In my studies of psychic people I have come to understand that we are a minority group with the same pressures and problems of other minorities.

[...]

The comparison of gays and psychic people is a useful one:

Like gays, psychic people have the option of hiding who they are from the general public. There are no physical features of psychic people to give them away and the only way for people to find out is if the psychic gives away the secret.

Psychic people are unfairly portrayed as incompetent and flaky, crazy and deluded. Much as gays had to deal with a psychiatric evaluation as "abnormal" at best and "sexually deviant" at worst in years past, psychics have had to deal with the same level of misunderstanding in the present. In the field of psychology, it is assumed that there is something wrong with us. As I pointed out earlier, the pejorative term "magical thinking" is tossed about.

Psychic ability has been pushed underground and off to the fringes for the most part, with high profile psychics facing intense criticism and ridicule from the fanatical atheist James Randi and the pseudo skeptical organization CSI.

Most professional psychics toil in obscurity in an unregulated industry dotted with incompetence and the occasional outright frauds. In the public's eyes, they all tend to get lumped together. Like many small businesses, most fail within a couple of years to get established and the psychics move on to more profitable professions. Some stick it out and go on to have successful, if unremarkable careers. Psychics are limited in where they can advertise; not every publication will take their money because of their fringe status.

Moving away from professional psychics, another area where psychics struggle, just like gays, is that they have to find health professionals friendly to them. Not just anyone will do. If a psychic person confides a psychic experience to a doctor, he/she does not want to come away with a handful of anti-psychotic medication. The doctor has to know the difference.

Similarly, psychics in need of therapy will often have to search for psychic friendly therapists who will calmly accept psychic ability and its presence in treatment.

Both gays and psychic people tend not to advertise who they are for fear of disapproval, waiting instead to find out "who's cool." It is all very isolating and mentally unhealthy.

Like gays, many psychics suffer from self-loathing due to non-acceptance by authority in our society. Many people keep their psychic abilities secret due to fear of losing their jobs or status or both. They don't want the "crazy" label.

Both have organizations pitted against them. Gays have the evangelical Christian churches trying to "pray away the gay" and psychics have JREF and CSI and their satellite skeptic groups trying to paint them as frauds or delusional. Both the Christian and the atheist organizations come from the standpoint that they are "helping."

Interestingly, both the fundamentalist Christian and skeptic organizations rely on pseudo-science, hypocrisy and double standards to achieve their goals; the difference being that skeptics have far more support from the scientific community at large. I forgot to add, evangelical Christians aren't exactly our friends; they think we're in league with the Devil or something. They do respect psychic ability though, so I suppose that's a positive of sorts.