonder why they are dismissed so easily. Extraordinary Beliefs takes a historical approach to an ongoing psychological problem: why do people believe in extraordinary phenomena? It considers the phenomena that have been associated with mesmerism, spiritualism, psychical research and parapsychology. By drawing upon conjuring theory, frame analysis and discourse analysis, it examines how such phenomena have been made convincing in demonstration and report, and then disputed endlessly. It argues that we cannot understand extraordinary beliefs unless we properly consider the events in which people believe, and what people believe about them. And it shows how, in constructing and maintaining particular beliefs about particular phenomena, we have been in the business of constructing ourselves.

1. Introduction
2. The making of the extraordinary
3. The making of mesmeric phenomena
4. The making of spiritualist phenomena
5. The making of psychic phenomena
6. The making of paranormal phenomena
7. The making of extraordinary beliefs.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Psychology [JM]