Historians Flashcards

Question

Braude, Spiritualism and the home

Answer 1

Spiritualism also reflected Victorian view that the home was the true locus of religiosity. Introduction of the planchette facilitated the mediumship of untrained family mems within the home. Heart-shaped piece of wood mounted on three casters, the planchette was believed to respond to magnetic forces passing through the bodies of those who placed fingers on it, thus communicating messages from spirits. Cld be used either with copy of alphabet or with pencil inserted in hole on back. Not commercially Mass-produced in US until 1860s, but planchettes imported from France were avail in Spiritualist bookstores by late 1850s. Line between parlour game and religious inquiry blurred when fams who tried the spirits in fun discovered mediums in their midst. Professional mediums.

Answer 2

Spiritualists staunchly opposed national organization Mediums understood that formal association threatened their role because it recognized masculine leadership qualifications rather than the passive characteristics that linked mediumship and femininity - opponents included Lizzie Dolten. Trance speakers lost the debate and American Association of Spiritualists was voted into existence, 2864 Breakdown for and against organization divided normal speakers from trance speakers more fully than it divided men from women. Women who had the same leadership qualities as men joined men in advocating a system of organization that rwarded assertiveness over passivity Female normal speakers included physicians Juliet Stillman, Alcinda Wilhelm.

Answer 3

Spiritualism represented an extreme position in the liberal trend of theology that swept the mainstream Protestant denominations in the United States far from their Calvinist or Reformed origins Many Americans adopted Arminianism As 19th C wore on, American culture increasingly viewed women as the moral guardians of their families Similarities between Spiritualism and Transcendentalism Sentimental values and an increasing emphasis on the nuclear family as the focus of emotional life encouraged a rebellion against death. Messages frequently focused on the spirit's happiness after death and continued concern for surviving family mems Spiritualists embraced the rural cemetery movement, in which the rejection of death was expressed in the transformation of the burial ground from a reminder of the inevitability of death and decay into a site designed for the contemplation of hapy memories and heavenly reunions

Answer 4

Universalists found in them confirmation for their rejection of eternal damnation Quakers saw them as a concrete illustration of the doctrine of the inner light Across Midwest and New York State, Quaker splinter groups investigated Spiritualism Mediums emerged from the leading women in the Progressive Friends - e.g. Charlotte Beebe worked as medium in Massachusetts 1855 Quaker splinter groups used their new freedom to explore both radical religion and radical politics Spiritualist network, including Progressive Friends, assembled large audiences for promoters of radical causes.

Answer 5

Spiritualism's greatest contribution to the crusade for woman's rights probs lay in new role of spirit medium. Mediumship cast women in central public role Mediumship did not model a simple abrogation of accepted feminine norms. Mediumship gave women a public leadership role that allowed them to remain compliant w the complex of values of the period that have come to be known as the cult of true womanhood - this asserted woman's nature was characterizd by purity, piety, passivity and domesticity Speakers observed a rigorous sexual division of labour, even though equal nums of men and women spoke from Spiritualist platform. Men called meetings to order, forcefully presiding. Women at the podium were unconscious. Trance mediums understood to be passive vehicles. New York City lecture by Emma Jay - 'that a young lady not over 18 yrs of age shld speak for an hour and a quarter, in such an eloquent manner, w such logical and philosophical clearness', proved to one observer the presence of a power not natural to the education or mentality of the speaker Youth proved medium didn't compose own speech Also considered to reduce motivation for fraud Unaccountability of mediums controlled by unseen intelligences Trance mediums = import element in emergence of women and public speakers 1850s Sight of a lone woman confidently expounding spiritual truths enchanted American listeners - New Yorkers enchanted by Cora Hatch Flowing speech of trance mediums depended on a self-assurance unavailable to mid-century women who lacked spiritual inspiration

Answer 6

Spiritualists insisted women naturally healthy. Asserted women better suited than men to act as healers. Medical mediums Health reform. Proposed reformations of personal liefe that wld free the population from illness and suffering. Appealed to the Laws of Life as written in book of nature as guides to maintaining hlth and curing disease. Spiritualists condemned the baleful influence of tobacco and alcohol

Answer 7

Paradoxes and tensions within Spiritualism began to undermine its significance for woman's rights and reform during 1870s and 80s. As century advanced, distinctiveness of Spiritualism's social program faded, owing in large part to its success, however limited, in several areas. Spread of liberal theology and loosening of some restrictions on appropriate activities for women reduced distance between Spiritualism and other visions of society. Increase in reform women speaking in public after the Civil War diminished the social significance of trance speaking. Woman's appearance on the public platform no longer attracted interest in and of itself. Within Spiritualism, variety of attacks on mediumship evinced a devaluing of the feminine qualities so prized in the movement's early yrs. Sensational mediums replaced trance speakers as Spiritualism's biggest attraction, and mediumship itself therefore ceased to challenge accepted gender roles. The new sensationalism attracted figures anxious to gain personal benefit from its newsworthiness - Victoria Woodhull, Helena Blavatsky. Sensationalism and self-aggrandizement generated reaction against mediumship Spirits no longer emboldened mediums to exceed the traditional female role. Mediums who emerged in the 1870s did not lecture, nor did they become active reformers. Typical of these new mediums = French-American Lucie Marie Curtis Blair, whose career began mid-1870s Spiritualists spent the decade preoccupied with accusations of fraud and attempts to vindicate specific mediums . Almost every issue of Banner discussed these. Mediums attacked each other. Mrs Carpenter exposed Annie Fay by demonstrating Fay's feats without the assistance of spirits. Andrew Jackson Davis attacked the new manifestations. Bundy, editor of Religio-Philosophical Journal, joined Davis's attempt to return Spiritualism to its basic philosophy but refused to go along in condemning séances altogether y and Woodhull undermined Spiritualism's claim that woman's nature suited her to be a teacher of religion. Although Woodhull achieved widespread fame and Blavatsky became founder of a religious movement that still exists today, both figures, as did Mary Eddy, emphd their own leadership rather than the empowerment of women in general. Under these conditions, Spiritualism ceased to be a locus of either spiritual or political power for women.

Answer 8

Culmination of the sensational trend in spirit manifestations came with the popularity of 'materialisations' When materialisation replaced trance speaking as the most noteworthy public manifestation of Spirtiualism, the meaning of mediumship changed. Emphd medium's passivity in new and humiliating ways and downplayed her employment. Test conditions humiliating. While trance speakers oft travelled independently, most of the new mediums required male confederates/ managers In most cases, manifestations appeared only after the medium was securely bound and hidden in a cabinet, her effectiveness depending on invisibility and powerlessness. Mediums for materialisation cld not hope to inspire same admiration trance speakers elicited from their audiences. While materialization diluted the meaning of mediumship, it also opened Spiritualism to new and more spectacular forms of fraud and self-aggrandisement The new manifestations lacked the potential to be vehicles for the social criticism delivered by trance speakers.

Answer 9

Spiritualist doctrines remained permanently outside the pale of acceptable public opinion. America's identity as Christian nation became more firmly entrenched than ever as the 20th C opened Spiritualism's critique of Christianity as inherently oppressive was as controversial in 1900 as had been in 1848

Answer 10

the feminization of American culture reflected in Spiritualism perpetuated women's restricted role and produced a morally impotent sentimental culture.

Answer 11

History of Spiritualism suggests that the identification of piety with femininity cld aid in the expansion of women's options and contribute to the potency of a comprehensive moral idealism. More women stepped beyond conventional female roles because of Spiritualism than they would have without it

Answer 12

Communication with the spirit world was not an occult practice limited to those with access to secret knowledge. Spirit phenomena could be produced and observed by anyone willing to follow a few simple procedures.

Answer 13

psychical research would play an important role in psychology’s theories of a decentered and fragmented subject

Answer 14

Psychology would draw abundant evidence for subconscious activity, the subliminal self, and unconscious mental processes from the often staggering feats of mediums.

Answer 15

International cooperation reached its apogee in the decades following the First World War with a series of international congresses involving participants from dozens of European, Asian, and American countries

Answer 16

Resented the silences institutionalized science seemed to impose on those anomalies that refused to fit its established paradigms Wished to sustain heroic age of discovery in era increasingly characterized by the regimentation and specialisation of scientific work Confronted by prospect of closing scientific frontier and corresponding loss of creative agency, psychical researchers highlighted indeterminacies revealed by mediumism and somnambulism As a young science, the scientific psychology of Ribot and Pierre janet turned, sometimes boldly, sometimes more cautiously, to the facts of somnambulism and mediumism in its effort to substantiate the claim that the mind could be studied through objective means. In contrast to prevailing discourse of 'degeneration', the revalidation of the spirit suggested by the facts of mediumism held great appeal both to those tied to the older spiritualist philosophy of the self and to many eager to find firm scientific footing for what had previously passed as religious beliefs Great deal of interest shown. More than psychoanalysis, bc psychical research had advantage that it professed principle of determinacy by eschewing subjective phenomena

Answer 17

Psychical researchers sometimes found it rhetorically useful to draw upon legitimizing principles of democracy by making ref to fact the phenomena they studied had been witnessed by tens of thousands of amateur observers

Answer 18

Late 19th-C Fr, expansion of sci knowl promoted as central component of ideology of Third Republic. Scientific spirit of education in Fr primary and 2ndry schools = essential part of the republic's efforts to combat traditional claims to authority that undermined secular ideals of republicanism

Answer 19

inability to untangle objective causes from subjective motivations Psychoanalysis became about analysing doubt, why/ how came about. No such sophisticated analysis of doubt in psychical research

Answer 20

While in its empiricism the practice explicitly mimicked scientific forms of knowledge, in its populism it questioned an older form of scientific authority rooted in elite ideals of social respectability. It also countered a newly emerging ideal of science based on the insulated and exclusive space of the experimental laboratory.

