Ben Alderson-Day
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A Thickness in the Air
in Presence
Chapter DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526173515.00007
Online Publication Date:
21 Mar 2023
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This chapter recounts the author’s interviews with people who hear voices that others cannot. This hearing of voices is connected to the central notion of ‘the presence feeling’. The author describes how in feeling that something is there, but not via our normal senses, we are sensing something impossible, ‘going beyond’ the ordinary sensory field. At the same time, these experiences don’t quite seem to fit the sensation of presence we have encountered already. They are beyond what someone could conceivably experience, but they do not pick out the social bit – the sense of someone being there. Presences, then, are not new. They have been there all along, with people trying to describe them but unable to pin them down or grasp why they come, why they are there.
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Presence

The strange science and true stories of the unseen other

eISBN:
9781526173515
Publisher:
Manchester University Press
Cover Presence
Subjects:
Psychology
Page Count:
20
Publisher:
Manchester University Press

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Cover Presence

Presence

The strange science and true stories of the unseen other

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
21 Mar 2023
Subjects:
  1. Psychology
Available In:
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This book follows a psychologist's quest to understand one of the most curious experiences known to humankind: the universal, disturbing feeling that someone or something is there when we are alone. What does this feeling mean and where does it come from? When and why do presences emerge? And how can we begin to understand a phenomenon that can be transformative for those who experience it and yet almost impossible to put into words? The answers to these questions lie in this tour-de-force through contemporary psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience and philosophy. Presence follows Ben Alderson-Day's attempts to understand how this experience is possible. The journey takes us to meet explorers, mediums and robots, and step through real, imagined and virtual worlds. Presence is the story of whom we carry with us, at all times, as parts of ourselves.