Psychic Detectives

By: Gregory Elliott

Divination and fortune telling have been around for thousands of years in one form or another, in our time these “powers” are called psychic abilities. These powers appear in different facets of our society, mostly involving entertainment but the largest example of serious use of psychic powers would be in the realm of law enforcement with psychic investigators.

The fact that the use of psychic detectives is even still considered as an option to investigators amazes me. The information gained by such attempts is hardly ever useful and if it ever even is useful its almost negligibly important information. The modern “psychic” has probably been around since the 1800’s sometime and since then no scientific proof has come up to support psychic claims. I think the reason psychic powers are still considered by police departments may be something to do with their line of work than its effectiveness. Police departments are very stressful places to work, typically things happen that the officers have no control over and the job then becomes reactionary. Constantly dealing with the unknown or uncontrollable as well as the terrible situations police are constantly exposed to may predispose police to be more open to the idea of psychic abilities. Let me explain, when humans are forced into situations that they don’t understand for whatever reason they try and rationalize it the best they can. If you’ve ever heard the phrase “there are no atheists in a foxhole” you may understand. People in chaotic situations will look to religion or try to improve “luck” to help them selves out and gain a feeling of control. When a police department turns to psychic investigators this may be this seeking other worldly powers to try and get a handle on a situation they might not have much control over. To them it doesn’t have to make sense it just has to work. Many high stress jobs, especially those that involve the risking of ones life, I feel predispose people to act this way.

With this predisposition psychic investigators can easily take advantage of the situation either maliciously or not, to make them selves look better. Because of this many psychics reports of proof of psychic ability are highly contested as they seem to stretch the truth when talking about what they’ve done, who they have worked for and the chances of success they have had.

some interesting links refuting a very popular "psychic detectives" claims-

http://noreenrenier.com/index.htm

http://www.commentarybysherlock.com/commentarybysherlock/runwaypart3.asp