Events

Question 1

1882

Answer 1

Society for Psychical Research founded.

Not break w naturalistic science: the poss reality of Spiritualism and other occult phenomena wld not constitute a break w a naturalistic worldview, but rather indicate that our picture of the natural world had to be radically expanded.
Psychical research thus predicated on an open-ended naturalism

Question 2

1869

Answer 2

London Dialectical Society special commission to investigate Spiritualism and psychic phenomena

Commission’s report concluded bulk of evd concerning Spiritualistic phenomena cld not at present be discounted as fraudulent. Advised more research on topic.

Question 3

1875

Answer 3

lawyer Edward Cox established Psychological Society of Great Britain.

Establishment of psychology as wholly ‘secular’ academic discipline was still decades away

Question 4

Sidgwick Circle

Answer 4

• Henry Sidgwick. Utilitarian moral philosopher. Advocate of educational reform
• Eleanor Sidgwick
• Arthur Balfour - SPR President 1892-5
• Lord General Balfour - in charge of cross-correspondences experiments early 20th C
• Classicist Edumnd Gurney
• Classicist Frederic Myers
• Richard Hodgson

Question 5

SPR output

Answer 5

14,000 pages of research reports, theorizing and experimental notes published by the SPR’s journal and proceedings 1882-1900

Question 6

US reaction to uses of probability in Phantasms of the Living (1886)

Answer 6

amateur uses of probability sparked sharp debate in first volume of Proceedings of the American branch of the SPR, where philosopher, logician and mathematician Peirce lashed out at the SPR researchers: ‘I shall not cite these numbers, which captivate the ignorant, but which repel thinking men, who know that no human certitude reaches such figures of trillions, or even billions, to one’

Question 7

Hodgson’s expositions

Answer 7

Exposé of methods of Blavatsky 1884-5

Hodgson accused Richet, Myers and Lodge of being fooled by Palladino
Hodson exposed her fraud in trials at Myers’ house in Cambridge, 1895

Question 8

SPR generational shift (Asprem)

Answer 8

W exception of Eleanor Sidgwick, all mems of the Sidgwick circle - first generation of SPR - were dead by 1905

Question 9

SPR presidents 1900-39

Answer 9

• Nobel laureates Bergson, Rayleigh
• Famous politicians, Gerald Balfour, chief secretary for Ireland 1900-5
• Biologist/ philosopher, Driesch
• McDougall
• Broad

Question 10

1925, stage magician Harry Price

Answer 10

convinced University of London to support him in establishing the National Laboratory for Psychical Research which was to act as a more scientific counterpart to the SPR. Turned out to be used more for debunk ing tho

Question 11

1924, US (Asprem)

Answer 11

institutional schism

controversy that had erupted over tests run with famous Boston physical medium Mina Crandon (‘Margery’). McDougall, Houdini etc investigated. When the comte’s report concluded Margery was fraudulent, the American SPR took a curious course of action - disregarded the verdict, fired critics from positions of power in the society. Started circulating apologetic articles, books and pamphlets defending Margery

• One of orchestrators of this devel = Le Roy Crandon, Margery’s husband
• Prince, who had been editor of the ASPR journal and on Margery comte, was fired

Question 12

1925, US, Prince

Answer 12

established Boston Society for Psychical Research (BSPR to act as a scientific counterpart to the American SPR

Ceased operations 1934

Last thing the BSPR did was publish Rhine’s Extra-Sensory Perception (1934) - paradigmatic text of experimental parapsychology. Initiated new phase in history of psychical research - new institutions, oft connected to mainstream research universities, pursued the scientific track through what became professional parapsychology. Emergence of professional parapsychology marked the end of the SPR as an institution of any serious scientific promise

Question 13

Carrington

Answer 13

journalist and member of the American SPR

authored more than one hundred books, primarily on psychical research, spiritualism, magic and magical traditions, and occult phenomena such as astral projection.2 By the 1920s, those who presumed to know something about psychical research were quite likely to have their knowledge from Carrington’s writings. (Asprem)
e.g. 1909, Eusapia Palladino and her phenomena

Question 14

Cross-correspondences

Answer 14

By 1906, some of the most prominent first-generation figures had returned from the afterlife

Verrall, Holland, and Piper would produce hundreds of messages in total, with the major breakthrough occurring during Piper’s stay in England

First systematic reports on cross-correspondences published in the SPR Proceedings, 1908

1910 the research was made available to a broader public through the concise exposition in Helen Alexandrina Dallas’ Mors Janua Vitae?

