ParaMOOC2024 Presenters: Biographies & Abstracts

Biographies of Presenters and their Abstracts:

 

    • Jeannie Lagle Dollar

“RSPK & the Case of Christina Boyer,” Monday, April 15th, from 3 pm Central/4 on Eastern. Click  here for the recording.

Biography: Jeannie Lagle Dollar has enjoyed a successful career as a medical speech pathologist and, prior to and throughout her lifetime, has dedicated herself to work in clinical psychology and parapsychology. She began with the PRF and William G. (Bill) Roll when she first met Christina Boyer in 1984. Jeannie graduated with a B.S. in Speech Pathology and Audiology in 1976 from Auburn University and, in 1979, completed the M.A. in Humanistic Psychology from West Georgia College. She later received the M.S. in Communication Sciences Disorders in 1994 from the University of Alabama.

Abstract:  This presentation focuses on the period from 1984 to present when Jeannie participated in the first and only scientific research of RSPK (recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis) and the higherly significant results and ongoing phenomena.

 

Kirsty Allan:

“PSI and Sensitivity,” Thursday, April 18th, from 7:00am Central/8 am  Eastern/1 pm London.

Biography:  Kirsty Allan is a Senior Research Assistant at the University of Central Lancashire and a Ph.D. Candidate and Graduate Teaching Assistant at University of Northampton. With interests in psi phenomena, sensory processing sensitivity and mental health, she has spoken at various academic conferences, is a certified coach to highly sensitive people and has published a self-help book on transforming anxiety. Kirsty supports participatory research with children and young people exploring culture and consciousness. With expertise in exceptional human experience and psi phenomena and, practical experience in play, creativity and wellbeing, Kirsty’s interests also include the co-development of an exploratory tool using story and illustration.

Kirsty has been a student of five UK universities and has taught numerous areas of psychology to undergraduate and postgraduate level. Her research projects have focussed on altered states of consciousness and restricted environmental sensory techniques (R.E.S.T).
Kirsty has several years experience as a Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner at NHS Step 2 and worked with children and young people in the Trafford borough to address a gap in mental health services. In 2022, Kirsty was recruited to University of Northampton to lead the floatation tank research for the Exceptional Experiences and Consciousness Studies unit. She was recruited here to assist the data collection and analysis of a funded project exploring children’s anomalous experiences, with Dr. Donna Thomas at the University of Central Lancashire. Kirsty is currently facilitating the development of an conference and retreat events and an illustrated research tool.

 

Abstract:  In parapsychological research, a number of individual differences – and dimensions of experience – correlate with the likelihood of having anomalous experience and perhaps, hint at the processes that underly the phenomena. In this talk, Kirsty explores the potential connection between the trait of high sensitivity and anomalous experience – and how sensitive children, in particular, experience and process a world of deep interconnection and maybe, more.

Athena Drewes:

“Children’s Exceptional Experiences: Exploring Anecdotal Cases and Clinical Ways to Work with Children and Families.” Friday, April 19th, from 3 pm Central/4 on Eastern. Click here for the recording.

Biography:  Athena A. Drewes, Psy.D., M.A., M.S. Ed, RPT-S is a licensed child psychologist, clinical parapsychologist, and consultant to the Rhine Research Center and the Parapsychology Foundation on children’s psychic experiences. Dr. Drewes has had her own psychic experiences as a child through adulthood. She was a research assistant at the Division of Parapsychology and Psychophysics at the Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, assisting with dream telepathy experiments. She has published research, journal, and magazine articles and reviews on children and psi, and has lectured extensively on the subject.

Dr. Drewes is senior author, with Dr. Sally A. Drucker, of the reference work Parapsychological Research with Children: An Annotated Bibliography (Scarecrow Press, 1991). She has been featured in Psychic Children (a CBS production), has appeared as a consultant on Paranormal State, and has contributed to and is referenced in The Gift: ESP, the Extraordinary Experiences of Ordinary People by Dr. Sally Rhine Feather and Michael Schmicker (St. Martin’s Press, 2005). Dr. Drewes has an informational website to help children and parents deal with paranormal and psychic experiences (www.perceptivechildren.org), and she assists clinicians in understanding how to respond to children’s psi experiences. She is also a national and international presenter and supervisor of play therapy, as well as a chapter author and senior editor of over 13 books on play therapy.

Abstract:  This presentation will focus on various perspectives of anecdotal Exceptional Experiences (ExEs) reported by children, teens and parents, such as seeing and interacting with imaginary friends, orbs, spirits and ghosts. Comparisons will be made between anecdotal cases received from a website devoted to perceptive children’s experiences, Dr. Louisa Rhine’s children’s letters, experiences reported during a children’s PEG (Psychic Experiences Group), as well as clinical cases.

Anecdotal reports will offer rich examples of children and teen’s experiences along with their personal reactions, fears and concerns from having ExEs. Clinicians will be helped to create a holding space for the child’s imaginary worlds and experiences without judgement, which materials to include in the therapy room to encourage disclosure, how to be culturally sensitive to parental beliefs and religious views and ways to understand and respond to exceptional experiences. The presenter will stress the point that therapists need to be sensitive in responding and not assume such exceptional experiences indicate psychosis.

 

Kate Adams

“Visions in the Night: Children’s ‘Extraordinary’ Dreams. Monday, April 22nd, 7 am Central/8 am Eastern/1 pm London.

