Charles McCreery

Charles Anthony Selby McCreery (born 30 June 1942) is a British psychologist and author, best known for his collaboration with Celia Green on work on hallucinatory states in normal people.

Biography

Charles McCreery was born at Stanton St. John in Oxfordshire. He is the son of General Sir Richard McCreery and Lettice, daughter of Major Lord Percy St. Maur and granddaughter of Algernon St Maur, 14th Duke of Somerset. McCreery was later disinherited by his parents.

During the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 Charles McCreery was a page to Field Marshal Alan Brooke, and took part in the ceremony in Westminster Abbey.

McCreery was educated at Eton College (1955-60) and New College, Oxford (1961-64), where he read Philosophy and Psychology.

Since 1964 he has collaborated with Celia Green on a series of studies of hallucinatory experiences in ostensibly normal people, including studies of out-of-body experiences, in which people seem to perceive their own physical body ‘from outside’. From 1987-2000 he also collaborated with the Oxford psychologist Gordon Claridge on work on the theoretical construct of schizotypy.

In 1993 he was awarded a doctorate by the University of Oxford for work relating out-of-body experiences to schizotypy.

From 1996 to 2000 McCreery was Lecturer in Experimental Psychology at Magdalen College, Oxford.

Work

The three main areas of McCreery’s work with Celia Green have been the types of hallucinatory experience known as lucid dreams (dreams in which the subject is aware that he or she is dreaming), out-of-body experiences, and apparitional experience.

In addition to books co-authored with Celia Green, McCreery has published a paper proposing a theory of psychosis, linking the phenomena of psychosis, such as hallucinations and delusions, to arousability, Stage 1 sleep and dreams.

More recently (2006) McCreery has published a paper on the implications of hallucinatory experiences of the sane for the philosophy of perception. This argues that the phenomena provide empirical support for the theory of representationalism as against that of direct realism.

See also

• Hallucinations in the sane

Books

• Science, Philosophy and ESP (1967). London: Faber and Faber.
• Psychical Phenomena and the Physical World (1973): London: Hamish Hamilton.
• The Abolition of Genius (2012). Oxford: Oxford Forum.

With Celia Green:

• Apparitions (1975). London: Hamish Hamilton.
• Lucid Dreaming: the Paradox of Consciousness During Sleep (1994). London: Routledge.

Selected papers

• ‘Hallucinations and arousability: pointers to a theory of psychosis’ (1997). In Claridge, G. (ed.): Schizotypy, Implications for Illness and Health. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• ‘Perception and hallucination: the case for continuity’. Philosophical Paper No. 2006-1, Oxford: Oxford Forum.

With Gordon Claridge:

• ‘A study of hallucination in normal subjects – I. Self-report data’ (1996). Personality and Individual Differences, 21, 739-747.
• ‘A study of hallucination in normal subjects – II. Electrophysiological data’ (1996). Personality and Individual Differences, 21, 749-758.
• ‘Healthy schizotypy: the case of out-of-the-body experiences’ (2002). Personality and Individual Differences, 32, 141-154.

External links

• McCreery's paper on the philosophical implications of hallucinatory experiences
• 'Dreams and psychosis, a new look at an old hypothesis' An online version of McCreery's theory of psychosis.