The Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions [Paperback]

The blots do not need to be 100% "formless" or ambiguous! Where does the author get this? Why the interest in form? What about the other percepts? Now we really get outlandish because the author calls the blots "superfluous" based on his own assumption that the "therapist" is doing the interpretation. This is not the case but I suppose he meant to single out people who give the test but don't know how to administer it. It gets worse because it appears that the author is over focused on content ("I see a bumble bee", or "That's an arrogant know-it-all looking back at me"). The RIM is not all about the content! Can the author guess what the majority of the RIM is actually about? Even worse is that a single variable is NEVER used to make grand over generalizations. The "Dawes 148" reference (It would be nice to see the year here) is a good example of this repeated problem. The power of the RIM is the combination of clusters and signs. Structural summary man, structural summary!

The whole idea of "deceiving others" by making up responses demonstrates further lack of understanding on the author's part. Don't you have to know what the RIM is doing so you can deceive or alter a response in a desired way? The fact that the author thinks the test is all about content presents further problems with his theory that you can "deceive" the "test". If the author does not know the fundamentals about the RIM how is a layperson supposed to deceive it? Remember, it is not a traditional test. You cannot cheat. This brings me to my last point, not that we have time to exhaust the misconceptions printed in the author's work.

The idea that a person can give "good or bad responses" is overwhelming and convincing evidence that the author has no business writing about the RIM. The RIM does not, nor does the examiner label these responses good or bad. We'll leave the labeling up to the author. Besides, the subject's responses are not compared to the examiner's interpretations. Again, just wrong. It is an open-ended method with no good, bad, right, or wrong responses. This is clearly told to people before administration and has no bearing on scoring. Is this guy even talking about the Rorschach? Critiques like this seem to be attempts to fill space. They certainly have little to do with the actual Rorschach. I don't mind constructive criticism but I would expect the criticism to be informed and for the sake of education - in the ball park!

This work is a disaster.

I first found the Skeptic's Dictionary online as I was searching for responsible information on some of the truly questionable things I see in my New Age/metaphysical culture. Unless you're a part of the culture - or unless you're a skeptic keeping an eye on the New Age culture - you really wouldn't believe the amount of untested theories, urban legends, wild ideas, and just plain irresponsible stuff that's going around. I've often likened the New Age to the Wild West - I mean, it often feels like open season on consumers here.

I struggled for years to find responsible dissent literature in my New Age culture, but the fact is that responsible skeptical questioning simply doesn't exist in the New Age. If I want to get a non-sales-pitch or non-dreamy-eyed version of the latest channeler, spiritual leader, divination protocol, personality typing modality, magic herb, megavitamin, healing gadget, or sacred destination, I can only get that information on the q.t. If I want to research things, I have to call friends who might know a friend who knows a guy who went to the healer or took the vitamin or whatever. That's how New Age skepticism works - it's a person to person process of trial and error.

If you are in the New Age, but don't know enough people, you won't have access to this underground consumer protection agency, and you'll probably end up wasting time and money chasing after stuff that just doesn't work (or is dangerous).

True consumer protection is not a part of my New Age culture. Everything offered is generally agreed to be healing and harmless, because God or Spirit or Faeries or good Atlanteans are involved - so why should anyone question any of it? Questioning in the New Age is only allowed at the level of gossip - anything more open than that is treated as a sign of rudeness, near-paranoia, or betrayal. Real questioning can actually get you expelled from the culture.

So when I needed to question the heck out of the things I saw in the New Age, I had no culturally approved way to proceed. Luckily, I have access to the Internet, so instead of making a fuss or shutting off my mind in response to all the pressure I experienced, I just became quiet and navigated around the Web on my own. Thankfully, I ended up on skepdic.com - the site from which the Skeptic's Dictionary was created.

I've read stacks of books by skeptical authors, but I haven't respected too many of them. However, I respect Bob Carroll because his debunking and skepticism aren't bad-tempered attempts to denigrate believers or take the magic out of life (real life is magical enough without any mystical crutches, thanks). Instead, his skepticism is a natural function of his intelligence, his concern for people, and his interest in discovering what's true and what isn't. Sure, Carroll's writing sometimes leans toward sarcasm, but honestly, if you had reseached as much strange material as he has, you'd probably get a bit arch yourself. For me, this isn't just a book - it's a clear example of compassionate information gathering and dissemination. It's cool.

Here's my suggestion for New Age people or very devout people who need to be able to question what they have been taught. Flip to a topic in the Skeptic's Dictionary that you already KNOW is a hoax (all New Age people and all religious people can identify hoaxes - however, I've noticed that their training generally keeps their hoax-detection behaviors to a minimum). Don't flip to topics that cover your most cherished beliefs. Instead, stay in the safe areas.

Take a look at how Bob Carroll handles the things you've already debunked on your own, and see if you agree with his approach and his research (and his humor). Then you'll know if this book is for you - and if it is, perhaps you can then tread into touchier, sacred cow areas with the sense that you'll be treated with respect.

As a full-fledged member of the New Age culture for over thirty years, I've seen so many instances of chicanery, half-truths, and exploitation that I'm just heart-sick. If my culture can't be skeptical of itself (and it can't), then someone else has to be. I'm really grateful that a person of Bob Carroll's integrity, scholarship, and humor stepped up to the plate. The Skeptic's Dictionary is an indispensable resource. Bravo, Dr. Carroll.

In this case, the book unfortunately tells us little more than what groups/ideas have earned the author's vitriolic displeasure. What we DON'T find out is what has really shaped the contents of the book, and this despite the fact that there is solid evidence that in numerous instances the views and claims are based on indirectly obtained, and often wildly off beam, information rather than on solid investigation.
In short, we are offered prejudices posing as objectivity.

Take the rejection of "the unconscious mind", for example.
The book provides a lengthy, even tedious, pseudo-scientific discussion of how "science" has failed to demonstrate the existence of the "unconscious" mind as described by Freud, Jung and Tart, and then leaps to the unsupported conclusion that therefore there is no such thing as the unconscious mind.

In the first place this argument presupposes that nothing is "true" until it has been scientifically validated. Which is a bit like arguing that Australia dind't exist until the first white explorers discovered it.
Secondly, it studiously ignores the fact that "scientific" knowledge is itself a highly moveable feast - what seemed to be proven/disproven yesterday may well turn out to be disproven/proven tomorrow. (Yesterday "natural selection" was seen as THE controlling force behind evolution, today it is just one part of a much larger, more complex picture, tomorrow - who knows.)

But then again, you really don't need to be a rocket scientist to recognise the validity of the notion of an "unconscious", or "out of conscious" mind.

Fact: numerous experiments carried by Prof. Robert "Pygmalion in the Classroom" Rosenthal have shown that students can accurately predict a teacher's perceived effectiveness (as rated at the end of a complete semester) on the basis of just three 2 (TWO) second video clips.

So what process do they use to make that evaluation?
How can they be so accurate?
What yardstick(s) are they using to make the evaluation?
We have no idea, because the processing takes place OUTSIDE of the conscious mind.

So whether you call it "unconscious", "subconscious", "out of conscious", "non-conscious" or anything else, we clearly have a capacity for mental processing which is something rather more sophisticated than just "lost memory", as this author suggests.

This is the sort of book that greatly appeals to dilitante cynics, offering broad grounds for scepticism regarding numerous topics by way of a host of half-baked "facts" which the reader isn't expected to check out for him/herself.

One measure of a truly useful critique is that BOTH sides (or ALL sides) of the story are presented and compared so that the listener/reader can reach their own conclusions. But don't worry - you'll find nothing that open or constructive in this volume.