Through reliance on the cross-correspondences the SPR seems to have abandoned their earlier attempts to emulate strictly naturalistic methods, and instead developed an increasingly esoteric form of hermeneutics (Asprem)

Question 15

Latin Experiment

Answer 15

1906:

a specific question with instructions intended for “Myers” had been translated into dense and difficult Ciceronian Latin, and read to Mrs Piper in one of her “trance states”.

researchers spent the next months attempts to draw significant references out of the mediums’ statements. In the quest to find what they were looking for, the psychical researchers seized increasingly abstruse methods of interpretation, where hidden anagrams and secret symbols were considered for clues, down to the letter.46 While they were ultimately convinced by the evidence thus produced, in the form of symbolic and thematic correspondences across a wide set of séance notes, it is hard for the outsider to avoid observing that they also stretched their interpretations to the limits in order to get to that conviction

Question 16

1891

Answer 16

Annales des sciences psychiques founded - Richet = a key driving force

Question 17

Quantitative studies of isolated effects of telepathy in SPR’s early yrs (Asprem)

Answer 17

Richet appears to have been the first to apply probability calculus to the guessing of playing cards in a larger population, for which he found some very slight evidence of thought-transference

Following Richet’s publications, the economist F. Y. Edgeworth, an expert on statistics, contributed a series of papers to the SPR journal that explained the use – and misuse – of probability calculus.113 For example, Edgeworth warned that even when probabilities seemed to rule against a pure chance result, and thus indicating that there is some agency involved, ‘[t]he calculus is silent as to the nature of that agency – whether it is more likely to be vulgar illusion or extraordinary law’.

The development of probabilities introduced a new and popular rhetorical tactic to the psychical research literature of the 1880s and 1890s, in which probabilities against chance were liberally invoked for any kind of phenomenon that was being discussed

these figures were, however, given without any standardised method of control, and we find some utterly ridiculous numbers put on the most unfitting type of material. Gurney et al.’s Phantoms of the Living is exemplary

Question 18

McDougall

Answer 18

crucial role in the formation of British psychology over the first two decades of the 20th century; he had occupied positions at both Cambridge and Oxford, and worked as an explicit counterweight to the popularity of Freud and the psychoanalytic movement. (Asprem)

1920, professor of psychology at Harvard

1921, president of the SPR

1922 Boston lecture, and his

1926 lecture at the conference “For and Against Psychical Research” held at Clark University.

How did McDougall try to convince his audience that committed sceptics and spiritualists were both wrong?

Against the hard-nosed sceptics, he used arguments resonant with what is considered good scientific conduct.22 A true man of science, McDougall argued, is obliged to scrutinise all opinions held by sophisticated people, even popular opinions.

Whether or not the phenomena will be found to be authentic was less important; the crucial thing was to not reject a whole field of research out of hand.

attack on convinced spiritualists was perhaps the most important aspect of McDougall’s 1922 polemic.23 It can be seen as an exercise in internal boundary-work, aimed at exorcising elements in the field that were deemed to be a liability

McDougall’s main problem with the spiritualists was their strong and apparently unshakable conviction, which appeared dogmatic and wholly counterproductive.

The divisive Boston lecture was, in the end, a call for organised, scientific psychical research on a big scale with the aim of convincing a group that was getting ever more significant in modern society: the professional scientists

In the picture that McDougall painted, psychical researchers became “more scientific” than their “dogmatically agnostic” opponents

Arriving at Duke university in the summer of 1927, William McDougall finally found himself in a position to develop policies and administer budgets.

Inspired by McDougall’s repeated pleas for the institutionalisation of psychical research, the Rhines eagerly wanted to conduct such work in a university setting.

Their cooperation with McDougall would lead to the foundation of the first autonomous research institute for parapsychology at an American university.

Question 19

American SPR founded in Boston (later New York)

Answer 19

1884

Despite the enthusiasms of James, the Boston society was a great deal more skeptical than its London counterpart

By 1889 it had concluded (with Richet) that there was no sound statistical support for telepathy.