Answer 21

Second Emp left spiritists to it, as they were apolitical (some cynics thought spiritism encouraged bc distraction from atrocities)

Answer 22

In industrial cities like Lyon, spiritist organizations tended to manifest themselves as workers' mutual aid societies

Answer 23

Set standard for all psychical research in 19th C List of mems/ corresponding mems across Europe e.g. Hippolyte Taine, Bernheim, Richet, Janet, Flournoy, Lombroso, William James (served as one of the soc's 1st vice presidents). Freud, Carl Jung, Flournoy, eventually contribd to soc's Proceedings Richet and Bergson each served term as president

Answer 24

Spiritism, which in the 19th C had focused on personal losses assoc w the intimacies of the bourgeois fam, now took on collective meanings in proportions unknown to other periods Spiritism = perfectly suited to the effort to transform great suffering and loss into an occasion for national redemption by permitting the souls of the dead to remain in communion with the soul of the living France Fr President, Paul Deschanel - framed procession down Champs-Élysées as moment of national communion between living and deadTheme of immortal dead and their communication w living Invoking Deschanel's speech, La Revue Spirite asserted priority of the spiritist movement in work of restoring unity to the nation

Answer 25

Mediums capable of producing phenomena were so rare that the experiments were not widely reproducible. Phenomena became increasingly tangible and increasingly visible at the same time that they became less accessible to the general public. Mediumism in this form no longer open to the widespread public scrutiny it had enjoyed in the past. Public knowledge was increasingly reliant on the accounts of elite researchers. Question of good faith that psychical researchers had so oft raised about their mediums now became afeature of the relationship between the elite practice of science and the general public Dependent on press accounts that shaped their understanding of mediumism, general public also inclined to apply standards of truth completely alien to the methods of experimental science Was in the gaps produced by the opposition of journalistic, historical and juridical methods of investigation, on the one hand, and experimental methods on the other, that the traditional doubts surrounding mediumistic phenomena intensified Ectoplasm came to play increasingly important role in experiments of psychical research. Interwar period, difficulties plaguing efforts of psychical researchers to contrib to sci knowl were compounded by unprecedented popular interest in the field. Increased scrutiny from skeptical public that was, from perspective of committed psychical researcher, inexpert and ill informed. Intuitive arguments made regarding similarities between Eva's ideoplastic faces and portraits form Le Miroir indicated the errors inherent in the ppular conception that the reality of mediumistic phenomena cld be tested by commonplace methods of observation In contrast to table rapping, mediums w ability to produce materializations were extremely rare, and technical expertise claimed by those who studied them well beyond reach of the merely curious. Drawing widely from the methodologies of natural history, clinical psychology and physiology the field of psychical research had develd in the last decades of the 19th C in a methodological no-man's-land Richet, Schernck-Notzing - claimed solidarity w such scientists by arguing their science was closer to that of the naturalist who observes phenomena that the observer has no power to bring about or influence. Nordmann agreed that psychical research presented methodology typical of many accepted sciences. While claiming methodological similarity to field sciences, psychical researchers continued efforts to emulate the experimental sciences. This aspiration continually thwarted by field's reliance on human subjects and poss the phenomena were produced in interests of deception - central preocc of the field Researchers agreed an overly severe set of controls was just as likely to disrupt a genuine phenomenon as expose a false one Experimenters were apt to rely on criterion difficult to translate into terms acceptable to science. 'Good faith' Nordmann - this = Achilles heel of whole enterprise. Problem was that faith had a role to play at all. For a public unlikely ever to witness materialization, knowledge came exclusively from written accounts. Invoked set of methodologies diff from those psychical researchers employed in their labs. Heuzé crit lack of detail (e.g. dates) in Flammarion's Autour de la mort Heuzé called his method 'historical'. Pointed out inconsistencies. Comparing/ corroborating H challenged ability of researchers to make phenomena of mediumism transparent Difficulty of recording all details, especially when conditions were frequently changed

Answer 26

By turn of century, psychological study of mediums had given way to program that aimed to estab the objective reality of mediumistic phenomenon. This focus corresponded to a shift in attitudes about hysteria, hypnosis and automatism, which came to be seen not as authentic representations of mental processes but as effects of suggestion and stimulation. This shift began around 1901 w Babinski's challenge to Charcot's theories and was formalized in 1909 w his article, Démembrement de l'hystérie traditionnelle. Psychical research responded to diminished faith in hysteria and hypnosis by seeking to substantiate its claims in the objective phenomena of materialization. Study of mediumism proceeded w little serious consideration of the subjective phenomena - automatic writing, disaggregation of the personality - that had initially drawn psychologists to the study of mediums in earlier decades. Emph on objectivity had widespread appeal for proponents and critics alike For Dupré, hysteria and mediumism constituted a contradiction to reality; they were not, as Freud wld argue, the means of negotiating a reality in which contradiction was inherent

Answer 27

Psychical research emerged as relevant to French thought just as older, socially limited forms of subjective knowledge were giving way to a new, democratic enthusiasm for the objective methods of experimental science Psychical research would embody many of the antagonisms lingering from this transition from a philosophy of the mind to a science of the mind, seeking, for example, to objectify the mind in an examination of physical and physiological phenomena while insisting on the essential qualities of will, intention and good faith. By acting as the representative of these displaced antagonisms within the field of psychology, psychical research wld help to safeguard, through its contradictory methods and assumptions, indeterminacy even as the field of scientific psychology achieved an institutional base and a corresponding social utility. As sci psychology gave rise to methods of rendering the mind knowable and making this knowl publicly accessible and useful, psychical research wld continue to mark a point of resistance w/in the sciences to the v universality claimed on its behalf. Psychical research in this role wld fade from this position only as the indeterminacy it represented came to be refigured in other terms. In the movement of French thought that wld culminate in the Lacanian 'return to Freud', indeterminacy was no longer to be seen as anathema to universal knowledge but as a necessary feature of the knowing and desiring subject.

Answer 28

streets filled with 1.5 mil spectators 1852 for funeral procession of Duke of Wellington Materialism and a desire for spectacle centered on technology within the context of religious ceremony: these two conspicu- ous features of Wellington's funeral mark a shift in cultural attitudes toward mourning in the Victorian period the popularity of the spirit photograph in the second half of the nineteenth century points to a culture which saw its materialism spilling over into reli- gious doctrine, and whose interest in technology was transforming into a type of religious faith

Answer 29

In a soci- ety where mourning was highly visible in dress, but where grief was all but taboo, the spirit photograph provided a space to gain conceptual control over one's feelings directly refuted the collec- tive soul doctrine. As the spirit photograph clearly shows, spirits have discrete bodies after death, and furthermore, they retain (at least to the eyes of eager-to-believe relatives) the same physical appearance. This seems to suggest that the self is retained in the afterlife, and that the dissolution into the collective soul that so many feared does not occur material heaven" was one endorsed and promoted by Spiritualists par- ticularly In England, the fervor for the version of heaven portrayed in spirit photography isattributa-ble to an equal fervor for - and oftentimes frustration with the failures of - social reform. Class inequality, workhouse and fac- tory conditions, overcrowding in the cities, all of Dickens's poor starving orphans - everything that made Victorians lament the "condition of England" would find redress in a material heaven.

Answer 30

In the United States, part of the popularity of Spiritualism and spirit photography was due to the impact of the Civil War. So many loved ones met early and tragic deaths that it was a comfort to think of them getting a second chance to live out the lives they were meant to have.

Answer 31

I would argue that Doyle's spiritu- alistic beliefs and the Sherlock Holmes sto- ries use the same ideological framework: one that sees all knowledge as obtainable through observation, and believes that all things are reducible to physical signs What makes Sherlock Holmes so appealing is precisely the appeal of the Spiritu- alist Movement. Spiritualism is premised on the notion that the divine and the afterlife can be broken down and systematically understood through physical signs

Answer 32

Buguet's clients illustrate how strong the faith in technology was at the time. They believed that the camera, like a logical, dispassionate Sherlock Holmes, was not susceptible to corruption The popularity of spirit photography is thus a mark of a shift toward faith in science and technology and away from faith in tradi- tional Christian doctrine. in the spirit photograph, the interest in technological marvel that Vic- torians evinced at the Duke's funeral was transformed into the equivalent of religious faith. spirit photograph is a marker of a shift in faith, of a belief in man's ability to reveal the nature and workings of the Divine, and in technology's ability to enhance man's powers of perception

Answer 33

The word telepathy is coeval with the society, having been coined by one of its founding members, F. W. H. Myers, in 1882. For the first several years the SPR was preoccupied with telepathy. It remained a prime concern for decades. Richet did something that, though obvious, no one had quite thought of doing before. proposed a long sequence of trials in which an "agent" drew a playing card at random and concentrated upon it for a short time, after which a "reagent" guessed the suit of the card. Some 2,927 guesses were made by various reagents in sequences of various length. In each sequence the expected number of successes was compared with the actual number, and a rather primitive statistical inference was drawn. In the total se- quence of guesses there were 789 successes, whereas 732 is the expected number there is some probability for the hypothesis of mental suggestion-low, but not negligible. The result was not very thrilling for the SPR, but the method was

Answer 34

Fisher, the acknowledged founder of randomized experimental design , Fisher was well aware of psychical research, even if, on the testimony of the daughter who is his biographer, he thought it baloney Fisher was intimately aware of the practices and the past of psy- chical research.

Answer 35

Enlightenment crusade - to banish reports of supernatural phenomena from intellectual discourse

Answer 36

Spiritualists, in terms of numbers, were in the majority on the original SPR council 3 areas of conflict: - Proper investigation and interp of physical phenomena - Source of automatic wriitng, speaking and drawing - Timing, focusing and ordering of the Society's investigations Cambridge group felt Spiritualists jumped to quickly to assumption of spirit action Spiritualists saw the key condition for a successful séance as one of sympathetic respect; for Myers and his colleagues, it was control and unimpeded, sustained observation Spiritualists frustrated w focus on telepathy. Cambridge group argued this = prior stage to investigation of life after death. Many Spiritualists believed SPR leaders not unbiased, but dismissed evd that did not fit w their social and academic preconceptions Stainton Moses resigned from SPR in 1886 but other influential Spiritualists e.g. Massey and Wallace remained. No mass exodus. A number welcomed the SPR exposure of fraud, and the greater status the involvement of more academic and socially established leadership had given to this whole area of investigation

Answer 37

Crusade probably attracted more worldwide attention and controversy than any other development in the history of Spiritualism.

