Celia Green

Celia Elizabeth Green (born 1935[1][2]) is a British parapsychologist and writer on parapsychology.[3]

Biography

Green's parents were both primary school teachers, who together authored a series of geography textbooks which became known as The Green Geographies.[4] Green completed a B.A., M.A., and B. Litt. from Oxford University.[1] She studied psychical research at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1958 to 1960.[1]

From 1957 to 1962, Green held the post of Research Secretary at the Society for Psychical Research in London.[1][5][6] In 1961, Green founded and became the Director of the Institute of Psychophysical Research.[1] The Institute's areas of interest were initially listed as philosophy, psychology, theoretical physics, and ESP.[7] However, its principal work during the sixties and seventies concerned hallucinations and other quasi-perceptual experiences.[citation needed] In 1982, while Green was the director, the Institute investigated psychokinetic phenomena.[8]

Writing

In 1968 Green published Lucid Dreams, a study of a phenomenon described by Green as when a dreamer consciously changes the content of their dreams.[9][10] The possibility of conscious insight during dreams had previously been treated with scepticism by some philosophers[11] and psychologists[12] and scientific skepticism continued after her book was published.[3]

Green collated both previously published first-hand accounts and the results of longitudinal studies of four subjects of her own. In Lucid Dreams, she proposed a correlation between lucid dreams and the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep.[10] In 1968, Green also published a collection of 400 first-hand accounts of out-of-body experiences for the benefit of scientists interested in studying the phenomena.[13][14]

With Charles McCreery, Green co-authored the 1975 book Apparitions and the 1994 book Lucid Dreaming: The Paradox of Consciousness During Sleep.[15][16][17] Apparitions is a taxonomy of 'apparitions', or hallucinations in which the viewpoint of the subject was not ostensibly displaced, based on a collection of 1500 first-hand accounts.[18] A 1976 Kirkus Reviews review of Apparitions states, "It's hard to imagine anyone being converted by this [Institute for Psychophysical Research] product: an endless sequence of supposed apparitions [...] There are minimal efforts at objective classification by type of experience and attendant phenomena—visual and auditory effects, collective apparitions, out-of-body experiences—but none whatever at verification."[19]

Aphorisms

Her aphorisms have been published in The Decline and Fall of Science[20] and Advice to Clever Children.[21] Ten are included in the Penguin Dictionary of Epigrams,[22] and three in the Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations.[23]

CDs

The CD titled Lucid Dreams 0096, which includes parts of the book Lucid Dreams narrated by Green for the label Em:t, was released in 1995.[24][9] Earlier Green had contributed a nine-minute track to a compilation CD put out by the same recording label.[25] The track was entitled "In the Extreme" and consisted of readings by the author from her books, The Human Evasion, and Advice to Clever Children.

Selected works

Books

  • Lucid Dreams (1968) London: Hamish Hamilton. Reissued 1977, Oxford : Institute of Psychophysical Research .
  • Out-of-the-body Experiences (1968) London: Hamish Hamilton. Reissued 1977, Oxford : Institute of Psychophysical Research[13]
  • The Human Evasion (1969) London: Hamish Hamilton. Reissued 1977, Oxford: Institute of Psychophysical Research[26]
  • The Decline and Fall of Science (1976) London: Hamish Hamilton. Reissued 1977, Oxford: Institute of Psychophysical Research .
  • Advice to Clever Children (1981) Oxford : Institute of Psychophysical Research.
  • The Lost Cause: Causation and the Mind-Body Problem (2003) Oxford: Oxford Forum.
  • Letters from Exile: Observations on a Culture in Decline (2004) Oxford: Oxford Forum.
  • The Corpse and the Kingdom (2023) Oxford: Oxford Forum.

with Charles McCreery:

  • Apparitions (1975) London: Hamish Hamilton.[19]
  • Lucid Dreaming: The Paradox of Consciousness During Sleep (1994) London: Routledge.[27]

Selected papers

  • 'Waking dreams and other metachoric experiences', Psychiatric Journal of the University of Ottawa, 15, 1990, pp. 123–128.
  • 'Are mental events preceded by their physical causes?' (with Grant Gillett), Philosophical Psychology, 8, 1995, pp. 333–340.
  • 'Freedom and the exceptional child', Educational Notes, No. 26, Libertarian Alliance, 1993. Available as an Online PDF
  • 'Hindrances to the progress of medical and scientific research', in Medical Science and the Advancement of World Health, ed. R. Lanza, Praeger, New York, 1985.