• First president of the ASPR ridiculed phenomena the Society had been set up to address, in Science
• Ruthless in exposing fraud. Letter to Banner of Light (1886) on Mrs Hannah Ross, a physical medium. Used dummy slung around neck to give impression of child spirit in darkness

Question 20

Pierre Janet

Answer 20

unconscious activity with its own volition, independent of that exhibited in conscious processes. Will, fundamental to Cousin’s philosophical psychology, was preserved by Janet within a subject divided into multiple selves, conscious and unconscious

Question 21

Fourth International Congress of Psychology

Answer 21

1900

• Was through assoc w somnambulism and hypnotism that research on spiritism claimed presence in the 1900 congress.
• Denis, Delanne, Encausse, Baradux, Dariex - discussed variety of supranormal phenomena e.g. exteriorization of sensibility, measurement of the life force, clairvoyance, mental suggestion, movement of objects w/o physical contact, telepathy

Vogt, Against Spiritism - regretted that spiritists invade our section and compromise it with their antiscientific presentations.

anatomophysiological group.
At head of group = clinical psychologist Paul Valentin - reiterated that scientific psychology cld only be study of functions of the brain. Psychology = branch of biology, whose only place is between physiology and sociology

Hartenberg concluded by demanding, along with Ebbinghaus, that the questions connexes be excluded from the section on hypnosis in subsequent congresses. Hippolyte Bernheim, who presided over the session, agreed that the discussion of these issues should be cordoned into their own subsection.

Ochorowicz anticipated the complaint of the anatomophysiological group by tying the research of the institute to the positive science of Auguste Comte and assured the congress participants that the methods of the new organization were to be marked by their absolute independence from the metaphysical tradition that had “eschewed experience” and “ignored shared scientific method.” 29 The institute was to be equipped with a conference room, a library, a museum, a clinic, a journal, and, most important, a laboratory

In the aftermath of the “stormy” session of the section on hypnosis and questions connexes, several participants had grown concerned that “behind the word psychique there was the dreaded phantom of études psychiques [psychical studies]!” 34 As a concession, the name was changed to Institut Psychologique International just before the congress convened

Question 22

Marthe Béraud, 1905

Answer 22

Algerian villa of a retired French army officer and his wife.

the Villa Carmen became the scene of astonishing events in which spirits took on physical form, breathed, walked, talked, touched observers, posed for photographs, and then vanished like vapor. Richet’s testimony, which appeared alongside photos of a phantom in Les Annales des Sciences Psychiques and, in an abbreviated version, in Le Figaro, detailed these experiences and confirmed that the phenomena had not been produced by fraudulent means.

Magnetized in a curtained corner of the room, Béraud remained visible during the materializations through an
opening in the fabric. At her feet formed what was described as a ball of tissue, a substance that gave Richet occasion to coin the term ectoplasme, a substance he suspected was physiological in origin. From this ball developed the head of Bien-Boa, which lifted vertically from the floor to achieve full stature, complete with cloak, helmet, and beard

Richet also dismissed the suggestion that some duplicitous role had been played by two other women who frequented the séances (the négresse Aïssa and a palmist called Ninon) on the basis that the collusion of the socially respectable Marthe with such persons was unthinkable, given her “purity” and the “simplicity of [her] soul.”

Richet’s most esteemed colleagues, including Théodule Ribot, Pierre Janet, and Théodore Flournoy, would tend to echo this sentiment by reaffirming his reputation as a perspicacious man of science. 64 More skeptical readers were, however, less inclined to give Richet the benefit of the doubt and wasted no time constructing an alternative version of events

clinical psychologist Valentin complained Richet= inadequately trained to study spiritism.
Phenomenon belonged to domain of mental pathology. Not subject to the experimental methods of the physiologist

B’s acceptance of gifts of jewelry from both Gabriel Delanne and Richet was deemed inappropriate by the matronly Noël, as was the physical contact between them occasioned by the séances.

newspaper article in 1906 revealed that an Arab coachman known as Areski, who had previously worked at the villa, had been hired to play the part of Bien Boa and that the entire thing was a hoax. Areski wrote that he made his appearance into the room by a trapdoor. Béraud also admitted to being involved with the hoax

Question 23

Charles Richet

Answer 23

Physiologist

Nobel Prize 1913, for his research on the causes of certain sudden deaths, which proved to be due to an unhappy combination of antigens. (He named this anaphylaxis.)