Answer 38

Spiritualist magnetism emerged before 1848 New way of looking at the emergence of Spiritualism from mesmerism in France, which led to Kardec's Spiritism By 1840s, medical magnetizers w somnambulistic patients were claiming to contact spirits. Spiritualist magnetizers - included Garnay, Delaage Published articles devoted to Spiritualist magnetism in Journal du magnétisme (1st published 1845 editor of Journal du Magnétisme = Baron Dupotet Frequent reprints of articles concerning American Spiritualism and discussion of them. Dupotet in one editorial claimed evd from US was further proof of what he already believed By 1860s, Kardec's Spiritism had absorbed the interest of those concerned w spirit communication Spiritualist magnetizers' popularity declined as Kardec's grew Change in role of medium. Medium not directed by magnetizer - mediums put themselves into trance Kardec's requirement to have th spirit via medium impartially but vigorously questioned meant that the questioner occupied same social role and dominant position as magnetiser Spiritualist magnetism = plural and diverse discourse w many competing views. Spiritism had unity of doctrine and structural organization that Spiritualist magnetism lacked Spiritualist magnetism = as import as American Spiritualism in devel of Kardec's Spiritism, yet had received comparatively little acadmic attention Spiritism survived bc Kardec produced a codified and coherent religious system

Answer 39

Grew from fascination w magnetism, knowledge of Swedenborg and his religious writings, and sense of disease brought on by tumultous changes accompanying a rapidly expanding and devleoping new nation peak 1857. Estimates for num of adherents as high as 11 mil. Church of the New Jerusalem (Swedenborgian) well established by time Spiritualism took hold in US. Spiritualism had already been divisive force w/in the Church. 1844, the New Era movement was started among mems of the New Church's New York Society by Silas Jones Jones held private gatherings where communicated w spirits

Answer 40

Spiritualists believe in long run process wld be democratized and all Spiritualists wld devel the gift of mediumship. Could be said that Spiritualists were democrats in theory but specialists in practice To extent, medium's circle ran against anti-clerical thrust of movment. Acceptable to them bc seemed they were naturally selected, by spirits, not selected by human-made institutions

Answer 41

Public condemnation from scientists, med journals, psychical socs Tarnished Spiritualism's reputation Results of SPR's investigations damaged Spiritualism

Answer 42

overwhelmingly conservative. Finds Spiritualism to be a 'salient example' of a postwar 'avalanche of the unmodern' the enduring appeal of Spiritualism was related directly to the universality of bereavement

Answer 43

Spiritualist movement = private denial of death

Answer 44

Spiritualism not jst conservative. Also ran counter to traditiona nd was deeply affected by experience of war Lodge 1916 - death but no extinction 1919, Conan Doyle - we miss their physical presence Lodges also pursued other means of consolation - Mary kept Raymond's letters with intention of making them into a book Spiritualism complemented rather than supplanted other ways of mourning the war dead Spiritualism borrowed from secular ways of memorialization e.g. photography Deane's photographs taken during armistice day. Deane's photographs suggest Spiritualism and Armistice Day wer enot opposing responses to war bereavement. From 1919 onward, Spiritualists held their own Armistice Day ceremonies, organized by the Spiritualists' National Union 1926 moved from Queen's Hall to Albert Hall - 8000 ppl attended Klass, Silverman, Nickman - Continuing bonds Mourning as negotiating a meaningful relationship with the deceased. In this continuing bonds framework, Spiritualism can be readily understood as an aspect rathe rthan avoidance of mourning and memorialization Universality of bereavement also worked against Spiritualism

Answer 45

Spirits brought many assurances that the Great War wld never be repeated. Utopian progressivism and metaphysical apologetics leashed Spiritualists to a new and immutable principle: the horror and chaos of the Great War was tolerable bc it was the birth-agony of an enlightened age. Great war = unique. This was dangerously falsifiable principle

Answer 46

Attending a Spiritualist séance cld be considered an activity as entertaining as a magic show 'star' (film studies) Stardom theory Spiritualism not immune to the dynamics of precinematic stardom. Most popular mediums were true celebrities, capable of arousing curiosity of Spiritualists and non-Spiritualists alike Celebrity mediums contribd to cohesion of Spiritualist communities by spreading the fame of the movement and furnishing a common ground of recognized personalities Frequently was the appeal exercised on the pop press by famous mediums e.g. Palladino that allowed Spiritualism to 'break the news', acquiring public attention beyond boundaries of believers Palladino famous for humble origins and simple manners Poverty making mediumship story of social and economic redemption Downfalls attracting attention - falling stars Through repeated admissions of trickery, troubled sentimental lives and pathological addiction to alcohol, Fox sisters recurrently attracted attent of the Spiritualist press Exceptionality as key element of stardom. Mediums described thus Home performed so many extraordinary features.. He became one of the most famous men of his time Home started using levitation 1851

Answer 47

Mediumship = considered a profession. Economical activity for own sake Fox sisters publicly demonstrated their mediumship in Rochester's Corinthian Hall Nov 14, 1949, charging 75 cents for admission Mediumship = a skill that cld be improved by regular training

Answer 48

first emerged with Mesmerism in the late eighteenth century and developed into a widespread cultural phenomenon after 1850 sought to resolve crisis of factuality in religious life For an explanatory system of this kind to function properly, it needs to have an “aura of factuality,” to strike believers as “uniquely realistic.” In addition to articulating a particular vision of symbolic order, a given religious system must make that order seem authoritative. adhered in many crucial ways to the grammar of the Catholicism with which the vast majority of them had grown up. Ideas of Christian morality, the importance of charity and the soteriological value of repentance, the necessity of doctrinal uniformity, and the fundamental role of centralized authority in the legitimation of religious teachings all remained crucial, in varying degrees, to their spiritual projects. distinctively French brand of nineteenth-century religious innovation

Answer 49

During the period from 1848 to 1914, journalists and other commentators tirelessly proclaimed the radical difference and novelty of the era they inhabited The modern age, according to late-nineteenth-century conventional wisdom, was characterized above all by an ever-growing knowledge and mastery of the forces of nature. Like Weber, many others assumed that this new reality entailed a particular way of seeing the world, one based on “scientific” objectivity and empirical rigor clear moral overtones: not only was it the path to truth, it was also the path to virtue In the French context, this critique of subjectivity—and by extension of religion—also assumed a political dimension, which stemmed from the Catholic Church’s support of antidemocratic conservatism. Beginning in the 1850s, and increasingly after the 1870s, French advocates of democracy and reform used Comte’s vision of history to affirm their own sense of political destiny.

Answer 50

Likened religious innovation to the “creolization” of a language.20 In creole languages, the grammatical structure remains relatively stable, while the vocabulary, imported from a wide array of other languages, changes dramatically. Similarly, in religious systems, a “grammar” of deep structures can be separated from a “vocabulary” of specific practices, doctrines, and institutional arrangements.

Answer 51

Catholic priests and writers simultaneously justified and assuaged post-1848 conservative anxieties by presenting the Devil as a frighteningly tangible presence in the séance room. Académie des sciences - explaining the tables tournantes became a way of linking science with the authoritarian, technocratic ethos of the Second Empire. Debunking the new phenomena allowed members of the Academy (académiciens) to elaborate an image of the scientist as objective guardian of rationality and, by extension, as protector of the social stability that 1848 had threatened. spring of 1853, the Académie des sciences quickly agreed on a hypothesis to account for the tables tournantes—that their rotation was the product of imperceptibly tiny muscular tremors produced by séance participants By adding a psychological dimension to their analysis, the second wave of académiciens and their allies transformed the terms of the debate about the tables tournantes. The conflict was no longer one between intolerance and openness to innovation; instead, it became a struggle between virtuous objectivity and destructive subjectivity, in the form of an all-too-human amour du merveilleux (love of the marvelous).

Answer 52

for socialists and republicans demoralized by the collapse of the Second Republic, these new phenomena were a source of hope and metaphysical consolation. In their séances, the entities that spoke through the tables explained the left’s political failures while reaffirming its transcendent aspirations.

Answer 53

One group asserted that a truly objective attitude entailed absolute open-mindedness. To deem even the most implausible-seeming phenomenon impossible without first subjecting it to thorough experimental study, in this view, was a violation of proper experimental method. The other group, which followed Arago’s lead, held that current scientific knowledge was sound enough to furnish certain irrefutable principles. These accepted principles, in turn, could be used to make an objective distinction between the possible and the impossible in evaluations of particular phenomena By advancing this view of the scientist as prophylactic explainer, Littré linked his argument to those of Chevreul and Babinet. For these writers, the proponents of scientific open-mindedness were fundamentally misguided. When confronted with such a large number of dramatically implausible accounts, a truly rational analyst turned first to the study of those who claimed to have observed the phenomena, not to the phenomena themselves The image of the scientist presented by Babinet, Chevreul, and Littré embodied a new moral vision, rooted not in faith but in an ascetic commitment to objectivity. The role of the trained scientist, these writers argued, was to act as a bulwark against sentiment

Answer 54

Many of those who regarded the tables as a source of revelation came from the political left. For many advocates of democracy and social reform, the rapid, violent collapse of the Second Republic provoked a crisis of faith. This was especially true among exponents of the theories of Romantic Socialists such as Henri de Saint-Simon, Etienne Cabet, and Charles Fourier At the same time, however, their arguments tended to make visionary leftism seem increasingly marginal. Political theories developed by human beings had a long and august history; political theories tapped out by animated tables, on the other hand, struck many observers as being of dubious provenance.

