Christopher French

Christopher French is a senior lecturer in psychology, parapsychology, and pseudoscience at Goldsmiths College at the University of London in England. In his essay on psychic healing, which originally appeared in The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal, French discusses the emergence of psychic healing in the alternative health movement. Although many psychic healers claim to have cured seriously ill patients, there is no medically documented proof that psychic healing cured the patients. In many cases, the patients were not truly ill; in others, the patients temporarily felt better and attributed the improvement to psychic healing. However, French notes, feeling better is not the same as becoming well. French believes that many psychic healing "cures" are actually due to the placebo effect, in which the patient's suffering is alleviated because he or she believes in the treatment. While psychic healers...