Question 24

Flournoy

Answer 24

Grandson Oliver Flournoy - Flournoy’s discovered but doesn’t manage to say that the subjectivity of the observer is also part of the scientific domain

Question 25

Eva Carrière (Marthe Béraud)

Answer 25

Bisson pre-war experiments. Checked rectum and vagina to see if using these to smuggle ectoplasm

Made eat blueberry jam to stain her insides

Most photogenic medium.

Le Matin - said spirit faces were clipped from Le Miroir

Schrenck-Notzing argued in response that the resemblance of the images might just as easily be accounted for by the phenomenon of “ideoplasty,” in which the medium gave ectoplasmic form to images that she had recently seen and whose traces (the letters of the title, the creases of the paper) had been registered in her memory and reproduced in exact detail in the materializations.
Produced photos by same method claimed by skeptics - much lower resolution, showed half-tone linescreen typical of the newsprint photo

Question 26

1922, Sorbonne

Answer 26

Eva C experiments at the Sorbonne in 1922
Disappointing results.

Popular press hailed as definitive blow against psychical research

Heuzé exposed Eva C as Marthe Béraud, woman of the Villa Carmen affair

Richet was accordingly baffled by the popular reaction to the 1922 report on Eva C., which for him revealed a stupefying inclination of the public to wildly exaggerate the meaning of the facts actually recorded. In reality, Richet noted, “my eminent friends at the Sorbonne” made no mention of fraud in their report and, on the contrary, concluded that Bisson at least had acted with undisputed good faith.

Geley suggested that in 2 of the 15 seances scientists had not ‘seen nothing’ as the report concluded. Also, unimpressive nature of the phenomena lay w the comte’s mediocre committement to the investigation

Bisson made excuses for Eva - poor health during many séances, poor lab conditions e.g. noise in neighbouring lab. Argued Eva’s sense of physical and emotional well-being was essential to production of phenomena.

Question 27

Guzik

Answer 27

Guzik séances in response to Eva C failure.
Geley described conditions under which demonstrations took place as ‘most severe conditions of control’

Prévost signed (along w 33 others) to attest to authenticity of phenomena. Opened pages of La Revue de France to thorough discussion of psychical research

Question 28

Henry Slade (Sommer)

Answer 28

Zöllner, inspired by Crookes, in 1877-8, conducted series of experiments w American Henry Slade, who specialized in slate-writing (direct spirit writing)

caused major public and academic scandal

Wundt argued that even eminent scientists shld not be considered authorities, and that true experts in study of mediums were prestidigitators.
Spiritualism = inherently reprehensible and dangerous. Argued Spiritualism based on same phenomena as Early Modern witch craze

Question 29

Frederic Myers

Answer 29

English classical scholar, school inspector, poet (1843-1901). Remained school inspector through SPR work

• Evangelical environment of upbringing
• Personal extinction idea horrified him
• Quest became increasingly personal: suicide of Annie Marshall, cousin’s wife. Death of intimate friend, Gurney, 1888
• unpublished memoirs - Secretly wished that closer assoc w Spiritualists might give him access to private home circles, where most interesting events said to take place
• tirelessly explained the SPR’s position in the SPR Journal and Light (Spiritualist weekly)
  SPR position: not hostile to Spiritualism. Sole concern was dispassionate examination of evidence.
• In early papers of Society’s Proceedings, Myers categorized apparitions into 57 groups
• developed theory of ‘subliminal self’ - The Subliminal Consciousness (1889–95)
• pattern late 1880s, 1890s: work on his theoretical papers trying to establish clarity in the field with regard to canons of evidence and some initial explanatory framework, then to examine a medium in detail when the conditions of control appeared adequate.
  Did this with Piper, Palladino, Thompson
• inching towards accepting Spiritualist hypothesis late 1880s.
• 1893, Myers stated in autobiographical draft that he had received messages from deceased Gurney which convinced him of postmortem survival
• For Myers, crowning glories = sittings w Mrs. Piper in James’s house in Cambridge, Massachusetts 1893, and sittings w Mrs Thompson from 1898. By this time, his position virtually indistinguishable from conventional Spiritualist
• contact with Theosophical Soc. Absorbed many religious influences
• distorted and misinterpreted modern psychology in the interests of upholding ancient wisdom. Wanted psych to be science of the soul. Science always remained a highly malleable discipline for Myers (Oppenheim)
• His mind may have imagined itself at home in a scientist’s laboratory, but Myers’ heart always yearned for a church (Oppenheim)
• Myers, subliminal self = boldest and best-known of contributions that psychical research made to psychology before WW1.
• M, not original experiments, but propounded theories that seemed to unify diverse phenomena into coherent patterns. Flournoy praised.

