Techniques and status of modern parapsychology.

is about 100 years since the earliest university studies and first research developments occurred which led to the founding of the Society for Psychical Research in London in 1882. Thus, it seems appropriate to have a symposium on what is now called parapsychology at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago. The founders of the society were exceptional persons. One, Sir Arthur Balfour, later became Prime Minister of Great Britain, and another, Frederick Myers, wrote the classic work in the field. In later years, three Nobel prize winners became presidents of the society. The American Society for Psychical Research started in 1885 as a result of a visit of Sir William Barrett to the United States. The change in name to "parapsychology" was associated with a change in emphasis, around 1930, from investigation of spontaneous cases to the experimental, quantitatively evaluated study of psychic phenomena. Parapsychology can be considered as the study of interactions between behaving organisms and their external environment, which occur under conditions precluding participation of the sensorimotor system. For convenience, such interactions are called psi processes. Psi processes, in which the organism's behavior gives evidence that information was received from the environment without the use of the recognized senses, are designated as ESP. Psi processes, by which the environment is altered without the use of the organism's motor system, are called psychokinesis (PK). At the symposium, the first two