The phenomena of table turning flourished during the 1850s, providing for many the context for belief in spirit action, and for the development of explanations such as unconscious muscular movements and the exteriorization of nervous forces from the sitters. This paper consists of the presentation of excerpts from the classic study of these phenomena by Agénor de Gasparin, who reported his work on the subject in his book Des Tables Tournantes (1854, 2 vols., translated to English in 1857). De Gasparin (...) believed that unconscious muscular action could not explain the movements of tables, and postulated the emission of a force from the sitters around the table to account for the movements. I present a long excerpt from de Gasparin’s book in which he described the phenomena he obtained, preceded by a short review of interest in table phenomena in the 1850s, and followed by critiques showing the general skepticism about these phenomena during and after de Gasparin’s lifetime. (shrink)

Autobiographies are one of the sources we have to learn about past developments in psychical research. While powerful in terms of presenting a personal perspective, such documents can be problematic and may present incomplete perspectives. I will discuss this in the context of a translation of an autobiographical essay French physiologist Charles Richet wrote about his involvement in psychical research in his Souvenirs d’un Physiologiste (1933). In the essay Richet presented an outline of aspects of his psychic career, including aspects (...) such as: Early interest in hypnosis and hypnotic lucidity, encounters with gifted individuals such as Eusapia Palladino and Stephan Ossowiecki, contact with the Society for Psychical Research, his Traité de Métapsychique, and his lack of belief in survival of death. Richet’s account will be of particular interest for those who are not acquainted with his career. However the essay is very succinct and lacks important events that need to be supplemented with other sources of information. An examination of this autobiographical essay illustrates the limitations of autobiographies to reconstruct the past. (shrink)

The development of psychology includes the rejection of concepts and movements some groups consider undesirable, such as psychical research. One such example was the way psychologists dealt with phenomena such as telepathy and mediumship in the first five international congresses of psychology held between 1889 and 1905. This included papers about telepathy and mediumship by individuals such as Gabriel Delanne, Léon Denis, Théodore Flournoy, Paul Joire, Léon Marillier, Frederic W. H. Myers, Julian Ochorowicz, Charles Richet, Eleanor M. Sidgwick, and Henry (...) Sidgwick. These topics were eventually rejected from the congresses, and provide us with an example of the boundary-work psychologists were engaging during the period to build their discipline. The height of such presentations took place at the 1900 congress, after which there was a marked decline in discussion on the topic that mirrored the rejection science at large showed for psychical research during the period in question. (shrink)

In the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries psychical research literature there were many speculations to explain physical mediumship consisting of the projection of nervous and vital forces from the body. The purpose of this paper is to present an example of these ideas consisting on a translation of part of an article published by Albert de Rochas in 1897 in the Annales des Sciences Psychiques. The article was devoted to séances with Eusapia Palladino and de Rochas suggested the projection of (...) forces to explain telekinesis and materializations, a concept also involving the idea of a fluidic double. The ideas are presented in the context of previous speculations, and of the life and work of its author. The point of the article is not to defend or criticize the validity of the concept, but to contribute to the history of these ideas by rescuing de Rochas from oblivion, which in turn shows as well French contributions to nineteenth Century psychical research. (shrink)

Interest in telepathy during the nineteenth-century developed in the context of ideas of magnetic, nervous and psychic forces said to project from the physical body to cause various phenomena, as seen in the literatures of mesmerism, Spiritualism, and psychical research. An article about cerebral radiations authored by American electrical engineer Edwin J. Houston in 1892 is reprinted and commented. Houston speculated that cerebral waves were projected to other brains via the ether, a process involving resonance with a similarly disposed brain. (...) These ideas were affected by concepts from physics dealing with such forces as magnetism and constructs like the ether. In fact, the phenomena of thought-transference stimulated many speculations involving ideas of brain waves and radiations that were part of a tendency to reduce unexplained phenomena to physical and physiological principles, or in this case, biophysical ones. Houston's paper is one of the most detailed ideas of this sort published in the nineteenth-century. Nonetheless, Houston showed no familiarity with the literature about telepathy of his times. While his article did not originate ideas of this sort, it is a good representative of speculations of the period about what today we refer as physical transmission models of ESP. Keywords: Edwin J. Houston; Telepathy; thought-transference; history of telepathy; brain waves; cerebral radiations. (shrink)

Revue Spirite: Journal d’Études Psychologiques, 1858, Vol. 1, 356 pp.. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 1882-1883, Vol. 1, 336 pp. Journal of Parapsychology, 1937, Vol. 1, 307 pp. Much has been written about the various existing research styles and approaches in science. An example is Alistair Crombie’s Styles of Scientific Thinking in the European Tradition, in which the author presented a widely cited classification that included axiomatic, experimental, and taxonomic approaches to the study of nature, among others. Similarly, (...) many approaches coexisted during the nineteenth-century in the study of the human experience, as seen in the field of psychology. This brought debates and conflicts between case and experimental studies, as seen in the German and French traditions, respectively and between the use of introspection and studies based on the study of observable phenomena. As Danzinger has argued the situation was not simply one of differing approaches, but also one of different assumptions and different social research styles and practices. (shrink)

