Psychics and Claivoyants

Psychic
From the Greek psychikos—"of the soul, mental"
Is a person who claims to have the ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception, or is said to have such abilities by others. It is also used to describe to theatrical performers who use techniques such as prestidigitation and cold reading to produce the appearance of such abilities. It can also denote an ability of the mind to influence the world physically and to the telekinetic powers professed by those such as Uri Geller.
Psychics appear regularly in fiction and science fiction, such as the The Dead Zone by Stephen King, or Jean Grey from the Marvel comic book universe. A large industry exists whereby psychics provide advice and counsel to clients.
Some famous contemporary psychics include; Miss Cleo, Sylvia Browne, Danielle Egnew, and John Edward.
Critics attribute psychic powers to intentional trickery or self-delusion.
In 1988 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences gave a report on the subject that concluded there is "no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years for the existence of parapsychological phenomena." In 1990 survey of members of that organization, 4% of respondents agreed that extrasensory perception had been scientifically demonstrated, or that it happened sometimes. Asked about research in the field, 22% would discourage it, 63% would allow but not encourage it, and 10% would encourage it.

Etymology
The word psychic is derived from the Greek word psychikos ("of the mind" or "mental") and refers in part to the human mind or psyche (ex. "psychic turmoil"). French astronomer and spiritualist Camille Flammarion is credited as having first used the word psychic, while it was later introduced to the English language by Edward William Cox in the 1870s.

Early seers and prophets
Elaborate systems of divination and fortune telling date back to ancient times. Perhaps the most widely-known system of early civilization fortune-telling was astrology, where practitioners believed the relative positions of celestial bodies could lend insight into people's lives and even predict their future circumstances. Some fortune-tellers were said to be able to make predictions without the use of these elaborate systems (or in conjunction with them), through some sort of direct apprehension or vision of the future. These people were known as seers or prophets, and in later times as clairvoyants and psychics.
Seers formed a functionary role in early civilization, often serving as advisors, priests, and judges. A number of examples are included in biblical accounts. The book of 1 Samuel (Chapter 9) illustrates one such functionary task when Samuel is asked to locate the donkeys of the future king Saul. The role of prophet appeared perennially in ancient cultures. In Egypt, the priests of Ra at Memphis acted as seers. In ancient Assyria seers were referred to as nabu, meaning "to call" or "announce".
The Delphic Oracle is one of the earliest stories in classical antiquity of prophetic abilities. The Pythia, the priestess presiding over the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, was believed to be able to deliver prophecies inspired by Apollo during rituals beginning in the 8th century BC. It is often said that the Pythia delivered oracles in a frenzied state induced by vapors rising from the ground, and that she spoke gibberish, believed to be the voice of Apollo, which priests reshaped into the enigmatic prophecies preserved in Greek literature. Other scholars believe records from the time indicate that the Pythia spoke intelligibly, and gave prophecies in her own voice. The Pythia was a position served by a succession of women probably selected from amongst a guild of priestesses of the temple. The last recorded response was given in 393 AD, when the emperor Theodosius I ordered pagan temples to cease operation. Recent geological investigations raise the possibility that ethylene gas caused the Pythia's state of inspiration.
One of the most enduring historical references to what some consider to be psychic ability is the prophecies of Michel de Nostredame (1503 – 1566), often Latinized to Nostradamus, published during the French Renaissance period. Nostradamus, was a French apothecary and seer who wrote collections of prophecies that have since become famous worldwide and have rarely been out of print since his death. He is best known for his book Les Propheties, the first edition of which appeared in 1555. Taken together, his written works are known to have contained at least 6,338 quatrains or prophecies, as well as at least eleven annual calendars. Most of the quatrains deal with disasters, such as plagues, earthquakes, wars, floods, invasions, murders, droughts, and battles — all undated.
Nostradamus is a controversial figure. His many enthusiasts, as well as the popular press, credit him with predicting numerous major world events. Interest in his work is still considerable, especially in the media and in popular culture. By contrast, most academic scholars maintain that the associations made between world events and Nostradamus' quatrains are largely the result of misinterpretations or mistranslations (sometimes deliberate) or else are so tenuous as to render them useless as evidence of any genuine predictive power.
In addition to the belief that some historical figures were endowed with a predisposition to psychic experiences, some psychic abilities were thought to be available to everyone on occasion. For example, the belief in prophetic dreams was common and persistent in many ancient cultures.

