Psychics and Stability

In spite of the fact that psychics enjoy confusion, both inside and outside themselves, they are stable. Or maybe they are stable because they enjoy confusion. Perhaps "stability" should be defined here. There seems to be some misunderstanding about that personality trait. An emotionally stable person can take a great deal of pressure before showing any sign of emotional illness, but that is not to say he never will. By comparison and emotionally unstable type is the "typical juvenile delinquent type." The emotionally unstable person gets angry at little slights, and will get violent as a result of seemingly minor annoyances. To a degree, being emotionally stable as much in common with having low irritability.

An early paper by Gertrude Schneider said that, "All other things being equal, well-adjusted subjects will do better at ESP than will poorly adjusted subjects." For long time individual psychics were observed to be emotionally stable. To return to the Nicol-Humphrey tests reported in 1953 and 1955 they said, "Another striking correlation was found to exist between ESP and the factor of emotional stability (from Cattell's personality inventory.)" The correlation with the total runs was P= .003 level. As they said, "For the correlation of total ESP score with emotional stability, we have coefficient of +.37, a result that would occur by chance about once in 350 investigations of the size."

People who think of psychics as "emotionally unstable" are wrong. Shortly after these results were released Dr. Nicol was speaking at a number of conventions. At one conference for a parapsychologists he told them of an event that had happened at another meeting where he spoke. He recalled, "At that conference there were a fair number of psychiatrists experienced in psychical research. They pounced on this finding that emotional stability was favorable to psychic impressions, saying this was contrary to their experience." But they reply was that they only see emotionally unstable people. Dr. Nicol had said earlier, "With only a mild play on words we may wonder whether instability is associated with 'fear of the (ESP) unknown signal." Even normally emotionally stable people have their "breaking point." So most people who have experienced psi phenomena of some kind are probably stable. We can even add those occasional ones who couldn't take it from the psi Unknown and so began to exhibit degrees will "mental illness."

In the mind of the psychic there is desire for improving himself yet there is a natural stability and ease in tough situations. These things may seem contradictory, but motivations for any behavior in a psychic will spring from great depths and travel many complicated and pathways. Most importantly, the person himself likes this way, he feels perfectly comfortable with the situation.

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Nicol, E., and Humphrey, B.M. 1953. The exploration of ESP and human personality. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 47:133-178.


Nicol, J. F., Humphrey, B.W. 1955. The repeatability problem in ESP personality research. The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 49: 125-156.

Schmeidler, G. R. 1949. Personality correlates of ESP as shown by Rorschach studies. Journal of Parapsychology 13: 23-31