Question 30

William James

Answer 30

Harvard psychologist and philosopher, 1842-1910

Founding member of the American SPR, 1884

discovered Leonora Piper and introduced her to psychical research community, late 1880s

President of the SPR, 1894-6

Question 31

Lead-up to SPR

Answer 31

1870s investigations = tedious, expensive, disappointing. Mediums: Wood, Fairlamb, Petty family, etc.
Cambridge group found the observational standards of Spiritualists v low

Investigations guttered out. Enthusiasm of Cambridge gorup revived when William Barrett brought to their attent his investigations into mesmerism, thought-transference, clairvoyance, end of 1870s

Barrett w Rogers summoned the two-day conference Jan 1882 that led to setting up of SPR following Feb

Question 32

Faraday

Answer 32

Late June 1853, published an account of his own experiments with the tables tournantes and concluded that the physical pressure séance participants unwittingly exerted on the table-top caused the mysterious rotation.

Question 33

Camille Flammarion

Answer 33

French astronomer.

After his conversion, one of the most visible apologists for Kardec’s doctrine. He published three books on the subject between 1862 and 1865, and contributed a long series of articles on Kardec’s ideas to the literary journal La Revue Française

became increasingly skeptical of the way in which Kardec used spirit communications as the basis for philosophical speculation.

In the early 1860s, he had produced several automatic writings that he had believed were dictated by the spirit of Galileo and had submitted them to Kardec

Now, though, Flammarion doubted the authenticity of the signature. These communications, he argued, were merely “the reflection of what I knew, of what we thought at that time, about the planets, the stars, cosmogony, etc.”
His alleged Galileo had told him, for example, that Saturn had eight moons, when by 1899 astronomers had discovered a ninth.

Question 34

Cesare Lombroso

Answer 34

• Italian Criminologist
• had been an outspoken critic of psychical research.
• After his first séance with Palladino, however, June 1891, Lombroso pronounced himself “quite ashamed” of his earlier resistance and reversed his opinion

Question 35

William Benjamin Carpenter

Answer 35

distinguished Victorian physiologist, medical practitioner, and zoologist.

anti-Spiritualist

staunch Unitarian, Carpenter believed that the laws of the material universe were direct expressions of God’s will and that natural laws could not be broken without His will (Noakes)

Building on the researches on bodily and mental reflexes of such early Victorian physicians as Marshall Hall and Thomas Laycock, the associationist psychology of David Hartley, and his own extensive studies of mesmerism, table-turning, spirit-rapping, somnambulism, and hysteria, Carpenter developed the notion that all mental activity was, in the first instance, automatic or spontaneous, and that the more developed the species, the more unconscious mental reflexes could be regulated by the will.

‘epidemic delusions’ were propagated by individuals who, under the influence of erroneous ‘dominant ideas’ from within or suggestions from without, had become the sorry victims of their automatic mental reflexes and thus experienced sensations and motor responses (‘ideomotor’ actions) that were entirely dependent on false ideas and stimuli.

Their interpretations could not be trusted because they usually entered séances already possessed by the ‘dominant idea’ of disembodied spirits, a strong expectation that severely weakened their ability to control unconscious mental and physical responses with educated judgement

• Definition of rigorous scientific education varied w intended victim, so everyone who rejected spiritualism was sufficiently educated, whereas everyone who did not lacked adequate (Oppenheim)

Question 36

William Crookes

Answer 36

chemist

discovered thallium 1861

Edited the Quarterly Journal of Science in the 1860s and 70s

began investigating Spiritualism in 1867

1870, séances with Home.

summer of 1871 he constructed several mechanical instruments for registering the power that seemed to emanate from Home’s body

Satisfied that Home had not secretly manipulated the apparatus or performed any other trickery, Crookes was confident that his apparatus had registered the existence of a ‘new force.
Psychic force

Knighthood 1897, Order of Merit, 1910, presidency of Royal Society 1913-5

Psychic researches occupied small span of time - 5 yrs of active investigation 1870-5

Sat with Home, Kate Fox, Fay, Morse, Moses, etc. Crookes’ séances with Home, 1871-3

Crookes recounted investigations w Home in the Quarterly Journal of Science, July and Oct 1871. Emphd the mechanical contrivances devised to test the medium’s powers

galvanometer test with Cook, believed this had advantage of absolute certainty since the medium has hands or body removed from the wires

Séances with Cook, 1874-5. Fully materiaized form of Katie King. Spiritualist Newspaper, 5 June 1874 - noted Katie’s perfect beauty

Faith in Cook shaken after Showers’ exposure.

