Psychology: Consciousness, Altered States of Consciousness and Parapsychology

Explore how psychology studies consciousness, how awareness can shift, and how science investigates unusual experiences. This course provides you with an introduction to conscious and non-conscious processes, altered states of consciousness, and parapsychology. What is consciousness? How do we study something as personal as experience? And how can science examine claims about unusual or unexplained psychological phenomena? This course introduces you to three main areas: consciousness, altered states of consciousness, and parapsychology. This course will explain the interactions between conscious and unconscious processes and show how psychological research can study states of consciousness and parapsychological phenomena. You will learn how conscious experiences can be analysed scientifically and gain knowledge of consciousness, its states, and their relation to parapsychological phenomena such as reputed extrasensory perception, telepathy, and psychokinesis. You will also learn about altered states of consciousness and unusual (anomalous) experiences. The course explains what these states are, how they can be identified and how they differ from psychological disorders. The course also covers scientific research on psychological phenomena. Here you will learn how psychology investigates claims about so-called Extrasensory perception (ESP) and related phe-nomena. You train your ability to search for scientific information, compare sources and explain your reasoning. You will study on site in Lund at the Department of Psychology, and you are expected to attend all classes and participate actively. The course is held in English.