Belief in psychic abilities
In a survey, reported in 1990, of members of the National Academy of Sciences, only 2% of respondents thought that extrasensory perception had been scientifically demonstrated, with another 2% thinking that the phenomena happened sometimes. Asked about research in the field, 22% thought that it should be discouraged, 63% that it should be allowed but not encouraged, and 10% that it should be encouraged; neuroscientists were the most hostile to parapsychology of all the specialties.
A survey of the beliefs of the general United States population regarding paranormal topics was conducted by The Gallup Organization in 2005. The survey found that 41 percent of those polled believed in extrasensory perception and 26 percent believed in clairvoyance. 31 percent of those surveyed indicated that they believe in telepathy or psychic communication.
A poll of 439 college students conducted in 2006 by researchers Bryan Farha of Oklahoma City University and Gary Steward of University of Central Oklahoma, suggested that college seniors and graduate students were more likely to believe in psychic phenomena than college freshmen.[24] 23 percent of college freshmen expressed a belief in paranormal ideas. The percentage was greater among college seniors (31%) and graduate students (34%). The poll showed lower belief in psychic phenomena among science students than social science and education students.
Some people also believe that psychic abilities can be activated or enhanced through the study and practice of various disciplines and techniques such as meditation, with a number of books and websites being dedicated to instruction in these methods. Another popular belief is that psychic ability is hereditary, with a psychic parent passing their abilities on to their children.

Clairvoyance
The term clairvoyance (from 17th century French with clair meaning "clear" and voyance meaning "vision") is used to refer to the alleged ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through means other than the known human senses, a form of extra-sensory perception. A person said to have the ability of clairvoyance is referred to as a clairvoyant ("one who sees clearly").
Claims for the existence of paranormal and psychic abilities such as clairvoyance are highly controversial. Parapsychology explores this possibility, but the existence of the paranormal is not accepted by the scientific community.
The Scottish term fey is often used for clairvoyance, but in the writer's opinion intuitive-knowing might be preferred.[citation needed]
Within parapsychology, clairvoyance is used exclusively to refer to the transfer of information that is both contemporary to, and hidden from, the clairvoyant. It is very different from telepathy in that the information is said to be gained directly from an external physical source, rather than being transferred from the mind of one individual to another.
Outside of parapsychology, clairvoyance is often used to refer to other forms of anomalous cognition, most commonly the perception of events that have occurred in the past, or which will occur in the future (known as retrocognition and precognition respectively), or to refer to communications with the dead (see Mediumship).
Clairvoyance is related to remote viewing, although the term "remote viewing" itself is not as widely applicable to clairvoyance because it refers to a specific controlled process.
(Bruce Main-Smith writes):- It is unfortunate, indeed careless, that clairvoyance has come to be indicative of all/most forms of purported mediumship. There are four primary channels, clairsensing, trance, healing and physical plus a whole raft of others that do not fit neatly into any one primary channel. Clairvoyance (seeing) and clairaudience (hearing) for example are both kinds of clairsensing and belong in that main group. Many mediums who are good clairvoyants may well have little or no clairaudient capability even though both "gifts" belong in the primary channel of clairsensing. Remote viewing is a facet of clairvoyance and usually appears in practitioners suffering from arrested development.
Trance is the ability to communicate with, and mainly to receive from, other entities, incarnate & discarnate, and may sometimes be independent of time; it is usually divided into deep trance (obliterative & so dangerous, where the operative abdicates the throne, quite common) and light trance (a high or even total degree of awareness & thus safer for the practitioner, and extremely rare when well-done).
Healing is the ability to induct health benefits from some usually unspecified higher source where the healer can direct the effects to the beneficiary. Contact healing involves the healer being in the closest proximity but not necessarily actually touching. Absent healing is explained by its alternative name of distant healing and is independent of spatial distance.
Physical mediumship includes events such as table turning, production of quasi-physical objects (even personages) & sometimes involving so-called ectoplasm. It is often said to require either total darkness are at the most a weak red light; the writer cannot agree with this, events can occur under strong halogen lighting, in bright sunlight, incandescent-tungsten and mercury-vapour, candlelight and firelight.
There are many further mediumistic events, still unfortunately too often dubbed clairvoyance, which do not fit neatly into any of the four main channels. These include psychometry (establishing the history of an object), slate writing (common in Victorian times), extras appearing in photographs (seemingly no more; possibly since the advent of compound camera lenses using plastic as well as quartz-glass) and a long list of other curiosities too extensive to be dealt with here.
It is most unusual for a medium to have more than one primary channel "open" and under control.
The Scottish term fey is often used for clairvoyance but in the writer's opinion intuitive-knowing might be preferred? --This other writer agrees.