Katie King had in 1874 promenaded arm in arm with Maple, Mary Showers’ materialized spirit. Crookes served on SPR council and president in late 1890s

Crookes briefly subscribed to Spiritualist views, then attitude changed by mid-1870s and suspended judgement on subject until 1916

After wife’s death 1916, convinced that Hope captured his wife’s spirit on film

exerted an important influence on a number of prominent British physicists during the 1870s, including William Barrett, Lord Rayleigh, and later, Oliver Lodge, all of whom became active in spiritual research. (Shortt)

Question 37

Famous audiences for Spiritualism

Answer 37

Lady Waldegrave, Lady Hastings

Question 38

Daniel Dunglas Home

Answer 38

celebrated medium

Ashley House levitation, London, December 1868. Lord Adare, Master of Lindsay, Wynne - Home floated out of one room overlooking Victoria Street, and entered through window of adjacent room

Crookes séances 1870. Retired early 1870s

Question 39

Florence Cook

Answer 39

matrializations, 1870s

June 1871 Blyton published article on Florence Cook in the Spiritualist, and other believers became aware for 1st time of new and promising young medium

As Cook’s powers progressed, spirit faces became more animated and she began to materialise arms and hands

Daily Telegraph account of Cook séance. Materialisations complete w medium being secured inside the cabinet by spirits put Florence marginally ahead of competition

‘Katie King’ - Britain’s first full spirit materialisation, recorded in Daily Telegraph 1873 - novelty value

exposure:

Sir George Sitwell, grabbed alleged full-form materialization in 1880 séance. Transgressed bounds of good behaviour expected of séance participants, but certainly proved to all that most blindly faithful that Cook was cheat

Question 40

Henry Sidgwick

Answer 40

• Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge. Remained so throughout SPR
• unlucky as psychical researcher
• SPR president 1882-92, except 1885-7
• was in Metaphysical Society, founded 1869
• died of cancer 1900

Question 41

Eleanor Sidgwick (maiden name: Balfour)

Answer 41

• sister of the PM
• Henry’s wife
• continued G’s inquiries into relationship between hypnosis and telepathy, using Smith as hypnotist
• 1832, Lord Balfour announced to SPR that Mrs. S was a spiritualist

Question 42

SPR precursors

Answer 42

Ghost Society, Benson, 1850.

Oxford Phasmatological Society, originated among group of University College undergraduates in 1879, lasting until 1885.
Sidgwick had joined Ghost Society when undergraduate

Myers, Gurney, Sidgwick - Saw diff mediums - Fay, Showers, Slade. W exception of Myers, they realized skepticism ws reasonable and optimism generally misplaced in a field where error, self-delusion and potent motives for fraud flourished abundantly

Question 43

Edmund Gurney

Answer 43

Classisist

By 1883, G had abandoned attempts to estab career in music, med and law, and had begun to dedicate all talents to SPR

• G was only one for whom SPR became professonal commitment - only source of (unpaid) employment.
• contributions to the Society’s investigations during the 1880s concentrated partic on hypnotism and telepathy. Believed they cld be tested in way the highly suspect and erratic physical phenomena of spiritualism cld not
• Death 1888. Chloroform O.D. Suicide?
• Gurney wanted to expose inability of neurological reductionism to probe the human mind in all its intricacies. He displayed his familiarity with man’s material aspect, not only because he acknowl the inseparability of body and mind, but because he sought to demonstrate his scientific credibility. Found evd of memory in hypnotic states, so attempted to demonstrate that it was not just state of unconscious automatism. Hypnotism prompted behaviour at once conscious and reflex. His work more focused on the conscious
• Notion of secondary intelligence
• G - in hypnotism, whatever force was at work required both a physical and mental foundation in order to function properly. Recognition of multiple levels of consciousness
• G’s approach to psychology shared by Janet, James, Binet, Jung. Mind = dynamic entity. Psychology not neurophysiology

Question 44

SPR’s illustrious membership

Answer 44

Presidents incl - Balfour brothers, William James, Eleanor Sidgwick, Andrew Lang, W Boyd Carpenter, Henri Bergson, Arthur Balfour, John Robert Hollond (Liberal MP for Brighton).