Translations

  • René Sudre. Traité de Parapsychologie, published as Treatise on Parapsychology (1960)[1]

References and notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f "Green, Celia Elizabeth (1935-)". Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2 June 2023.
  2. ^ "77170613". viaf.org. Virtual International Authority File. Retrieved 2 June 2023.
  3. ^ a b Heines, Vivienne (13 October 1986). "Lucid dreaming: Making fantasies work for you". Houston Chronicle. A decade ago, LaBerge came across a book called Lucid Dreams by Celia Green, an English parapsychologist. Since many scientists were skeptical that lucidity occurred during the dream state, LaBerge went to the sleep lab to prove that lucid dreaming occurred during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep—the time when most dreams occur. ProQuest 295270295
  4. ^ The Oxford Times, 8 September 1989, Obituary: Mr William Green, Headmaster and author.
  5. ^ Renée Haynes, The Society for Psychical Research 1882-1982, London: McDonald, 1982, p.52.
  6. ^ "London's Ghost Tales Diminishing". Reading Eagle. 6 December 1959. p. 62. Retrieved 1 June 2023.
  7. ^ The Psychophysical Research Unit, Oxford: undated pamphlet of 3 pages, in circulation ca 1962-1965
  8. ^ "Calling All Poltergeists..." Record-Journal. UPI. 15 November 1982. Retrieved 1 June 2023.
  9. ^ a b Gray, Louise (11 August 1995). "Lucid pink noise". New Statesman & Society. Green reads sections from her book, Lucid Dreams, to a background of music that has a fluctuating, if constant, presence. Bursts of pink noise (an aural static, with the hard frequencies cut out), a sound that Green uses in experiments to stimulate lucid dreaming, is featured. ProQuest 224376255
  10. ^ a b Stumbrys, Tadas (2018). "Bridging Lucid Dream Research and Transpersonal Psychology: Toward Transpersonal Studies of Lucid Dreams". Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. 50 (2): 176–193. The first scientific book on the subject was published by Celia Green (1968) who also worked in the field of psychic research. In her book entitled Lucid Dreams, Green provided a comprehensive summary of the phenomenon describing its perceptual features and associations with out-of-body experience (OBE). Additionally, she introduced the notion of pre-lucid dreaming and proposed that lucid dreams are likely to occur during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. ProQuest 2234966136
  11. ^ Cf. Malcolm, N., Dreaming. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959, pp.48–50.
  12. ^ See, e.g., Hartmann, E., 'Dreams and other hallucinations: an approach to the underlying mechanism,' in Siegal, R.K. and West, L.J., eds., Hallucinations. New York: Wiley, 1975.
  13. ^ a b "Probably an Eerie Feeling". The Press-Courier. UPI. 1 December 1968. p. 6. Retrieved 1 June 2023.
  14. ^ "Psychics Strive To Erase Stacked-Deck Image". St. Petersburg Times. 9 November 1968. p. 10-A. Retrieved 1 June 2023.
  15. ^ "Dream dreams". The Guardian. 19 October 1994. These case histories have been edited from Lucid Dreaming: The Paradox of Consciousness During Sleep, by Celia Green and Charles McCreery. Published by Routledge ProQuest 293528536
  16. ^ Ilman, John (19 October 1994). "Self-awareness in dreams is more common than we think. So why do those who inhabit a shimmering nocturnal world keep quiet about it?". The Guardian. ProQuest 293508330
  17. ^ Simons, Paul (26 December 1994). "Balls of fire, rain of fish, and other very weird phenomena". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Psychologists Celia Green and Charles McCreery put a lot of these sightings down to an unusual state of sleep. In their recent book Lucid Dreaming (published in Britain by Rotledge [sic]) they explain that the dreamers think they are wide awake but all their electrical brain waves show they're in a deep sleep and their visions are, in fact, dreams. ProQuest 391872813
  18. ^ Green, C., and McCreery, C., Apparitions, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975.
  19. ^ a b "Apparitions". Kirkus Reviews. 1 February 1976. Retrieved 1 June 2023.
  20. ^ Cf. Green, C., The Decline and Fall of Science. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1976.
  21. ^ Cf. Green, C., Advice to Clever Children. Oxford: Institute of Psychophysical Research, 1981.
  22. ^ M.J. Cohen, ed., The Penguin Dictionary of Epigrams, London: Penguin Books, 2001. Pg 452
  23. ^ J.M. and M.J. Cohen, eds., The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations, London: Penguin Books, 2nd edition 1980. Pg 140
  24. ^ Lucid Dreams 0096. Nottingham: Em:t, 1995. 5025989 960027.
  25. ^ Em:t 2295. Nottingham: Em:t, 1995. 5025989 229520.
  26. ^ "NOTED WITH PLEASURE: [Review]". The New York Times. 26 January 1986. ... He is quoted in The Human Evasion, by Celia Green (Institute of Psychophysical Research/State Mutual Book and Periodical Service). ... ProQuest 425763801
  27. ^ Reviews of Lucid Dreaming
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