Unwirkliche Wirklichkeit. Individuelle Erfahrung und gesellschaftlicher Umgang mit dem Para-Normalen heute

In academic debates on “the occult”, the everyday experiences of individuals with paranormal or supernatural phenomena are often neglected. This article presents and analyses empirical data on the “everyday nature of the paranormal” from a contemporary representative survey in Germany. Despite extraordinary experiences being an everyday matter for many of them, the participants in the survey stated that they only seldom communicate paranormal experiences. But if they did – as the analyses of qualitative interviews showed – they used a particular narrative mode which could be labelled “protected communication” („geschützte Kommunikation“). The necessity of using such a mode is explained through the application of a sociological model of heterodox knowledge. According to this model, the discursive rejection of extraordinary experiences in the public discourse appears in a culture of scientism as a strategy to exclude rejected knowledge

Epistemology · Ethnography · Narrative · Occult · Paranormal · Scientism · Sociology · Anthropology · Paranormal Experiences and Beliefs · Philosophy · Psychology · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices · Social Psychology