David Fontana

David Fontana (1934–2010) was a British psychologist, parapsychologist, spiritualist and pseudoscience promoter.

It's fun to pretend
Paranormal
Fails from the crypt
v - t - e

Biography

Fontana was a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Chartered Psychologist and a Chartered Counselling Psychologist. He published many books, including popular treatments of dreams and symbols. He also took interest in paranormal research such as mediumship, poltergeist cases and electronic voice phenomenon. He was at one time the president of the Society for Psychical Research, from 1995 to 1998.[1]

Life after death

Fontana was a convinced spiritualist and is most well known for his book Is There An Afterlife?: A Comprehensive Overview of the Evidence (2005). Fontana believed that hauntings (including poltergeists), mental and physical mediumship, claims for electronic communications from the dead, near-death and out-of-body experiences, and reincarnation were all real and evidence for an afterlife.[2] It is clear that Fontana was credulous when it came to the subject of life after death as he did not use any critical or skeptical material in his book. He took reports at face value and did not cite the evidence of fraud in mediumship. According to Fontana fraudulent mediums such as Helen Duncan, Eileen Garrett, Leslie Flint and Gladys Osborne Leonard were all genuine.

Fontana was one of the few psychologists to accept many of the reports of physical mediumship as valid, but investigations into physical mediumship have proven fraud, such as ectoplasm made out of butter or muslin, or mediums using plastic dolls as spirits in seance rooms.

Publications
  • Life Beyond Death: What Should We Expect? (2009)
  • Creative Meditation & Visualization (2007)
  • Is There An Afterlife?: A Comprehensive Overview of the Evidence (2005)
  • Learn to Dream: Interpret Dream Symbolism, Enhance Inner Life, Remember Your Dreams (2004)
  • Psychology, Religion and Spirituality (2003)
  • The Secret Language of Symbols: A Visual Key to Symbols and Their Meanings (2003)
  • Discover Zen: A Practical Guide to Personal Serenity (2001)
  • Learn to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Self-Discovery and Fulfillment (1999)
  • Meditation: An Introductory Guide to Relaxation for Mind and Body (1999)
  • The Meditator's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Eastern and Western Meditation Techniques (1992)
gollark: Yes, the mandatory scene where they analogise it using a piece of paper or something.
gollark: For 4D *Euclidean* space the 2D/3D stuff mostly just generalizes fine, as far as I know.
gollark: There are theories of how they might work, but any useful ones involve ridiculously complex maths and not vague ideas of extra dimensions.
gollark: Also, I don't think that "the universe is the 3-dimensional surface of a 4-sphere" thing is actually... true?
gollark: You can totally understand it ish, just not very intuitively.

See also

References
  1. Biography of David Fontana
  2. Book Review by Anthony Campbell
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