Answer 55

séance held in the summer of 1859, a distinguished committee of French Mesmerists attempted to reach a definitive conclusion about the reality of spirit phenomena. At home of Honorine Huet spiritualist manifestations seemed to corroborate theories about the mind’s power to act outside the body On the other hand, the spiritualist tendency to ascribe these phenomena to the intervention of otherworldly beings exacerbated a fundamental difference of opinion that had become increasingly pronounced in Mesmerist circles during the 1840s. Spiritualist Mesmerists embraced these astonishing manifestations as signs of a new era in human history—one in which mankind would finally resolve the crisis of factuality that scientific progress had created in religious life. Therapeutic Mesmerists, for their part, argued that their discipline would never be accepted by the scientific community if its practitioners surrendered so readily to metaphysical aspirations that, in their view, were nothing but superstitious fanaticism Therapeutic Mesmerism lapsed into obscurity after 1859 Spiritualist Mesmerism, on the other hand, served as the foundation for Spiritism Two leading exponents of Spiritualism Mesmerism = Delaage, man of letters (Catholic), and Cahagnet (free thinker, inspired by Swedenborg) In the end, however, the addition of mysterious raps or spontaneously rotating tables did little to address the fundamental epistemological conundrum that spiritualist Mesmerists had always faced: the lack of a reliable means of proving that the spirits encountered in a séance were autonomous beings and not simply products of the imagination 1858, the rift between spiritualist and therapeutic Mesmerists finally grew too deep for the existing institutional structures to contain. In January, Piérart left the Journal du magnétisme and started a periodical of his own, the Revue spiritualiste, exclusively devoted to the study of the new phenomena. séances with Huet provide a revealing example of how much the American spiritualist example had changed the practice of Mesmerism in the years since the séance vogue of 1853. While the most obvious change was the introduction of new phenomena such as table-moving and spirit raps, spiritualism also introduced an even more pervasive shift in social dynamics. Home’s tour revealed this transformation clearly: The old relationship between magnétiseur and somnambule had given way to a new arrangement, which allowed the entranced subject a considerably greater degree of independence.

Answer 56

elationship between magnétiseur and somnambule was still founded on inequality: The somnambule Delaage described at greatest length, Alexis Didier, was the shy product of a humble family of artisans; Cahagnet’s most remarkable subject, Adèle Maginot, was a woman of undetermined occupation from what one commentator called “the illiterate class.” The transcendence these somnambulists achieved in their states of lucidity, however, far outstripped anything Puységur would have imagined. Didier, sitting in Paris, could describe the furnishings in London apartments he had never visited

Answer 57

1856-7 French tour seemed to mark the first step in the spread of this second, metaphysical American Revolution A torrent of publicity in the press journalists who discussed Home’s séances overwhelmingly cast them in a positive light: rather than mocking these events, they burnished their mystique, transforming the American medium into a Romantic hero and saying little that might call the authenticity of his gifts into question While in Paris, he frequented numerous aristocratic salons and held several séances for the Emperor and Empress at the Tuileries Palace. As press accounts of the marvels Home produced became increasingly common, journalists grew far more willing to take their aristocratic sources at their word journalists proclaimed the reality of his gifts remarkably widespread journalistic credulity—not an altogether unexpected development given the enthusiasm many writers had shown in the initial stages of the tables tournantes vogue—was probably a response to social and literary imperatives, not metaphysical ones. Young, dark, and slim, Home cut a picturesque and mysterious figure. The séances in which he produced his uncanny phenomena were always exclusive, private gatherings. By telling stories intended to make these events seem as remarkable as possible, aristocrats, femmes du monde, and men about town augmented their social cachet

Answer 58

Despite the opposition of the spiritualists Piérart and Delaage, six of the committee members voted to publish their conclusion, which appeared in August 1859. After this publication, what had been an intense intellectual debate erupted into ad hominem polemic, which precipitated a schism between therapeutic and spiritualist Mesmerists Morin, following the example of Academic scientists by pathologizing those who claimed to have witnessed the new phenomena, insinuated that Piérart suffered from “spirito-madness In 1859 and 1860, both the Journal du magnétisme and the Union magnétique shifted their attention back to accounts of Mesmeric cures spiritualists, in turn, lent their support to Piérart’s journal and to a competing periodical— the Revue spirite—founded by a former mathematics teacher who called himself Allan Kardec After this turn away from spiritualism, the Mesmerist movement was gradually eclipsed, not to reemerge until the early twentieth century. The Journal du magnétisme stopped appearing in 1861; that same year, the Société du Mesmérisme and the Société philanthropico-magnétique—both diminished by the loss of their spiritualist members—fused into a single group. The circulation of the Union magnétique, France’s only remaining Mesmerist periodical for much of the 1860s, dwindled steadily. By 1866, it had shrunk to a mere 300, while that of Kardec’s new journal had reached 1,800

Answer 59

Where séances had once taken place in darkness, they were now often held in lighted rooms. Physical contact between the séance participants was no longer considered an essential part of the ritual, and in its absence, the atmosphere of playful flirtatiousness that had once characterized so many experiments with tables tournantes disappeared. When communicating for the spirits, mediums no longer relied on moving tables, mysterious raps, or a cumbersome planchette; instead, they sat quietly, holding pencils in the conventional manner, writing when the otherworldly forces inspired them. While séances still often occurred in family circles, they also took place in formal meetings, where attendees and their otherworldly guests obeyed strict rules of order, like the members of any other discussion society. These rules involved a partial return to the old paradigm of Mesmerist and somnambule: mediums managed their own trance states, but instead of determining the direction of communication themselves, they often responded to questions posed by an educated male society president. the fanciful, oracular communications many visionary mediums had produced in the 1850s gave way to plainer, clearer messages. Where there had previously been a pronounced diversity of opinion among inhabitants of the beyond, a consensus emerged. The spirits most mediums contacted now elaborated a moral system based on charity and the importance of fellow-feeling.

Answer 60

By 1862, the movement he called Spiritism had adherents throughout France, particularly in the cities of Paris, Lyon, and Bordeaux.

Answer 61

Spiritist philosophy, so accessibly presented in Kardec’s books, struck many educated middle- and lower middle-class people as rational, consoling, and reassuringly familiar. Rooted in Romantic Socialism and Positivism, it fit the expectations of many seekers of alternative cosmologies Kardec intensified the appeal of Spiritist ideas by linking them to a set of practices: society meetings, the holding of séances, and the performance of automatic writing. This practical dimension brought individual believers together and gave them opportunities to have a personal, in many ways novel, experience of the sacred Finally, dramatic as his innovations were, Kardec avoided any appearance of extremism. He did not present himself as a visionary or prophet but instead adopted the role of the rational, even stolid, expert.

Answer 62

doctrine of Spiritism was for the most part a selective compendium of ideas from mid-nineteenth-century French Romantic Socialist thinkers.28 Kardec’s spirits appeared to have borrowed their notion of reincarnation and their critique of eternal damnation from the works of Fourier and Jean Reynaud 9 Their moral vision, with its emphasis on charity, owed a great deal to the thought of Etienne Cabet, The Spiritist conception of a universe driven to constant improvement by a “law of progress” reflected the republican optimism of thinkers like Eugène Pelletan

Answer 63

due in part to the organization-based model of authority Kardec developed. Formal sociétés spirites fostered feelings of solidarity among believers and, even more important, served as a regulatory framework for communication with the other world

Answer 64

emphasis on coherence and structure British and American spiritualists tended to be considerably more tolerant of philosophical or ritual differences among mediums and groups. In large part, the French preference for codification had to do with religious context: The majority of Spiritists, even if they had abandoned orthodox faith, still conceived of religious authority in Catholic term Spiritist séance as Kardec envisioned it, then, had none of the carnivalesque, sometimes transgressive flash he decried in fortune-tellers and in performing mediums like the American Davenport brothers, who had caused a sensation with glowing disembodied hands and spectral guitars during their 1865 visit to Paris Spirit societies tended to make the impartial questioner, not the medium, the true leader of their séances

Answer 65

Spiritism’s respectability and seriousness were fundamentally masculine. Men were always in the majority in spirit society meetings, he asserted; when couples disagreed about Spiritism, it was usually the wife who refused to allow her husband to explore the new doctrine precisely this penchant for the marvelous and for mysticism that makes women, in general, more resistant than men rationalism, Kardec asserted, made Spiritism the business of men. Men also made up the majority of the mediums who published automatic writings in Spiritist periodicals during the period. By seeking to impose coherence on otherworldly communications in this way, Kardec and other spirit society leaders who followed his example developed a relationship between medium and authoritative male questioner that resembled the old one between magnétiseur and somnambule mediums, like somnambules, were usually either men of lower class status than their questioners or women.

Answer 66

Judging by the Revue, Parisian Spiritists from the lower ranks of the working class seem to have been comparatively rare. In 1863, for example, the members of the Société Parisienne treated the humble burial of M. Costeau, a “simple worker” and stalwart member of their group, as an exceptional occasion Anecdotal evidence about Bordeaux and Lyon, on the other hand, suggests a greater number of working-class Spiritists

Answer 67

Esprit faux savant, therefore, provided a crucial safety valve—a way to de-legitimize the compelling, logical but awkwardly divergent communications some mediums produced.

