Lawrence LeShan

Last updated • 3 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
Lawrence LeShan
Born(1920-09-08)September 8, 1920
DiedNovember 9, 2020(2020-11-09) (aged 100)
Occupation(s) psychologist, parapsychologist, educator, and author
Known for psychological intervention for cancer

Lawrence LeShan (September 8, 1920 – November 9, 2020) [1] was an American psychologist, educator, and the author of the best-selling How to Meditate (1974) a practical guide to meditation. [2] He authored or co-authored approximately 75 articles in the professional literature and more than fifteen books on a diverse range of topics including psychotherapy, war, cancer treatment, and mysticism. He also wrote science fiction under the pseudonym Edward Grendon.

Contents

Biography

LeShan received a bachelor's degree from The College of William and Mary, a masters from University of Nebraska and a Ph.D. in Human Development from the University of Chicago. He taught at Pace College, Roosevelt University, and the New School for Social Research. He worked as a clinical and research psychologist for more than 50 years, including six years as a psychologist in the United States Army. He served in the army from 1943 to 1946 and from 1950 to 1952.

In the 1960s and 1970s, LeShan conducted extensive research in the field of parapsychology. In his book The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist: Toward a General Theory of the Paranormal, he investigated paranormal topics, mystical thought and quantum mechanics. [3] In the book LeShan claimed to have tested his hypothesis of "clairvoyant reality". He said the results were a success and he could heal with mental power and train others to do the same. However, Tim Healey wrote the results were not convincing as nine of his students had eight attempts at using a clairvoyant training technique and all scored four to fives misses. [3]

In World of the Paranormal: The Next Frontier, LeShan advanced his paranormal ideas further, claiming that psychic abilities such as clairvoyance, precognition, and telepathy can be explained using quantum theory.

In the 1980s, LeShan's focus shifted to the psychotherapy of cancer support, a field in which he is considered a pioneer. LeShan lived in New York City. LeShan was married to the late Eda LeShan, who was also a writer. [4] He died at the age of 100 in 2020. [5]

Publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clairvoyance</span> Claimed form of extrasensory perception

Clairvoyance is the claimed ability to acquire information that would be considered impossible to get through scientifically proven sensations, thus classified as extrasensory perception, or "sixth sense". Any person who is claimed to have such ability is said to be a clairvoyant.

Extrasensory perception (ESP), also known as a sixth sense, or cryptaesthesia, is a claimed paranormal ability pertaining to reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, but sensed with the mind. The term was adopted by Duke University botanist J. B. Rhine to denote psychic abilities such as intuition, telepathy, psychometry, clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, empathy and their trans-temporal operation as precognition or retrocognition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parapsychology</span> Study of paranormal and psychic phenomena

Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena and other paranormal claims, for example, those related to near-death experiences, synchronicity, apparitional experiences, etc. Criticized as being a pseudoscience, the majority of mainstream scientists reject it. Parapsychology has also been criticized by mainstream critics for claims by many of its practitioners that their studies are plausible despite a lack of convincing evidence after more than a century of research for the existence of any psychic phenomena.

Parapsychology is a field of research that studies a number of ostensible paranormal phenomena, including telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation, and apparitional experiences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Society for Psychical Research</span> UK nonprofit organisation

The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to conduct organised scholarly research into human experiences that challenge contemporary scientific models." It does not, however, since its inception in 1882, hold any corporate opinions: SPR members assert a variety of beliefs with regard to the nature of the phenomena studied.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telepathy</span> Psychic ability

Telepathy is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), and has remained more popular than the earlier expression thought-transference.

Precognition is the purported psychic phenomenon of seeing, or otherwise becoming directly aware of, events in the future.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Remote viewing</span> Pseudoscientific concept

Remote viewing (RV) is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen subject, purportedly sensing with the mind. A remote viewer is expected to give information about an object, event, person, or location hidden from physical view and separated at some distance. Physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, parapsychology researchers at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), are generally credited with coining the term "remote viewing" to distinguish it from the closely related concept of clairvoyance. According to Targ, the term was first suggested by Ingo Swann in December 1971 during an experiment at the American Society for Psychical Research in New York City.

Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Notable paranormal beliefs include those that pertain to extrasensory perception, spiritualism and the pseudosciences of ghost hunting, cryptozoology, and ufology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helmut Schmidt (parapsychologist)</span>

Helmut Schmidt was a German-born physicist and parapsychologist whose experiments on extrasensory perception were widely criticized for machine bias, methodological errors and lack of replication. Critics also noted that necessary precautions were not taken to rule out the possibility of fraud.

In parapsychology, psychometry, also known as token-object reading, or psychoscopy, is a form of extrasensory perception characterized by the claimed ability to glean accurate knowledge of an object's history by making physical contact with that object. Supporters assert that an object may have an energy field that transfers knowledge regarding that object's history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrija Puharich</span> American physician and medical and parapsychological researcher

Andrija Puharich — born Henry Karel Puharić — was a medical and parapsychological researcher, medical inventor, physician and author, known as the person who brought Israeli Uri Geller and Dutch-born Peter Hurkos (1911–1988) to the United States for scientific investigation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert H. Thouless</span>

Robert Henry Thouless was an English psychologist and parapsychologist. He is best known as the author of Straight and Crooked Thinking, which describes flaws in reasoning and argument.