Clientele became even more illustrious in following yrs - num of mems surpassed 900 by 1895 Honorary mems in 1887 - Gladstone, Ruskin, Lord Tennyson

Question 45

Eglinton, and divisions between Spiritualists and non-Spiritualists in SPR

Answer 45

1883-6 tensions between SPR and spiritualism thrown into sharper relief. 1886, SPR investigation of Eglinton, one of the most renowned physical mediums of the late 19th C. Mrs Sidgwick investigated, supported by Hodgson

Spate of articles in SPR Journal and Proceedings 1886 and 7 punctured Eglinton’s reputation - Mrs Sidgwick, Hodgson and Davey all stressed the fallibility of human observation and memory. Eglinton took offense, urged admirers in SPR e.g. Massey, Moses, noel, wedgwood, wyld, wyndham, to abandon the Society forthwith.

No mass exodus of spiritualists. Departure of Moses with a handful of loyalists e.g. Speer and Watts.

Question 46

Work of Gurney and Myers for SPR

Answer 46

On the Literary Comte

Over 10,000 letters from the comte in 1883. Hundreds of cases categorized and analyzed in the famous study by Gurney, Myers and Podmore, Phantasms of the Living

Question 47

Eusapia Palladino

Answer 47

Italian Medium, peasant background

notorious for her erratic and vulgar behaviour inside and outside her seances and trance states. For example, apart from displaying a diva-like behaviour, she would, apparently merely to entertain herself, tell obvious lies and openly flirt with some of her distinguished male investigators, sometimes jumping on the horrified savants’ laps

• sittings for SPR periodically between 1894 and 1910
• first sittings w SPR 1894, south of France
• invited her to Cambridge 1895
• Palladino’s phenomena not remarkable by mediums’ standards, but profile raised by fact scientists unable to find evd of trickery
• Hodgson ‘exposed’. declared 1895 that she jst had ability to wriggle hands and feet free from control of sitters through variety of deceptive movements
• Hodgson, ed of SPR publications, barred Myers from publishing lengthy discussion of later sittings and supported Sidgwick in attemtp to put that vulgar cheat Eusapia beyond the pale

1910, séances in America = fiasco. Palladino behaved erratically and cheated blatantly

Question 48

Richard Hodgson

Answer 48

• Australian. Law Degree. Studied poetry
• became convinced of human survival, thanks to the American
  Trance medium Mrs Piper
• language that he used to convey his deep satisfaction with the universe echoed not the scholarly scientist but the intense Nonconformist he had once been before his crisis of faith in young adulthood.

Question 49

SPR international suppporters

Answer 49

Bernheim, Janet, Richet, Lombroso, William James = corresponding members. Freud. Was Myers who had first publicized in England the Breuer-Freud studies of hysteria. Robertson, editor of the Journal of Medical science during the 1860s, joined SPR

Question 50

George Romanes, Crichton-Browne and the SPR

Answer 50

Romanes seems to have joined the SPR in 1882

He unaffild by decemb 1883.

Disillusioned when participated in the Society’s thought-transference tests w Smith and Blackburn early 1883

Perhaps what shocked him most - not that he had discovered two charlatans practicing ‘patent imposture’, but that SPR officials present did not seem partic grateful for his acuity. In Crichton-Browne’s memory, Myers said it must be allowed that this demonstration has been a total failure, and I attrib that to the offensive incredulity of Dr Crichton-Browne

Question 51

Alfred Russell Wallace

Answer 51

co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection in the 1850s and its most ardent champion.

Argued for a distinct process of mental growth in man, entirely separate from the rest of the natural world.

Once attended séances in 1865 he seems quickly to have attained unquestioning belief. Wallace extended mediums benefit of the doubt.
Cook emerged as paragon of probity. Kate Fox = exemplar of lifelong sacrifice to her calling.