Answer 68

Mediumism, then, was remarkably democratic, a position available to all people capable of producing communications that satisfied the necessary criteria. Kardec himself asserted that mediumism had nothing to do with characteristics like gender or intelligence. It was a “natural faculty,” encountered “in children, women and old men, in the learned and in the ignorant.” In the context of Spiritist publications, society meetings, and séances, mediumism provided a way for people to transcend the limitations of gender or class. At the same time, however, the tendency of women and less-educated men to become mediums supported Kardec’s insistence that many automatic writings displayed a perspicacity that exceeded the author’s personal abilities. Mediums were passive instruments, not divinely anointed visionaries,['

Answer 69

Spiritism, Kardec wrote, is found everywhere, in all religions, but it appears yet more—and with more authority—in the Catholic religion than in all the others Kardec’s aspiration to reform the Church instead of replacing it probably did much to make his ideas attractive to spiritual seekers in a French Catholic context For Kardec and other Spiritists, the notion of eternal damnation and related concepts like original sin were the aspects of Catholic theology most in need of otherworldly rectification whole notion that Satan existed, they argued, revealed the superstitious absurdity of orthodox Catholic theology Devil was a logical impossibility, a “hypothesis” that contradicted both “the idea of divine omnipotence” and that of God’s “infinite goodness.”1

Answer 70

Spiritists assertively linked their doctrine to the democratic left. Under Kardec, these political tendencies had been muted; under Leymarie, they intensified In the tense climate of the early 1870s, when France was still reeling from the popular uprisings that had occurred in Paris and other cities, Spiritism seemed dangerously subversive Leymarie and his critics agreed that after Kardec’s death, the best way to advance his ideas was to turn away from the philosophical speculation that had previously been at the center of the Spiritist enterprise. Instead, the focus would shift to the study of spectacular phenomena that occurred in séances. The Revue spirite announced this change of direction in January 1870. After Kardec’s death, Leymarie allowed these connections between Spiritism and the political left to solidify . In the pages of the Revue, articles about women’s rights, the socialist factory in Guise founded by Jean Baptiste André Godin, and the laic religion envisioned by Charles Fauvety began to appear. French Spiritism was coming to resemble its Anglo-American and German counterparts, which tended to view progressive social reform as a logical complement to their metaphysical concerns. 1875 trial

Answer 71

omantic Socialist Charles Fauvety, for example, began to publish articles on Kardec’s ideas in his new journal La Solidarité Most important, Spiritists became deeply involved in the Ligue de l’enseignement, a society devoted to lay education and the founding of popular lending libraries.

Answer 72

Société Parisienne’s first attempt to use psychical research for propaganda purposes, an 1874 pamphlet that presented translated excerpts from Crookes’s articles with an explanatory afterword by Leymarie. In the excerpts Leymarie had chosen, Crookes clearly expressed his preference for the hypothesis of “psychic force” rather than spirit intervention.1 Leymarie nevertheless praised the British scientist’s work Most disturbing, psychical research introduced a new way of understanding these phenomena: as products of the mind rather than the soul.

Answer 73

Over and over again, the Président would present the box of cut-out heads and the doll; over and over, convinced Spiritists would refuse to accept this evidence as proof that their particular photographs had been faked. All of these witnesses—many of whom were technically trained, either as army officers or engineers— viewed their belief in scientific terms their idiosyncratic use of scientific methods and terminology had a decidedly feeble effect on the judges Spiritist science followed a distinctive set of rules: The Spiritists tailored their experiments to what they believed to be the elusive nature of spirit phenomena. These manifestations, they argued, were not simple, repeatable processes like chemical reactions. Instead, like Mesmeric lucidity, spirit phenomena depended on a wide variety of conditions, including the observer’s emotional state, the presence of a medium, and the will of the spirits themselves. As a result, Spiritists tended to stress the importance of eyewitness accounts, and above all the quantity of evidence. A phenomenon may have been impossible to produce reliably in an experimental context, but if it could be shown to have occurred frequently nevertheless, Spiritists believed, its existence could be considered “proved.” Leymarie’s testimony provided a revealing example of the dissonance between “court science” and “Spiritist science.” The Président, in the process of asking Leymarie why he had published so many testimonials from Buguet’s customers, alleged that he had printed these letters to manipulate his audience. Leymarie took a different tack, asserting instead that the testimonials, which were unsolicited, constituted a form of scientific proof in their own right, particularly since he had included them in the Revue only after experimentally verifying the authenticity of Buguet’s photographs. for Spiritists, the very inconsistency of Buguet’s results was proof of their authenticity. If Buguet were a fraud, would he not have made sure every picture turned out properly? Journalists who wrote more developed pieces on the trial—as opposed to those who simply strung together quotes from the transcript—tended to present the steadfast credulity of the Spiritist witnesses as the most remarkable aspect of the case Republicans - this = irrational. Flaw in itself. Spiritists = inferior humans. Catholics - credulity of the Spiritist witnesses was in no way a sign of mental deficiency or spiritual weakness but rather a misdirected expression of humanity’s instinctive susceptibility to the allure of the supernatural

Answer 74

Despite the fact that twenty out of the twenty-five professed Spiritist witnesses were men, many republican journalists sought to explain their belief in terms of gender. In general, the journalists did this by describing the audience in the courtroom, which they claimed was predominantly female. By nature, women were far more disposed to ardent belief than men because they were both more emotional and more stubborn

Answer 75

had only recently emerged as an autonomous scientific discipline—its first international convention had been held in Paris in 1889 When psychologists discussed the evolution of their discipline during this period, they generally spoke in terms of its changing relation to metaphysics. French account of psychology’s abandonment of metaphysics, in contrast, gave a prominent place to the controlled study of pathological cases.3 This current began with the clinical psychiatrists Jean-Martin Charcot and Hippolyte Bernheim fluidity of the discipline’s boundaries came to the fore in the sessions of the 1900 Congress devoted to “hypnosis, suggestion, and related questions.” In these meetings, academic psychologists read papers alongside clinicians, psychical researchers, Spiritists, and Occultists Ribot himself, in his presidential address, referred to the strange phenomena psychical researchers investigated as “the most advanced, adventurous parts of experimental psychology, and not the least seductive.”7 Ribot’s enthusiasm made considerable sense in the context of the broader development of the field: Many of the landmark works of early psychological theory drew the bulk of their data from studies of hypnosis and mediumism, which had come to serve as the empirical basis for an array of innovative models of consciousness Psychologists generally accepted psychical researchers as legitimate colleagues. At the same time, however, the distinctive conception of the “subliminal self ” that psychical researchers like Myers elaborated—which stressed the transcendent, rather than the “inferior,” aspects of the subconscious—generated considerable controversy, and indeed defined a fundamental split within the discipline of psychology as a whole. For many French psychologists, the future of the discipline seemed to turn on the outcome of this debate. Would psychology abandon metaphysics and embrace a materialistic conception of the mind, or would it instead seek to use the empirical methods of scientific inquiry to elaborate a new conception of the human soul, thereby redeeming religion for the modern age? the French psychological community’s continuing acceptance of psychical research during the 1890s and early 1900s stemmed from the crucial role studies of mediums and trance states played in the development of the discipline as a whole.

Answer 76

Spiritism, for its part, seemed to be enjoying a remarkable resurgence after the lean years of the late 1870s, but this resurgence also revealed a new weakness in the movement. As independent mediums and journals flourished, the organization Kardec founded forty years before lost much of its influence. Its brand of Spiritism had come to seem increasingly out of step with the intellectual preoccupations of the time. Judging by the sheer quantity of periodicals, societies, and independent mediums, the decentralized, argumentative, exuberantly diverse Spiritism of the 1880s and 1890s attracted an unprecedented number of adherents. central disagreement among Spiritists during this period stemmed from conflicting views of the movement’s nature: Was it a “moral” enterprise, a source of consolation for those in mourning, or was it a “scientific” project, the primary goal of which was to elaborate an empirical approach to the beyon Throughout the 1880s and well into the 1890s, as Janet observed, neither of these factions took much notice of the developments that were transforming the field of psychology. Instead, both accepted the principle that automatic writing was necessarily of otherworldly origin, even as new theories of mind rendered this assumption increasingly tenuous

Answer 77

disciplinary consolidation of scientific psychology, the rise of psychical research, the fragmentation of Spiritism, and the triumph of Occultism are linked episodes in a broader story. All four developments mark important stages in the emergence and reception of a new model of subjectivity. The idea of a “subconscious” mind only partly under the control of a “speaking ego” had the potential to undercut orthodox religious teachings as deeply as Positivism had forty years before, challenging fundamental assumptions about the soul, individual identity, conscience and free will. Some sought to use this new notion of subjectivity as a means of purging studies of the mind of all metaphysical implications, while others hoped it would bring spiritual questions into the sphere of scientific discourse Heterodox believers, as we will see, met this challenge by using an array of eclectic sources to invent a new and enduringly influential solution to the religious crisis of factuality: a spirituality of the multivalent self. According to Flournoy, his studies had proved that the communications and visions mediums like Smith received were rooted in subliminal recollections of past experiences, which he called “cryptomnesia.” By 1891, however, the notion that consciousness could splinter in trance states had been accepted as a central principle of experimental psychology Hypnosis, a technique once condemned as a form of pseudoscientific “mysticism,” had revealed vast and previously unsuspected realms of mental life

Answer 78

Spiritualists played an important role in the Society during its earliest years, but by 1886 the Trinity group had become the dominant faction Building on the example Crookes had provided, it joined open-mindedness with a relatively sophisticated understanding of experimental method and a self-conscious reluctance to engage in explicit metaphysical speculation.

Answer 79

debate coalesced around the period’s two most influential conceptions of the subconscious: Pierre Janet’s “psychic disaggregation” model, advanced in his 1889 monograph L’Automatisme psychologique, and Frederic W. H. Myers’ theory of the “subliminal self,” first introduced to French-speaking audiences in an 1897 translation of an article that had appeared in the Proceedings of the SPR five years before Janet, following the precedent set by the philosopher Hippolyte Taine and by psychiatrists like Moreau de Tours and Charcot, treated subconscious mental activity as a symptom of mental disease, resolutely disconnecting it from any “supernormal” manifestations.32 For him, the subconscious was by definition a sphere of “inferior” mental activity A genius, Janet believed, was able to take this synthetic ability a step further through a prodigious feat of mental strength—he could not only create and maintain a unified self but also invent new forms of synthesis Myers, in contrast, argued that the “subliminal” encompassed the most exalted aspects of mental life: not only the creative inspirations of genius but also the uncanny powers certain mediums seemed to possess. Telepathy, in other words, allowed Myers to present the “violet” end of the subliminal spectrum as the physical location of the immortal soul. The renunciation of conscious control that Janet found so dangerous struck Myers as a potential form of salutary liberation

Answer 80

By the early years of the twentieth century, this conception of the multivalent self—along with its connection to the questions raised by psychical research, the hopes it inspired, and the anxieties it caused—had become common currency among educated French men and women.