Evan Harris Walker, was an American physicist and parapsychologist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stanley Krippner</span>

Stanley Krippner is an American psychologist and parapsychologist. He received a B.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1954 and M.A. (1957) and Ph.D. (1961) degrees from Northwestern University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Margenau</span>

Henry Margenau was a German-American physicist and philosopher of science.

Erlendur Haraldsson was a professor emeritus of psychology on the faculty of social science at the University of Iceland. He published in various psychology and psychiatry journals. In addition, he published parapsychology books and authored a number of papers for parapsychology journals.

In psychology, anomalistic psychology is the study of human behaviour and experience connected with what is often called the paranormal, with few assumptions made about the validity of the reported phenomena.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telekinesis</span> Influencing of objects without physical interaction

Telekinesis is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing an individual to influence a physical system without physical interaction. Experiments to prove the existence of telekinesis have historically been criticized for lack of proper controls and repeatability. There is no reliable evidence that telekinesis is a real phenomenon, and the topic is generally regarded as pseudoscience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph F. Rinn</span> American magician and skeptic of paranormal phenomena

Joseph Francis Rinn (1868–1952) was an American magician and skeptic of paranormal phenomena.

References

  1. "encyclopedia.com".
  2. Fields, Tracy. (1995). Cancer Patients Call On Mind To Help Heal The Body. Ocala Star-Banner .
  3. 1 2 Healey, Tim. (1976). The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist: Toward a General Theory of the Paranormal by Lawrence LeShan. Leonardo . Volume 9, No. 2. pp. 154-155.
  4. (20 August 1944). Eda Joan Grossman Wed. The New York Times .
  5. "LAWRENCE LESHAN". Legacy.com. Retrieved 16 November 2020.
  6. Leshan, Lawrence (1 May 2003). The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist: Toward a General Theory of the Paranormal. Simon and Schuster. ISBN   978-1-62153-593-5.
  7. LeShan, Lawrence (1979). How to Meditate: A Guide to Self-discovery. Bantam Books. ISBN   978-0-553-13515-2.
  8. LeShan, Lawrence (12 November 1987). Alternate Realities. Random House Publishing Group. ISBN   978-0-345-34924-8.
  9. LeShan, Lawrence (1980). You Can Fight for Your Life: Emotional Factors in the Treatment of Cancer. M. Evans. ISBN   978-0-87131-494-9.
  10. LeShan, Lawrence L.; Margenau, Henry (1983). Einstein's Space and Van Gogh's Sky: Physical Reality and Beyond. Collier Books. ISBN   978-0-02-093180-5.
  11. LeShan, Lawrence (1984). Holistic Health: How to Understand and Use the Revolution in Medicine. Turnstone. ISBN   978-0-85500-203-9.
  12. LeShan, Lawrence L. (1984). From Newton to ESP: Parapsychology and the Challenge of Modern Science. Turnstone Press. ISBN   978-0-85500-200-8.
  13. LeShan, Lawrence (1 August 1994). Cancer As a Turning Point: A Handbook for People with Cancer, Their Families, and Health Professionals - Revised Edition. Penguin. ISBN   978-0-452-27137-1.
  14. LeShan, Lawrence L. (1 January 1996). An Ethic for the Age of Space: A Touchstone for Conduct Among the Stars. Weiser Books. ISBN   978-0-87728-854-1.
  15. LeShan, Lawrence L. (1996). Beyond Technique: Psychotherapy for the 21st Century. Jason Aronson. ISBN   978-1-56821-550-1.
  16. LeShan, Lawrence L. (1990). The Dilemma of Psychology: A Psychologist Looks at His Troubled Profession. Dutton. ISBN   978-0-525-24928-3.
  17. LeShan, Lawrence L. (1992). The Psychology of War: Comprehending Its Mystique and Its Madness. Noble Press. ISBN   978-1-879360-20-4.
  18. LeShan, Lawrence (15 August 2013). A New Science of the Paranormal: The Promise of Psychical Research. Quest Books. ISBN   978-0-8356-3053-5.
  19. LeShan, Eda J.; LeShan, Lawrence L. (2005). Patriotism for Grownups. Trafford Publishing. ISBN   978-1-4120-5665-6.
  20. Leshan, Lawrence (2006). The Pattern of Evil: Myth, Social Perception and the Holocaust. Xlibris Corporation. ISBN   978-1-59926-885-9.
  21. LeShan, Lawrence (15 August 2013). A New Science of the Paranormal: The Promise of Psychical Research. Quest Books. ISBN   978-0-8356-3053-5.
  22. LeShan, Lawrence (2012). LANDSCAPES of the MIND: The Faces of Reality. Eirini Press. ISBN   978-0-9799989-8-0.