G. Stanley Hall (1844–1924) was one the most prominent of the early American psychologists and an outspoken skeptic about the existence of psychic phenomena. This article presents a reprint of one of his critiques on the topic, a little-known paper entitled “Mystic or Borderline Phenomena” published in 1909 in the Proceedings of the Southern California Teacher’s Association. Hall commented on some phenomena of physical mediumship, as well as on apparitions, telepathy, and mental healing. In his view all could be explained (...) via conventional ways such as trickery and the workings of the unconscious mind. The paper is reprinted with an introduction and annotations providing biographical information about Hall and additional information and clarification of the points he made in the paper. It is argued that Hall’s paper represents an instance of boundary-work common at the beginning of organized psychology, representing an attempt to give authority to the discipline over fields such as psychical research. (shrink)

While there were several psychical research journals during the nineteenth century many interesting discussions about psychic phenomena took place as well in a variety of intellectual reviews and scholarly and scientific journals of various disciplines. One such example was the French journal Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger founded in 1876 by Théodule Ribot. Reflecting the various interests of psychologists during the nineteenth century many topics were discussed in the Revue, among them hypnotic phenomena, as well as mental (...) suggestion and mediumship. The journal provided an important forum for French discussions in psychology and in the social sciences in general that helped the development of those disciplines. The same may be said about psychic phenomena, which were discussed in the pages of the Revue by authors such as Émile Boirac, Victor Egger, Théodore Flournoy, Jules Héricourt, Pierre Janet, Léon Marillier, Julian Ochorowicz, Charles Richet, and Albert Ruault. We present summaries of some of these writings which we hope will bring some of this material to the attention of non-French readers. (shrink)

In his paper Hypnosis Reconsidered, Resituated, and Redefined (JSE 26(2):297–327), Adam Crabtree, a distinguished expert in the history of hypnosis, maintains that contemporary hypnosis research suffers from conceptual disorder. In his words, he attempts to redefine hypnosis in order to provide a stronger ground for future research. We find that his proposed reconsideration of hypnosis as a form of “trance” characterized by a focus on internal stimuli and involving the recruitment of appropriate subliminal resources is neither novel nor helpful to (...) our current understanding of hypnosis. Among the problems we find with his paper is that it is conceptually unclear and is not informed by current research and theory; for instance, it disregards well-established findings such as individual differences in responsiveness to hypnosis and the importance of suggestion for the elicitation of hypnotic phenomena. Historical knowledge of a field is invaluable but is alone insufficient to understand its current status or propose pathways for future research and theory. Keywords: hypnosis—trance—suggestion. (shrink)

The purpose of this note is to dispel the notion that ideas of human agency to account for the veridical mental phenomena of mediums began with persons associated with the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in England, or with certain later individuals. In fact, the appearance of these ideas preceded the founding of the Society in 1882. Examples of earlier writers who discussed these ideas include Carl Gustav Carus, Edward W. Cox, Justinus Kerner, Asa Mahan, André-Saturnin Morin, Maximilian Perty, B.W. (...) Richmond, and Edward C. Rogers. In contrast to the speculation by later SPR authors and others, the concepts that appeared in the old literature involved belief in physical forces. Later authors who presented human agency as an explanation for mental mediumship included Walter Leaf, Frederic W.H. Myers, Charles Richet, and Eduard von Hartmann. (shrink)

The two-hundred-year history of hypnosis and its predecessor, animal magnetism, is replete with stories of unusual phenomena. Perhaps surprisingly, a close reading of that history reveals that investigators and students of hypnosis have been unable to achieve an agreed-upon definition of their subject matter. Because of this failure to describe the essential nature of hypnosis, they resorted to lists of hypnotic phenomena as a means for confirming the presence of a hypnotic state in clinical and experimental situations. However, identification and (...) enumeration of hypnotic phenomena proved to be problematic. The content of these lists varied from era to era and from practitioner to practitioner, and the selection of phenomena seemed to be an arbitrary process. With no agreed-upon definition and no definitive list of phenomena that would apply to hypnosis and hypnosis alone, there was no way to ensure that the “hypnosis” that was being studied in clinical and experimental work was the same entity in all cases. Although hypnosis research in recent decades has yielded important insights, significant difficulties and disagreements remain. It is the contention of this article that this confusing state of affairs came to pass because the discussion of hypnosis in the literature was wrongly situated and that there is a need to step back and gain a new perspective on hypnosis and hypnotic phenomena. The proposed fresh look at hypnosis situates hypnosis as a subspecies of trance as defined in a very specific way: a state of profound focus on something accompanied by a diminished awareness of everything else, which evokes appropriate subliminal resources. Hypnosis is then defined as an inner-mind trance characterized by rapport. This new approach and its implications are discussed in some detail. Keywords: hypnosis—trance—rapport. (shrink)