Answer 81

Throughout the 1880s and well into the 1890s, as Janet observed, neither of these factions took much notice of the developments that were transforming the field of psychology. Instead, both accepted the principle that automatic writing was necessarily of otherworldly origin, even as new theories of mind rendered this assumption increasingly tenuous At the end of the 1890s, however, developments in the field of psychology became impossible to ignore. The key turning point came in 1899, when Camille Flammarion, still the movement’s best-known fellow traveler, publicly asserted that spirit communications were in fact “unconscious reflections,” either of the medium’s own ideas or of the ideas of others present at the séance. Kardec had built his vision of consoling science—and scientific consolation—on the fundamental assumption of Positivism: that there was a coherent, indeed permanent self and that such a self’s perceptions of the world were transparently accurate new intellectual developments made these assumptions seem problematic. unitary, reasoning subject that Kardec had taken for granted now seemed an outdated concept.

Answer 82

Most strikingly, in the séances Denis led and in those reported in journals like the Progrès spirite, automatic writing gave way to trance speech. As new psychological theories made text into an increasingly slippery form of evidence, acting took its place

Answer 83

Where Spiritism remained wedded to Kardec’s musty blend of Romantic Socialism and Positivism, Occultism was self-consciously au courant. As chief organizer of Occultism, Papus ensured that the material trappings of these societies reflected the glamour and drama of their immaterial aspects. Where Spiritists had tried to make their séances as much like everyday life as possible, Papus and his fellow Occultists strove to cultivate a distinction between the sacred and the profane. At the beginning of the twentieth century, as interest in Myers’ work spread beyond psychological circles, writers familiar with the Occultist conception of the multivalent self began developing it in new directions. Writing in 1907, for example, the journalist Jules Bois, who had been a chronicler of the Occultist milieu since the late 1880s, made the multivalent self into a crucial element of what he saw as a distinctively “modern” conception of spiritual experience Bois argued, had revealed the “obscure capacities in which our ego is secretly rich. the Beyond is replaced by the Within

Answer 84

piritualist Mesmerists, Spiritists, and Occultists sought to synthesize what many had come to see as mutually exclusive ways of knowing.Their attempts to reconcile faith and reason placed these movements in an awkward position, a no-man’s land outside the conceptual boundaries of science, orthodox religion, and superstition. they wanted to construct a new religious system capable of serving as the moral foundation for a “modern” society. Their goal, then, was not to take France back to a pre-Revolutionary age but to add a new dimension to the gains the Revolution had already made. For many during this period, heterodox movements exerted a powerful attraction by seeming to resolve an intensely felt intellectual and emotional dissonance—a crisis of factuality in religious life

Answer 85

Fear of institutionalization and a resistance to the growth of organization amongst spiritualists, and continuing groups seem to be democratically based and structured. It is postulated that fear of institutionalization arises because the movement is based on the charismatic powers of mediums, and that routinization and institutionalization are seen as restrictive of the spontaneous expression of the charisma of mediums This belief may clearly lead to the autocratic dominance of the medium, but this has not happened in the majority of sectors of the movement because Spiritualists believe that all individuals are potentially mediums. In consequence of this belief becomes necess to treat all mems as equal - can only be expressed in democratic and voluntary form of organisation

Answer 86

led to later 1850s decline in Spiritualism Started as result of the disillusionment of many supporters at the exposure of some fraudulent mediums. Decline accelerated by the emergence of cranks, + association w socialism, free love. Public interest waned. 1857 investigation into Spiritualism by professors of Harvard

Answer 87

caused great deal of disruption of Spiritualist activities. Disturbing effect of 1st total war in modern history, resulted in serious deline in the whole movement. Public activities seem to have ceased almost entirely during the war In South the situation worse - Spiritualism assoc w anti-slavery

Answer 88

Modern Spiritualism arises amongst groups alienated from the traditional patterns of life and of religious behaviour and belief America: high social or vertical mobility extensive horizontal or geographical mobility a great influx of immigrants with different and conflicting cultural patterns the effects of rapid industrialization which led to chaos in the social structure and a failure to devel a coherent and integrated pattern of culture Social conditions in America produced Egoism (individualism) and Anomie (sense of absence of social norms/ dislocation)

Answer 89

difficult period for Spiritualist movement. More successful societies began to acquire many of the trappings of the more orthodox Christian churches, including Gothic style buildings w Nave and Chancel - e.g. St Paul's Spiritual Church, Bradford

Answer 90

In the early period Spiritualism was largely a science, but it gradually became a religioin because many people began to accpet the claims it made uncritically.

Answer 91

this = high water mark of British Spiritualism

Answer 92

Second World War hit Spiritualism with a devastating force. Spirits had predicted no war, so war = disillusion Aug 1939, only 2 weeks before war broke out, headline - 'No World War' - appeared in Two Worlds

Answer 93

precisely because the sciences were recognised as the most reliable means of discerning regularities beneath phenomena, that Victorian spiritualists sought to achieve the authority of scientific laws for their claims regarding the manifestations of the séance spiritualists sought to achieve scientific credibility for their enquiries by promulgating the argument that manifestations would eventually be found to be results of natural laws. the more intense disputes over spiritualism sprang from only subtle differences of interpretation conflicts over the naturalistic provenance of manifestations were also conflicts over what constituted a proper scientific authority on spiritualism like other controversies and ‘opposing’ positions in Victorian spiritualism, the differences were not simple matters of natural and supernatural, but of competing and, in many cases, irreconcilable, versions of what could be taken to be natural. What was at stake were rival notions of the scientific, the natural, and the lawful, with participants agreeing implicitly that spirits were natural and lawful, and agreeing implicitly that their own approaches were the most scientific, but with participants fiercely disagreeing over what exactly counted as natural and lawful, and who counted as scientific. these terms were as much the subject of dispute as the reality of manifestations themselves

Answer 94

The apparently lawless phenomena of the séance and the interpretations of such phenomena promulgated by spiritualists had to be banished because they threatened the rapid progress of science and the stable natural order on which scientific professionalisers based their claims for cultural authority. controversies over spiritualism were not, as traditional historiography suggests, struggles between proponents of ‘science’ and ‘pseudo-science’, but fights between individuals who passionately believed in science and that their particular approach to the spirit world was scientific and the most legitimate

Answer 95

Those attending séances in Britain during the early 1850s could expect to experience such remarkable phenomena as clairvoyance, tables rapping out coded messages from professed spirits of the dead, and the levitation of objects by ‘spirits’. By the early 1870s, however, the mediumistic repertoire had been vastly enriched with such feats as mediums who levitated around the séance, direct and mediated ‘spirit’ writing, and most spectacular of all, the materialisation of fully-formed spirits

Answer 96

steps of Harrison and other spiritualists towards the naturalistic basis of spirit can also be traced in their use of ‘spiritual’ analogues to electrical and magnetic forces in explanations of how spirits manifested themselves, their concerted attempts to turn séances into scientific sites for probing connections between the known physical and the unknown ‘spiritual’ forces, and their strong hope that their new ‘scientific religion’ would become a branch of existing scientific disciplines including psychology, physics, and physiology

Answer 97

what spiritualists attributed to agencies outside the body were well known to medical practitioners as consequences of agencies within the body, and it was their extensive knowledge of a wide range of mental disorders including insanity, hysteria, and somnambulism that underpinned such a naturalistic interpretation

Answer 98

conflicts that we have described between spiritualists and medical practitioners stemmed not simply from differing ‘naturalistic’ interpretations of spirits, but from rival notions of what constituted the mental training, experience, and ‘scientific’ expertise needed to make such interpretations authoritative. Crookes and Carpenter. Both promoted non-spiritual theories of manifestations and both sought control of the séance, but their different notions of the natural causes of manifestations and of authority sparked bitter and prolonged exchanges. Crookes - specialist technical training makes you legit source of authority Carpenter - broad sci education makes you legit source Between 1872 and 1877 Crookes and Carpenter published a stream of articles in specialist and generalist periodicals in which their rival ‘natural’ solutions to the problems of spiritualistic phenomena were bound up with their competing claims to authority in the séance. 1877 Carpenter insisted that ‘a knowledge of the physiology and pathology of the Human Mind, of its extraordinary tendency to self-deception in regard to matters in which its feelings are interested, of its liability to place undue confidence in persons having an interest in deceiving, and of the modes in which fallacies are best to be detected and frauds exposed’ enabled him to reliably discriminate the ‘genuine from the false’ in spiritualism. In the same year, Crookes, basking in the warm scientific reception accorded to his researches on a new radiation force, maintained that the ‘man of disciplined mind and finished manipulative skill’ was best able to investigate ‘unanticipated phenomena’ that appeared to defy common sense, but which formed the basis of ‘new elements, new laws, possibly even of new forces’

Answer 99

the ‘psychic force’ interpretation that Crookes maintained for these investigations fitted well with the non-spiritualistic interpretations of solicited and spontaneous psychic related phenomena forged by the intellectuals and scientists who dominated the SPR, an organisation of which Crookes was a loyal member and President. Keen to forge and maintain a respectable scientific front, these practitioners worked hard to rid their enterprises of the intellectually and theologically controversial associations with the supernatural and spiritualism Accordingly, they invented and promulgated such terms as ‘supernormal’ and ‘supersensory’ as more accurate and safer ways of interpreting the telepathic, spiritualistic and other strange psychological phenomena on which they worked

Answer 100

religious uncertainty To counter insecurity regarding religion, thousands of British men and women in the Victorian and Edwardian eras turned to spiritualism and psychical research Science had set up new standard of what is credible and estabd new criteria for Victorian system of values. Scientists commanded unprecedented public admiration.

