Two primary issues are addressed: 

The peculiar data of the laboratory.
The discipline’s marginality and failure to flourish.

    Psi exists.  But laboratory results severely challenge the rest of science.  The problematical findings include: independence of task complexity, retroactive PK, experimenter effects, and the source of psi problem.  Psi’s negative definition gives clues to its nature.

    Psi research has not been effectively integrated into academe.  Despite enormous popular interest, there are no departments of parapsychology in colleges or universities.  This is not due to a failure of the researchers, nor to the activities of the debunkers, rather, it is a consequence of the phenomena.  A similar anti-structural and anti-institutional pattern is observed wherever the phenomena are engaged directly.

    The Trickster and the Paranormal extends parapsychology with theories from anthropology and literary criticism.

    William Braud’s model of lability and inertia is integrated with Victor Turner's concept of anti-structure.

    The replication problem is considered in light of anthropological notions of “participation” and “reflexivity.”  These provide new views of the repeatability issue.

    The “enchanted boundary” of Walter Franklin Prince is strikingly similar to the “limen” of Arnold van Gennep in his The Rites of Passage (1909).  The combination of perspectives helps explain academe’s hostility to the field.

    Precognition and retroactive PK defy the notions of cause and effect.  Structuralism is explicitly acausal, and it has natural parallels with significant aspects of psi. 

    The anthropological theories cited above are directly tied to analyses of the trickster figure.  Of course, the problem of deception in parapsychology is addressed.