Abstract—German philosopher Carl du Prel (1839–1899) was a leading theoretician and proponent of research into dissociation, hypothetical postmortem survival, alleged psi phenomena and related areas. The impact of his works on several more widely known authors within and outside psychical research was often considerable. This article provides a concise biography of du Prel, gives an overview of his model of mind, and fi nally suggests avenues of research which were pursued by du Prel but nowadays are largely forgotten. Keywords: Carl (...) du Prel—Eduard von Hartmann—altered states of consciousness—survival research. (shrink)

One of the reasons the history of parapsychology and its ancestor psychical research is intriguing is because it addresses a central issue: the boundaries of science. This article provides an overview of the historiography of parapsychology and presents an approach to investigate the Dutch history of parapsychology contributing to the understanding of this central theme. In the first section the historical accounts provided by psychical researchers and parapsychologists themselves are discussed; next those studies of sociologists and historians understanding parapsychology as (...) deviant and even potentially revolutionary are dealt with; third, more contemporary studies are examined whereby enterprises such as parapsychology are understood as central to the culture in which they arose. On the basis of this analysis a new direction in the historiography of the subject is suggested in the fourth section, centred upon the relation between parapsychology and psychology in the Netherlands throughout the 20th century. In the Netherlands not only were pioneering psychologists such as Gerard Heymans (1857–1930) actively involved in experiments into telepathy, the first professor in parapsychology in the world – Wilhelm Tenhaeff (1894–1981) – was appointed in 1953 at Utrecht University and in the 1970s and 1980s parapsychology had its own research laboratory at Utrecht University in the division of psychology. This unique situation in the Netherlands deserves scholarly attention and makes an interesting case to investigate the much-neglected connections between the fields of psychology and parapsychology in the 20th century. The connections between psychology and parapsychology might help us to understand why parapsychology came to be regarded as a pseudoscience. (shrink)

There has been consistent interest in telepathy within psychoanalysis from its start. Relational psychoanalysis, which is a relatively new development in psychoanalytic theory and practice, seems more receptive to experiences between patient and analyst that suggest ostensibly anomalous communicative capacities. To establish this openness to telepathic phenomena with relational approaches, a selection of papers recently published in leading academic journals in relational psychoanalysis is examined. This demonstrates the extent to which telepathy-like experiences are openly presented and seriously considered in the (...) relational community. The article then discusses those characteristics of the relational approach that may facilitate greater openness to telepathic experience. The argument is that relational psychoanalysis provides a coherent framework in which otherwise anomalous phenomena of patient–analyst interaction can be understood. (shrink)

I argue for two theses: 1) An unconscious belief that p is not the same attitude as a conscious belief that p (here I am disagreeing with David Finkelstein and Richard Moran). 2) An unconscious belief that p is the attitude it is on account of its rational connection with the conscious belief that p (taking issue with Georges Rey). I defend parallel theses for emotions. I then argue that Wittgenstein can be understood as accepting both theses and that this (...) shows – contrary to the interpretations of Jacques Bouveresse and Donald Levy – that Wittgenstein can accept talk not only of descriptive but also dynamic unconscious states (in Freud's terminology). (shrink)

The physician, sexologist and psychical researcher Albert von Schrenck-Notzing (1862-1929) was without a doubt one of the most unusual and controversial figures in the history of late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century German medicine and science. As a young student, he sought – together with his one-time mentor Carl du Prel, the philosopher-psychologist Max Dessoir and others – to expand the methodological and epistemological scope of fledgling German professionalized psychology by serving as an important conduit for strands of psychological experimentation from France (...) and England as alternatives to the physiologically grounded experimental psychology of Wilhelm Wundt and its offshoots (Kurzweg, 1976; Sommer, 2013). An early leading proponent of sexology and medical hypnotism, his work was well received in- and outside Germany by authors such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Albert Moll, Sigmund Freud (with whom he had studied hypnotism under Bernheim in the 1880s), Auguste Forel, Morton Prince and Havelock Ellis (see, e.g., Gauld, 1992; Sommer, 2012a; Sulloway, 1992). After obtaining economic independence by marrying into one of the richest families in Germany, he abandoned his promising medical career and began to focus his energies on the study of probably the most controversial and disputed area of psychical research, i.e. physical mediumship. Thanks to his immense wealth and former academic credentials, shortly after World War 1 Schrenck-Notzing began to dominate German psychical research and became its doyen and sponsor. (shrink)