Answer 101

Strength of Nonconformist tradition, intensity of evangelical experience in Britaina nd particular influence of the Anglican church provided a context for spiritualism and psychical research distinct from continental or American varieties

Answer 102

Mrs Hayden, Mrs Roberts (1852, 53) - mediums preceded. Domestic circles blossomed in their wake Home's appearance 1855, return 1859, helped rekindle + sustain enthusiasm. By 1860s spiritualist movmeent had gained a momentum quite independent of the exertions of any one medium

Answer 103

Hall - (1962) declared Cook was Crookes' mistress. Cook, full form materialization, e.g. as Katie

Answer 104

Magic acts = extremely pop form of entertain in Victorian era. Seances could be jolly good shows

Answer 105

Spiritualism in London - dominated by m-c professionals, intellectuals, was largely Christian in emph. Outside metropolis, partic in northern Eng, strong ant-Christian sentiment among lower-m-c and better educated w-c mems. Christian spiritualists regarded spiritualism as perfectly legit interest in light of Christ's promise of eternal life Christian spiritualists frequently found that spiritualist beliefs blunted the edge of denominational differences and led them to abandon the specific doctrines or practices that distinguished one Christian sect from another. LSA wsa Christian, but nondenominational Widespread w-c apathy towards Christianity/ formal religion In progressive spiritualism, vision of man's depravity, hell, and predestination, vanished Original sin and Christ's vicarious sacrifice for mankind were unacceptable Anti-christian spiritualists spurned all authority and dogma. Individual responsibility Rejected category of the supernatural. Argued the phenomena they chronicled cld be plainly explained in the language of science. Yet language of science never fully satisfied them. Reverted to form of church organisation. Sunday services from late 1860s/ early 1870s.

Answer 106

Quest for universality that underlay much of Victorian spiritualism probs derived partic support from contemp developments in both religious and social thought. Universal religion - not universalism. Shorter pointed out the dust and cobwebs clinging to the Christian churches Wanted to find fundamental sub-stratum on which all religions of mankind had been built and on that base establish single faith that cld serve needs of all humanity

Answer 107

PR indepbted to tradition of discussion and debating clubs in British intellectual circles Early leaders of the SPR zealously explored the terra incognita of telepathy w the aim of providing new, unassailable foundations for religious beliefs - Myers, Gurney, Podmore, all sons of Anglican clergymen. - they thought and wrote at a time when the interp of 'all natural and human phenomena in positivist terms' appeared ever more authoritative, even irrefutable - They were impressed by rigors of the sci methods and in launching the SPR they insisted on highest intellectual standards - In practice, they did not always succeed in reproducing the methods of sci inquiry, nor maintaining its lofty standards - Grosser forms of spiritualist materializations tended to have less appeal than the mental phenomena of mediumship - SPR prestige also bc called itself a 'scientific society'. Emphd need for painstaing, rigorous accumulation and analysis of evd - SPR never reached any definitive conclusions before WW1. Worked hard tho. 6 comtes established, examining thought reading, mesmerism, Reichenbach's experiments, appararitions and haunted houses, physical phenomena, and the accumulation of information about the history and incidence of psychical occurrences. Latter job, assumed by Literary Comte - Myers and Gurney SPR may not have survived but for its independently affluent mems, like Sidgwick and Myers, who cld afford to subsidize a variety of its endeavours. - Telepathy and hypnosis remained the preferred subjects of investigation for several leading SPR mems befroe WW1. - But inquiry into second sight in the Scottish Highlands, suggested and subsidized by the Marquis of Bute. Frequent visits to haunted houses to interview witnesses and catch a ghostly glimpse. Sittings with Eusapia Palladino - Religion was at the root of their inquiries, for religious yearnings had played role in bringing them together in study of psychical phenomen - SPR widely believed telepathy proven by 20th C. Gurney had studied medicine for several yrs

Answer 108

Num of spiritualists saw no qualitative diff between SPR and spiritualist assoc like the BNAS Convinced spiritualists were involved in SPR from moment of its conception - 1881, Barrett, Massey and Rogers were on the Society's council in company of other BNAS veterans, e.g. Eld, Percival, Theobald. Spiritualists who joined were, with few exceptions, from the middle and upper classes, and had been well educated After Eglinton affair, Wyndham, Massey, Wallace remained. Doyle (NOT A SPIRITUALIST AT THIS POINT OPPENHEIM) and Stead joined in the 1890s. Nothing to suggest the SPR became an organization overtly hostile to spiritualists. Leadership of the Soc by the Cambridge friends became ever more strongly confirmed in the absence of any substantial challenge to their control

Answer 109

Intellectual historians have noted strong religious sensibility inherent in mid-Victorian agnosticism. They were quick to convey shortcomings of materialism, but cld not quite bring themselves to jettison the interpretative framework that scientific naturalism had imposed on their world It was not the voice of detached scientific inquiry that spoke through these men. Oppenheim calls psychical research a 'pseudoscience'

Answer 110

aimed to dissoc themselves from supernatural. Underscored 18th-C rationalist roots of their faith. Spiritualists did not demand true rigors of laboratory experimentation. Few had substantial knowledge of the painstaking observation and analysis required of the scientist. Diminution of scientific endeavour had been characteristic of spiritualist writings in Br from midcentury Spiritualists believed in a science demonstrable to the uninitiated public.

Answer 111

By 1850, problem of dualism no longer being articulated in Cartesian form, conscious mind was widely conceived as interacting with unconscious matter Numerous disciplines contribd to devel of psychology. Philosophical psychology to psychology subject to language, methods, of the physical sciences Spirituslists using word psychology to describe their activities. Howitt's daughter called him pioneer in the direction of Psychology. Founders of 1882 Ghost Club equated ghost stories with psychological

Answer 112

Similarities between spiritualism and mesmerism in terms of external trappings were partic striking, and received special emph from 19th C commentators In first decades of modern Br spiritualism, mesmerism frequently shared the spotlight at spiritualist séances, and vice versa, because the same individuals oft proved susceptible to both influences Elliotson, after much initial hostility, came to embrace spirit's real existence in the cosmos

Answer 113

Sidgwick's major role in introducing psychology into the Cambridge curriculum 1870s and 80s. He presided over Second International Congress of Experimental Psychology, London, Aug 1892. he and Myers reported that majority of Eng mems attending were either mems of the SPR or at least in avowed symp w its aims. At the Congress, Sidgwick discussed the Census of Hallucinations, Myers read a paper on hallucinations and Mrs. Sidgwick gave talk on experiments in thought transference. SPR's psychological contributions, like med doctors who embraced spiritualism, showed distaste for mechanistic approch to psychology - they hoped to prove how insufficient were all attempts to explain mental phenomena as part of a strictly deterministic process Subjectivity was a substantive factor in their experiments. 'Self' given spiritual nature No official Society position on psychology What united SPR psychologists - rejected old determinism of associationist thought, sought to ward off new neurological determinism preached by prophets of instinct and heredity. Upheld primacy of consciousness. Emphd in varying degrees the workings of will Serious effort by Numerous mems of the SPR to bring their insights and investigations into mutually fruitful dialogue w pioneers of psychology. Majority of professional psychologists in yrs before WW1 held them suspect, believing psychical research still reeked of the discredited practices of mediums, pseudomagic of the occult, and naïve enthusiasm of the amateur. After war, vogue for Freudian psychoanalysis rendered SPR line of inquiry largely irrelevant

Answer 114

M cld never decide which portion of human personality survived physical death. M confused the question of what distinguished one personality from another. Tension in M's work. Tried to affirm existence of higher principle of unity, soul - but difficulty bc soul didn't correspond to any specific portion of the human personality M's metaphors remained in realm of poetry, not proof. M's mind always worked its way back to the soul. He wanted to estab its existence beyond doubt, as crucial first step toward proving the immortality he craved Contemp psychologists mostly not impressed w M's work. Dismissed role he wanted psych to play in the modern world and disliked assurance w which he claimed endorsement of science for personal beliefs. Lang rejected Myers' theory of possession. Stout, prof of logic and metaphysics at St Andrews - harsh criticism of Myers. Common psychological understandings of the subliminal factor in mental life did not necessitate a secondary personality or alternative self. McDougall made many of same points in his review of Human Personality for Mind, Oct 1903.

Answer 115

Sweeping rejection of determinism. Reciprocal relationship with SPR - informing and giving credence to them. They also helped him devel his ideas. His acquaintance w Mrs Piper convinced him of reality of supernormal powers. Believed in insufficiency of mechanical categories

Answer 116

Goals of SPR were enormous - sought to resolve the mind-body puzzle by finding a via media between Cartesian dualism and a monism that threatened to eliminate the mind entirely. Comes as no surprise that they failed, nor that only a small group of professional psychologists valued the attempt. But to those partic psychologists, the work of the SPR mattered tremendously.

