The history of psychology in Japan from the late 19th century until the first half of the 20th century did not follow a smooth course. After the first psychological laboratory was established at Tokyo Imperial University in 1903, psychology in Japan developed as individual specialties until the Japanese Psychological Association was established in 1927. During that time, Tomokichi Fukurai, an associate professor at Tokyo Imperial University, became involved with psychical research until he was forced out in 1913. The Fukurai affair, (...) as it is sometimes called, was not documented in textbooks on the history of Japanese psychology prior to the late 1990s. Among earlier generations of Japanese psychologists, it has even been taboo for discussion. Today, the affair and its after-effects are considered to have been a major deterrent in the advancement of clinical psychology in Japan during the first half of the 20th century. (shrink)

Sándor Ferenczi, the great representative of the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis, had a lifelong interest in psychical phenomena. Although his ideas on the psychoanalytical understanding of spiritualistic phenomena and telepathy were not developed theories, they had a strong influence on some representatives of psychoanalysis, and thus underlay the psychoanalytic interpretation of telepathy. Ferenczi’s ideas on telepathy were interwoven with his most important technical and theoretical innovations. Thus Ferenczi’s thoughts on telepathy say a lot about his psychoanalytical thinking and attitudes, and (...) illuminate the significance of his greatest innovations in the context of psychical research. (shrink)

This paper analyses the fraught relationship between physics and the ‘occult sciences’ in the decades around 1900. For some, there was no relationship at all; for others there was a relationship but they did not agree on what it looked like. Many physicists converged with spiritualists, theosophists, and others in interpreting X-rays, the electrical theory of matter, and other aspects of the ‘new’ physics as powerful ways of rendering psychic and occult effects scientifically more understandable. However, they were opposed by (...) commentators on physics who agreed that there was a relationship between the ‘new’ physics and psychical research but that these were two manifestations of a worrying drift of physics into metaphysics and religion. More redoubtable critics were the psychologists who denied that physicists had the experience or experimental skill to cope reliably with the psycho-physical phenomena encountered in psychical research. This paper shows that physicist–psychical researchers were content to ally the ‘new’ physics with religion because it helped vanquish awkward associations with materialism. They also tried to justify the value of their experimental skills by appealing to their expertise in investigating subtle physical effects and ability to create tests that respected the delicate conditions of séances.Keywords: Physics; Psychical research; Ether; Occult; Psychology; Fin-de-siècle. (shrink)

In May 1862 Desmond G. Fitzgerald, the editor of the Electrician, lamented thattelegraphy has been until lately an art occult even to many of the votaries of electrical science. Submarine telegraphy, initiated by a bold and tentative process – the laying of the Dover cable in the year 1850 – opened out a vast field of opportunity both to merit and competency, and to unscrupulous determination. For the purposes of the latter, the field was to be kept close [sic], and (...) science, which can alone be secured by merit, more or less ignored.To Fitzgerald, the ‘occult’ status of the telegraph looked set to continue, with recent reports of scientific counterfeits, unscrupulous electricians and financially motivated saboteurs involved in the telegraphic art. Nevertheless, Fitzgerald reassured his readers that the confidence of ‘those who act for the public’ had been restored by earnest electricians, whose ‘moral cause’ would ultimately be felt and who ‘may be safely trusted even in matters where there is an option between a private interest and a public benefit’. As a prominent crusader for the telegraph, Fitzgerald voiced the concerns of many electricians seeking public confidence and investment in their trade in the wake of the failed submarine telegraphs of the 1850s. The spread of proper knowledge about the telegraph would hinge on securing an adequate supply of backers and the construction of telegraphy as a truly moral cause – an art cleansed of fraudsters, ignoramuses and dogmatists. (shrink)

This essay examines the technical evolution and scientific context of William Crookes's effort to achieve an absolute vacuum in the 1870s. Prior to late 1876, along with interrogation of the radiometer effect, the quest for perfect vacuum was a major motive of his research programme. At this time, no absolutely dependable method existed to determine exactly the pressures at extreme rarefactions. Crookes therefore employed changes in radiometric, viscous and electrical effects with changing pressure in order to monitor the progress of (...) exhaustion. After late 1876, his research priorities shifted because he had reached a plateau of technical accomplishment in the effort to attain extreme vacua, and because observed effects in vacua—particularly electrical—assumed an importance in their own right, and as bases for elucidation and defence of his concept of a ‘fourth state of matter’ at very low pressures. (shrink)

On the morning of Friday the fourth of December 1863, August Hofmann, professor of chemistry at the Royal College of Chemistry in London, lectured at the College on spectro-chemical analysis to Victoria, the Princess Royal, Princess of Prussia and eldest daughter of the Queen and the severely missed late Prince Consort. This event illustrates the spectacular success that the fledgling science of spectro-chemical analysis enjoyed during the 1860s.

This article describes the relations between academic psychology and psychical research in Britain during the inter-war period, in the context of the fluid boundaries between mainstream psychology and both psychical research and popular psychology. Specifically, the involvement with Harry Price of six senior academic psychologists: William McDougall, William Brown, J. C. Flugel, Cyril Burt, C. Alec Mace and Francis Aveling, is described. Personal, metaphysical and socio-historical factors in their collaboration are discussed. It is suggested that the main reason for their (...) mutual attraction was their common engagement in a delicate balancing act between courting popular appeal on the one hand and the assertion of scientific expertise and authority on the other. Their interaction is typical of the boundary work performed at this transitional stage in the development of psychology as a discipline. (shrink)

Recent studies in nineteenth-century spiritualism have illuminated the social practice of the occult in various cultural contexts. Richard Noakes in his latest study on telegraphy and the occult in Victorian England, for instance, shows how the world of spiritualism and the world of technology were welded together by Victorian engineering schemes and money. 2 This paper looks at another culture of occult practice which has often been neglected by historians of science: the role of spiritism in the making of German (...) experimental psychology. Based on a debate focusing on the German astrophysicist Karl Friedrich Zöllner and the American medium Henry Slade, I will show how spiritistic experiments were situated in the emerging contexts of scientific practice, laboratories and disciplines. 3 This study will also take a close look at the perception of spiritistic mediums as instruments by experimenters such as Zöllner. 4Things were in control and then they were not and then they were.Sally Bushell, Under the Breadfruit Tree. (shrink)