 I am currently a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society
and a Research Fellow at the Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies,
University of Edinburgh, Scotland. My research
interests include second sight and other types of psychic, religious,
and transpersonal experiences in Scotland and other cultures. I am also
interested in the possible relationship of second sight to other
exceptional mental and artistic abilities.
Originally wanting to become a bassoonist, I studied music at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook, USA, where my academic interests
extended to the fields of psychology, philosophy and human genetics. There
I completed my BA and MA degrees in psychology. My Masters thesis showed
that female carriers of colourblindness do have impaired vision when coloured
stimuli are presented briefly before eye movements can be made.
My interest in colour vision extended to the study of different forms of
perception and consciousness.
I completed my PhD in Psychology in affiliation with the
School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh. My
thesis, ``The Scottish Tradition of Second
Sight and Other Psychic Experiences in Families'', is a multidisciplinary
study of second sight, applying methods from the fields of ethnology,
psychology and human genetics.
Drawing from interviews
with people in different parts of Scotland, questionnaires, survey data and
family histories, my research examined the different types of psychic
experiences people report today and explores in more depth the belief that
second sight is hereditary. My doctoral research was funded by The
Perrott-Warrick Studentship for Psychical Research, the Eileen Garrett
Scholarship, the Society for Psychical Research, and the Institut
für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene.
My postdoctoral research focuses on the possible inheritance of musical,
artistic, poetic and mathematical abilities in themselves and also their
possible relationship to second sight. This work has been funded by a
grant from the
Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene, the Frances
P. Bolton Fellowship from the Parapsychology Foundation, and, currently a
grant from the Bial Foundation.
Selected Publications
- Cohn, S. A. (1999a) A Historical Review of Second Sight: the
Collectors, their Accounts and Ideas, Scottish Studies,
33, 146-185.
- Cohn, S. A. (1999b) Second Sight and Family History: Pedigree
and Segregation Analyses, Journal of Scientific Exploration,
13 (3), 351-372.
- Cohn, S. A. (1999c) A Questionnaire Study of Second Sight
Experiences, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 63 (855): 129-157.
- Cohn, S.A. (1998) Second Sight: Fact or Fiction?
In A. McKelvie (Ed.) Edit(The University of Edinburgh Magazine),
Issue 14, Summer.
- Cohn, S.A. (1996). The Scottish Tradition of Second Sight and Other Psychic
Experiences in Families, an unpublished PhD dissertation,
University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
- Cohn, S.A. (1994) A Survey on Scottish Second Sight,
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 59 (835), 385-400.
- Cohn, S. A., Emmerich, D. S., and Carlson, E.A. (1989)
Differences in the Responses of Heterozygous Carriers of
Color-Blindness and Normal Controls to Briefly Presented Stimuli,
Vision Research, 29 (2), 255-262.
- Address
-
Celtic and Scottish Studies
- University of Edinburgh
- 27 George Square
- Edinburgh EH8 9LD
- United Kingdom
Email: Shari.Cohn@ed.ac.uk We thanks the Parapsychological Association Board (www.parapsych.org) for the permission to publish the above material
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