For Wallace, formal sceintific training or adequate knowledge was irrelevant to the pursuit of spiritualist truth. Trusted his eyes and ears, sense of touch and smell.
Refused to believe his senses cld be deceived

300) Wallace's dislike/ distrust of ppl who practiced philosophy at the séance table kept him from an active role in the SPR. Wallace became one of the Soc's honourary members - a position he retained despite increasing distaste for the tenor of its investigations

When offered post of presidency of SPR by Barret at least twice, said that the Society wld not rise in the public esteem under the leadership of such a widely known ‘crank’ and ‘faddist’ as himself

Wallace believed in Spiritualism bc of his social conscience. Worried about social imbalance he saw all around.

received numerous medals from sceintific societies, an honourary degree from Oxford, Fwllowship in the Royal Society. President of the Biology Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1876.

Wrote prolifically for Spiritualism in the scientific press, tho did not mention the word itself in his sci writing

Attempted to convince other scientists to study Spiritualism. E.g. invited Huxley to study a new branch of Anthropology. Pressured Carpenter and Tyndall also

Always stressed
Spiritualism appealed to his reason

Question 52

Scientist supporters of psychical research

Answer 52

SPR mems included Prof Stewart of Owens College, Marie Curie (honorary mem)

also, Rayleigh and Thomson (sceptics)

Question 53

Barrett

Answer 53

made transition from cautious psychical researcher to outspoken Spiritualist

paper on thought transference and Spiritualist phenomena for presentation at the Glasgow meeting of the BAAS in September 1876.

Was courageous step - had recently been appointed prof of physics at Royal College of Science in Dublin. ‘On Some Phenomena Associated with Abnormal Conditions of Mind’. Cautious. Dealt mostly w mesmeric experiments and w spiritualist phenomena only towards the end. Not prepared to accept the phenomena on evd he had seen

By 1876, working towards theory of thought transference (convinced by aspects of clairvoyance/ thought reading)
July 1881, published in Nature a provisional announcement of his findings, which emphd the inadequacies of Carpenter’s theories on thought transference. Strongest part of evd focused on the Creery household. The daughters/ servants appeared to be able to read thoughts

Oct 1887, Sidgwicks and Gurney caught two of the Creers cheating during experiments at Cambdige. Barretr was himself convinced that enough trustworthy experiments with the Creers existed to make it unwise to expunge whole of their evd (letter to Sidgwick, October 1887)

Election to Royal Society 1899

Barrett’s ‘Reminiscences’ 1924 - proclaimed certainty the evd published by the SPR demonstrated existence of spiritual world, survival after death and occasional communications from those who have passed over

son of clergyman

Barrett abhorred contemp science’s role as censur - its assumption of the authority to dictate what was, or was not, within the possible realm of supernatural law, and its exclusion of what he insisted were not supernatural, but merely supernormal, phenomena.

Question 54

Oliver Lodge

Answer 54

Physicist

joined SPR in 1884

Council mem for yrs. President from 1901-3

Only believed in communication w dead after séances with Leonora Piper, trance medium from Boston

Provided detailed info about sitters’ lives, habits, friends, relatives

winner of Royal Soc’s Rumford Medal, president of the Physical Society, principal of the University of Birmingham since 1900

saw no sharp distinction between physical and psychical research. Believed methods of the physical sciences were applicable to the psychical realm. Mentioned this in presidential address to the British Association

Lodge’s call for an expanded physics (e.g. in first presidential address to the SPR, March 1901. Lodge had come close to discovering electromagnetic radiation during his yrs at Liverpool

Lodge was one of grandfathers of theory of relativity

Lodge felt physics became too abstract in 20th C

Stubborn opponent of contemp physics after WW1

Abhorred notion of gaps in the fabric of the universe.

In face of modern tendency to stress discontinuous or atomic tendency of everything, Lodge waved banner of continuity

Little of the detached, impartial scientist in the older Lodge’s psychical research (Oppenheim)

Question 55

Kate Fox and Horace Day

Answer 55

Horace Day, wlthy American manufacturer, paid Kate Fox annual sum of $1200 in mid-1850s to give public séances

Question 56

Taylor, editor of the British Journal of Photography

Answer 56

revived general interest in spirit photography 1890s.
Prevented fraud - own camera and unopened packages of plate

Compared and analyzed their photographic phantasms at public meetings.

Skeptics who challenged authenticity of spirit photography knew little about modern photographic techniques and theories - they therefore cld not engage the expert Taylor on technical lvl