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]