Metapsychy, or metapsychics, is the French science known in English-speaking countries as parapsychology or psychical research. As Régine Plas has shown, the ‘psychic’ phenomena were among the first subjects of psychological inquiry. Like many of his colleagues, Henri Piéron began his career researching apparent telepathic phenomena, and in collaboration with Nicolae Vaschide explained them in terms of an ‘intellectual parallelism’. From 1913 onward, Piéron developed the ‘Métapsychie’ section of L’année psychologique, where he used his critical skills to sometimes foster and (...) sometimes discourage this field of research. In the background to these events was the issue of metapsychy's place within the field of psychology, a field on which Piéron had himself helped to confer institutional and professional status. The growing disparity between metapsychy and psychology suggested a distinct demarcation between the two disciplines, with Piéron zealously fulfilling a missionary role as one of several gatekeepers. While open to what were presented as new examples of physiologically objectified psychic activity, he never really seems to have observed anything he considered convincing and so generally suspected fraud. His interventions played a role in the emancipation/expulsion of metapsychy from the nascent field of psychology, with the advantage of increasing recognition of the epistemic authority of the latter. (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)

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)