Pacific Neuropsychiatric Institute

The Pacific Neuropsychiatric Institute, founded in 1992 in Seattle, Washington, by South African psychiatrist Vernon M. Neppe, serves primarily as a center treating patients suffering from neuropsychiatric disorders, but also as a center for research on neuropsychiatric-related phenomena, including paranormal phenomena. Prior to establishing the institute, Neppe had an outstanding career as a professor of psychiatry at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the University of Washington.

Along with his work on specialized areas from forensic psychiatry to geriatric psychiatry, Neppe has had a long-term interest in paranormal phenomena that manifests as early as his masters thesis in 1979, in which he documented a correlation between the subjective experience of having a paranormal experience with the activity of the brain. Over the years he became convinced that if such experiences are real, then they should have links to more phenomena documented in psychiatric literature.

At the institute, Neppe has made use of a set of what he considers more neutral descriptive terms for phenomena such as ESP, remote viewing, or psychokinesis. The whole area of anomalous or paranormal phenomena is referred to as "delta." A clairvoyant event, an experience of reception of a delta experience, is termed an "afferent delta," and an event such as psychokinesis, or mind over matter, is termed an "efferent delta," an outgoing element of an anomalous experience. The new language recognizes the problem of researching subjective experiences of persons, which, while very real to the individual, is most difficult to understand in objective terms. Neppe has been especially concerned with correlating anomalous experience with brain activity. The institute may be contacted on the Internet at http://www.pni.org.

Sources:

Neppe, V. M. "Anomalous Experience and Psychopathology." In Betty Shapin and Lisette Cody, eds. Spontaneous Psi, Depth Psychology and Parapsychology. New York: Parapsychology Foundation, 1992.

——. "Extrasensory Perception—an Anachronism and Anathema." Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 52, no.789 (October 1984): 365-70.

——. An Investigation of the Relationship between Temporal Lobe Symptomatology and Subjective Paranormal Experience. Johannesburg, South Africa: University of Witwatersrand, Med Psych thesis, 1979.

——. "The Relevance of the Temporal Lobe to Anomalous Subjective Experience." In Rhea A. White and R. S. Broughton, eds. Research in Parapsychology 1983. Methuchen,N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1984.