Clairvoyance and related phenomena throughout history
There have been anecdotal reports of clairvoyance and 'clear' abilities throughout history in most cultures. Often clairvoyance has been associated with religious or shamanic figures, offices and practices. For example, ancient Hindu religious texts list clairvoyance amongst other forms of 'clear' experiencing, as siddhis, or 'perfections', skills that are yielded through appropriate meditation and personal discipline. But a large number of anecdotal accounts of clairvoyance are of the spontaneous variety among the general populace. For example, many people report seeing a loved one who has recently died before they have learned by other means that their loved one is deceased. While anecdotal accounts do not provide scientific proof of clairvoyance, such common experiences continue to motivate research into such phenomena.
The earliest record of somnambulistic clairvoyance is credited to the Marquis de Puységur, a follower of Mesmer, who in 1784 was treating a local dull-witted peasant named Victor Race. During treatment, Race reportedly would go into trance and undergo a personality change, becoming fluent and articulate, and giving diagnosis and prescription for his own disease as well as those of others. When he came out of the trance state he would be unaware of anything he had said or done. This behavior is somewhat reminiscent of the reported behaviors of the 20th century medical clairvoyant and psychic Edgar Cayce. It is reported that although Puységur used the term 'clairvoyance', he did not think of these phenomena as "paranormal", since he accepted mesmerism as one of the natural sciences.
Clairvoyance was a reported ability of some mediums during the spiritualist period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and psychics of many descriptions have claimed clairvoyant ability up to the present day.
Early researchers of clairvoyance included William Gregory (chemist), Gustav Pagenstecher, and Rudolf Tischner. These were largely qualitative experiments in which selected participants sought to identify a concealed target image, or to provide accurate information about the history of a target object. Charles Richet, the noted physiologist and, later, Ina Jephson, a member of the Society for Psychical Research, introduced more quantitative methods. A significant development in clairvoyance research came when J. B. Rhine, a psychologist at Duke University, introduced a standard methodology, with a standard statistical approach to analysing the data, as part of his research into extrasensory perception. Perhaps the best-known study of clairvoyance in recent times has been the US government-funded remote viewing project at SRI/SAIC during the 1970s through the mid-1990s; at least those studies amongst these that did not involve "agents" visiting or being otherwise aware of the target sites.
Some parapsychologists have proposed that our different functional labels (clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition, etc.) all refer to one basic underlying mechanism, although there is not yet any satisfactory theory for what that mechanism may be.[citation needed]

Parapsychological research
Parapsychological research studies of remote viewing and clairvoyance have produced favorable results significantly above chance, and meta-analysis of these studies increases the significance. For instance, at the Stanford Research Institute, in 1972, Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ initiated a series of human subject studies to determine whether participants (the viewers or percipients) could reliably identify and accurately describe salient features of remote locations or targets. In the early studies, a human sender was typically present at the remote location, as part of the experiment protocol. A three-step process was used, the first step being to randomly select the target conditions to be experienced by the senders. Secondly, in the viewing step, participants were asked to verbally express or sketch their impressions of the remote scene. Thirdly, in the judging step, these descriptions were matched by separate judges, as closely as possible, with the intended targets. The term remote viewing was coined to describe this overall process.
Targ and Puthoff both believed that Uri Geller, retired police commissioner Pat Price and artist Ingo Swann all had genuine psychic abilities. They published their findings in Nature and the Proceedings of the IEEE. Their work however met criticism from a number of writers, such as psychologists David Marks and Richard Kammann in their 1980 book The Psychology of the Psychic.
In order to explore the nature of remote viewing channel, the viewer in some experiments was secured in a double-walled copper-screened Faraday cage. Although this provided attenuation of radio signals over a broad range of frequencies, the researchers found that it did not alter the subject's remote viewing capability. They postulated that extremely low frequency (ELF) propagation might be involved, since Faraday cage screening is less effective in the ELF range. Such a hypothesis had previously been put forward by telepathy researchers in the Soviet Union.
The first paper by Puthoff and Targ on psychic research to appear in a mainstream peer-reviewed scientific journal was published in Nature in March 1974; in it, the team reported some degree of remote viewing success. One of the individuals involved in these initial studies at SRI was Uri Geller, a well-known celebrity psychic at the time. The research team reported witnessing some of Geller's trademark metal spoon-bending performances, but admitted that they were unable to conduct adequately controlled experiments to confirm any paranormal hypothesis about them.
Electroencephalography (EEG) techniques were also used by team to examine ESP phenomena. In these investigations, a sender, who was isolated in a visually opaque, electrically and acoustically shielded chamber, was stimulated at random by bursts of strobe-light flickers The experimenters reported that, for one receiver, differential alpha block on control and stimulus trials were observed, which showed that some information transfer had occurred. In contrast, this person's expressed statements of when the stimulus occurred were no different than that which would be expected by chance. The researches were unable to identify the physical parameters by which the EEG effect was mediated.
After the publication of these findings, various attempts to replicate the remote viewing findings were quickly carried out. Several of these follow-up studies, which involved viewing in group settings, reported some limited success. They included the use of face-to-face groups, and remotely-linked groups using computer conferencing.
The various debates in the mainstream scientific literature prompted the editors of 'Proceedings of the IEEE' to invite Robert Jahn, then Dean of the School of Engineering at Princeton University, to write a comprehensive review of psychic phenomena from an engineering perspective. His paper, published in February 1982, includes numerous references to remote viewing replication studies at the time.
Clairvoyance experiments involving Zener cards currently exist on the internet. One such online system, the Anima Project, gathers user results into a master database which is then analyzed using a variety of statistical techniques.