Biography:  Prof Kate Adams Ph.D. is an academic based at Leeds Trinity University, UK, in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Education. With a background as a primary school teacher, she moved into academia through undertaking a Ph.D. at the University of Glasgow, UK, which explored dreams of children from secular and religious backgrounds which they perceived to have a divine connection. Kate’s research places the child’s voice at the centre, as she seeks to understand their perceptions of what might be termed spiritual, unusual or extraordinary experiences, which she contextualises within multidisciplinary frameworks.

Abstract:  Every night we dream, albeit that we may not remember much, if anything, of the worlds we enter. However, some dreams have unusual qualities and can remain with us throughout our lives. Our ancestors recognised the power of some dreams, and psychologists continue to explore the multiplicity of dream types, albeit that most researchers focus on adults’ dreams.

In this talk, we explore dreams from childhood which appear to connect with other worlds. These include dreams which the recipient believes have predicted the future (precognitive dreams), offered meetings with the deceased and/or delivered messages from other realms. Children’s voices are heard, including their understandings of the dreams, and how peers and adults have responded to them. We consider the various ways in which these types of dreams might be understood across different disciplines.

 

Natalia Lavin

“Anomalous Experiences in Childhood: The Implications for Therapists.” Wednesday, April 24th, 7 am Central/8 am Eastern/1:00 pm London.

Biography:  Natalia (Talia) Lavin is a children’s psychotherapist and Ph.D. student at the University of Northampton, UK. Her research interests include involving children in parapsychological research, the occurrence of psi in industries and combining psychotherapy with anomalistic research. Talia recently presented at the SPR’s 46th International Annual Conference and the first ICreateS (University of Central Lancashire) Children, Consciousness and Culture event. You can find her on Twitter (X) at @talialavin_.

Abstract: The research area concerning anomalous experiences in therapeutic settings is a sparse yet growing area of psychology, but the inclusion of children and young people in research of this kind is severely lacking. Where children are involved, they are largely subjected to medicalisation. The study being discussed aims to include childhood anomalous experiences in the literature as well as considering the role counsellors play in assisting young people presenting with them.
We find that young people experience both positive and negative outcomes in relation to their anomalous experiences and an emphasis on the importance of adult understanding was established. It appears that practitioners working with young people would benefit their service users by developing an understanding of these experiences and the impacts they can have on children. It is hoped that this work begins to highlight not only the demand for children’s mental health practitioners to be aware of this, but also the need to involve young people’s narratives in parapsychological research.

 

Sally Drucker

“Children’s Psi: What the Research Tells Us.” Thursday, April 25th, 1 pm Central/2 pm Eastern.

Biography:  In the late 1970s, Dr. Sally Ann Drucker was a research assistant at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. She worked with Charles Honorton on altered states and psi, and with Dr. Athena A. Drewes, developed a series of experiments testing children’s psi with M&Ms candies. In 1991, they published Parapsychological Research with Children: An Annotated Bibliography (Scarecrow Press).

Dr. Drucker is an elected member of the Parapsychological Association and has served on the PA Board. In Durham, North Carolina, she taught for several years in the FRNM (now the Rhine Research Center) Summer Study Program. Currently, she is Vice-President of the Rhine’s board of directors and has served as an editor of the Journal of Parapsychology.

Abstract: Are children more psychic than adults? Has this ever been tested? Why does psi in children appear to fade after a certain age? Does our school system inhibit it? Are there cross-cultural differences in children’s psi?  When Dr. Athena Drewes and I tested children with M&M candies, how did psi results relate to levels of logical thinking and IQ?  What do numerous psi studies done with school children imply for educators, researchers, and parents? In this talk, these and other questions will be addressed as we examine  parapsychological research done with children.

 

James G. Matlock

“Previous Lives, and Why Past-Life Memory isn’t Psi.” Saturday, April 27th, 3 Central/4 pm Eastern.

Biography: Jim Matlock received a B.A. in English from Emory University in 1977 and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale in 2002. He has worked at the American Society for Psychical Research in New York City and at the Rhine Research Center in Durham, North Carolina. He is presently a Research Fellow at the Parapsychology Foundation in New York. He is the co-author (with Erlendur Haraldsson) of I Saw a Light and Came Here: Children’s Experiences of Reincarnation, and the author of Signs of Reincarnation: Exploring Beliefs, Cases, and Theory, which won a Best Book of the Year award from the Parapsychological Association. Jim  teaches a 15-week online graduate-level seminar course on reincarnation research and theory.

Abstract:  The title of this year’s ParaMOOC is “Children and Psi,: but this presentation is concerned with children’s past-life memories. I discuss the ways in which past-life memories resemble memories of the present life—they are often cued, they show reminiscence bumps and recency effects, and they may be classified and analyzed as either declarative or implicit, involving episodic, semantic, emotional, and procedural memory. Children’s memories most often arise in the waking state, although they may come in nightmares or, apparently, night terrors. Past-life memories typically are expressed in the first person and are accompanied by an emotional identification with the previous self. Emotional and behavioral memories sometimes present as phobias or in PTSD-like ways that relate to previous-life traumas.

All of these features together make it clear that past-life memory is a form of memory, not of psi, and demonstrate why explaining it in terms of a living-agent super-psi doesn’t work. I treat the issues of false memories, source amnesia, and the social construction of memory, explaining why none of these suffice to explain more developed past-life memories either. Additionally, I discuss why past-life memory cannot satisfactorily be attributed to genetic memory and why memory in general does not appear to be recorded in the brain, as reductionist materialist critics suppose that it is.
In the end, the only wholly satisfactory explanation for a child’s past-life memory is that it is exactly what it purports to be—actual memory of a previous life. But this brings up the question, why don’t all of us routinely recall previous lives? Answering this question involves outlining my theory of reincarnation and how it relates to past-life remembering.