Answer 117

Darwin's theory = infinitely pliable. Popular lvl, message of evolutionary theory was optimism. Natural development over the aeons. Myers' psychology relied heavily on evolutionary concepts. Hypothesised knowledge and capabilitis he attribd to the subliminal self might be remnants of former conscious powers. Demands of utility had relegated these powers to the subliminal, so that the supraliminal consciousness cld concentrate on functions and memories essential for survival. Biological knowledge of many Spiritualists = v limited. Perhaps recurring appeal of Lamarck's evolutionary theories throughout the 19th C lay particularly in their incompatibility with strict scientific naturalism, for they emphd the role of the organism's own effort, will or intelligence - something presumably non-material - in the process of adapting its physical body to a changing environment

Answer 118

326) During course of the 19th C, scientists had added vast amounts of information to what was actually known about matter. To many workers in that field, seemed by the 1850s and 60s that major theoretical formulas and fundamental concepts had been set forth Last quarter of the 19th C, certainty and confidence yielded to probability and doubt. Newtonian vision of the universe controlled by temporal and spatial absolutes gave way to a cosmos of relativity. Atoms divisible. Radioactivity, X rays, electron. Hinted of new forces to be harnessed. Subatomic physics Tyndall, Faraday and Kelvin derided Spiritualism Tyndall applied imaginative vision to physics, arguing against deity many a scientist in the late 19th and early 20th Century hoped to preserve some small corner safe For divinity

Answer 119

Was generally assumed in 1874 that men of science did have Special investigative talents that enabled them to ident fraud in the séance chamber

Answer 120

Glanvill, The Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661) - quoted by Barrett (G explained tale of telepathic powers suggesting mechanical transmission of ideas between the scholar and friends). To summon G in the war against materialism in Barrett's day was as effective as deploying archers against a bombing raid. Glanvill saw exploration of the natural world as a form of religious inquiry. Barret's day, such arguments had long outworn their utility

Answer 121

Barrett, Lodge and others contended that psychic occurrences Were fully subject to the working of natural laws, albeit laws still hidden from science. Given the revolutionary changes in physics around the turn of the century, contention of psychical researchers does not seem outrageous or unreasonable. Just conceivable that telepathy among living might have regular, demonstrable causative agents . Same was not true of the Spiritualist hypothesis. Nothing in the expanding horizons of post-Newtonian physics legitimated the assumption that spirits of the dead exist all around and communicate with us under special circumstances. Science and Spiritualism could not be served simultaneously

Answer 122

Ppl thought about science from widely different perspectives. For some, was restricted to lab research. For others, included every realm of knowledge and every form of technical expertise. Infinite number of intermediate positions. Spiritualism and psychical research outside the former, but within the latter

Answer 123

Notion of a citadel of sci orthodoxy and locus of sci power tormented some of the scientists who turned to Spiritualism and psychical research, but it is seldom clear exactly what institution or group they identified as their persecutors There were organisations e.g. the Royal Society and British Association. Professionalisation and rise of academic training programmes. Crookes, Barrett, Lodge, at some point felt like outsiders. Crookes was snubbed by Royal Soc and British Association in early 1970s. 1883, Barrett's application to read a second paper on telepathy at the annual BAAS meeting was flatly vetoed. Lodge used label 'orthodox science' To mean science as interp by recognised official exponents e.g. average Fellow of the Royal Society. J J Thomson - by scientific men in general such subjects as Spiritualism were regarded as 'untouchables'. No professional disgrace drove any of the psychical researchers into untimely retirement, however Identity and location of the sci authority that sought to punish them for unorthodoxy remain elusive. Between 1900 and 1920, four of the Royal Society's presidents were men who had participated in psychic investigations: Huggins, Rayleigh, Crookes and Thomson No central source of patronage for aspiring scientists. Roads to sci eminence were many. Mistaken in imagining British science spoke w single authoritative voice However, they did swim against the current of mainstream science.

Answer 124

sychical researchers' hypotheses cld not be proven false. All the fundamental questions the SPR addressed, and the major assumptions of Spiritualism, were neither definitively provable nor falsifiable by any conceivable test. Thus, models of the physical sciences never really applied to the efforts of the SPR before WW1, even less to the Spiritualist assocs. British Association and Royal Society never inquired into alleged psychic occurrences to avoid wasting time on seemingly futile task. Psychical researchers did not directly deny these arguments - agreed psychic phenomena elusive and not ideal subjects for sci lab. Did deny that the characteristics Of psychic phenomena placed these manifestations beyond the pale of legit sci concern. Rejected the assumption that only the predictable, measurable, observable, tangible, shld command attention of contemp science and serve as valid evd. Wallace pointed out in 1876 that such criteria of evd shld bar science from investigating meteorites. Some of the vocab of psychical research seems less laughable now. Faraday berated Spiritualists for ignorant use of terms like electro-biology. Carpenter dismissed Barrett's suggested nerve energy that operated in ways analogous to electricity Many scientists were religious men. Not trying to avoid the metaphysical - sought to discriminate between speculation that was conducive to further discovery and speculation that was not.

Answer 125

Attempt to locate common denominators of the universe, find basic building block/ ultimate substance of nature, inspired Spiritualists and psychical researchers. Spiritualists and psychical researchers addressed, directly and indirectly, the most critical issues of science, philosophy and religion. Fundamentally, their work was neither ridiculous nor even misguided, for through it they hoped to find the means of accepting the changed world around them.

Answer 126

More commonly people showed their contempt for the movement by refusing even to care whether its phenomena were real. It was sufficient that the rappings and other manifestations were undignified: having established this point, one need say nothing more about them. Varieties of discourse were promiscuously exchanged: sacred, sentimental, philosophical, conversational, literary, you name it, all tossed higgledy-piggledy together in spiritualists' speeches, tracts, books, and newspapers Conventional forms of authority were put into question by unlettered Americans, hysterical girls, charlatans, pretenders, "low adventurers modern spiritualism did something radically different: it vulgarized the supernatural. this movement did give access to communication to virtually everyone and on the simplest of terms One of the most common moves in spiritualist rhetoric was to say one did not urge others to believe anything: one simply urged them to investigate for themselves. This aspect of spiritualism may seem to parody the science of the day, with its emphasis on physics and physical experiments Spiritualism was suspect because it was thought to be wrong, but more importantly because it upset linguistic as well as other social and ideological relations If tables, trumpets, ordinary Joes, children's slates, and all the rest of the furniture of our lives could become philosophical mouthpieces, other objects-the objects of science, philosophy, religion, art-might appear as nothing more than the furniture of professional people, who gathered around it to be moved by the sorts of spirits they happened to prefer spiritualism drove reason to face the frustrating weakness of its discourse and thus the embarrassing complicity of its power with social privilege Spiritualism is so difficult to pin down because it was, in effect, a mass semiotic exercise. In inventing a ground for meaning that ran both within and without the territory of reason, it interrogated the materiality of reason through the spiritual media of tables, accordions, roses, and mountebanks.

Answer 127

spiritualist rejection of faith went beyond orthodox religion, aesthetic privilege, and scientific belief. It was a threat to the very notion of culture threatened culture by insulting one of the most dramatic developments in nineteenth-century social history: the incipient professionalism of science, medicine, education, and the arts. modern spiritualism challenges the very organization of meaning in modern life, which is largely determined by the relations between a nation's system of education and its other institutions The movement was opposed to both professionalism and common sense. This was what was so distinctive about it, and so frustrating to its opponents: that it would not respond to reason because it claimed to represent reason. In doing so it exposed reason as an apparatus of institutions, traditions, texts, practices, personal relationships, and common sense that was unified and coherent only as long as it was represented as an imperceptible spirit Spiritualism was everything reason and the rationalized professions were laboring not to be: popular, unhierarchical, inconsistent, disorganized, idiosyncratic, uneducated, un- cultivated, and so, in short, undignified.

Answer 128

Early 2 mid 20th C moment - unity of science. Unity of Science group Lots of well-known examples showing science not necess so unified. Ethnographer pointed out - diff scientific disciplines had v different methods Doesn't believe in unity of science. Also doesn't believe that different scientific practices are incommensurable. Gallison is interested in 'trading zones'. This is useful way we can think about phenomena we look at. A lot of science happens in a mid-way, where ppl don't necessarily agree

Answer 129

1. Metaphysical unity of science. All science is actually about the same thing deep down. Mesmerism as metaphysical unity -- Mesmer made claims about physiology, physics, psychology Closely related to concept of reduction. - Reduction - everything comes down to atoms. Biology can be reduced to physics. All branches of science reduce down to external reality which is the same for all of them. 2. Practical unity - seeking practically to make connections between diff areas of science/ phenomena, e.g. light and magnetism 3. Methodological unity. Experimentalism, possibility of falsification of knowledge

Answer 130

Freud was a doctor; Morelli had a degree in medicine; Conan Doyle had been a doctor before he began to write. In all three cases we have a glimpse of the model of medical semiotics that makes it possible to diagnose diseases not recognizable through a direct observation and is based on superficial symptoms sometimes irrelevant to the layman- to Doctor Watson, for instance rise of this medical semiotics paradigm. Using distinctive clues to distinguish wider reality

Answer 131

it was the SPR’s influence on Freud that first antithetically prompted Freud to articulate in systematic fashion, in what Strachey has justly called “among the most important of Freud’s theoretical papers,” his theory of the unconscious. Without this prompting psychoanalysis would have had to wait longer—at least three years (until the publication of “The Unconscious”), perhaps even eleven years (until The Ego and the Id)—for the conceptualization of the unconscious presented in this essay Freud’s name is invoked—for the first time in England— in Myers’s “The Mechanism of Hysteria” (1893–94) as a welcome source of clinical support for Myers’s theory of the subliminal self (14–15) Myers’s subordination of psychoanalysis to his psychology of the subliminal self, his relegating of psychoanalysis to the level of Janet’s theory of dissociation, his implication that Freud’s work was derived from Janet’s, the SPR’s keeping these views in circulation into the first decade or so of the new century, the rivalry between Myers’s psychology and psychoanalysis—all of these “contextual” matters present external evidence that Freud’s publishing “A Note on the Unconscious in Psycho-Analysis” in the SPR’s Proceedings had little of happenstance or informality about it. More than Freud’s first systematic theorization of the unconscious, this essay turns out to be a crucial text in the history of psychology: the textual site of Freud’s liberating himself from the influence of nineteenth-century psychology, as represented by the SPR’s psychology of the subliminal self Freud’s assertion of dynamism, however, prepares the reader for an unconscious that is fundamentally opposed to consciousness, and thereby for a human personality composed of irreconcilable parts Working in hysteria, it turns out, instead of merely supporting Myers’s views, offers a new conception of the mind. Psychoanalysis, he informs his reader, has demonstrated that healthy people also reveal unconscious ideas at work in “lapsus linguae, errors in memory and speech, forgetting of names, etc.” The subliminal consciousness, for Myers, contains nothing antithetical to the supraliminal consciousness. For Freud, on the other hand, the unconscious differs essentially from consciousness. latent thoughts in the mind, left over from the day’s mental activities and now residing in the preconscious, connect in the state of sleep with unconscious thoughts “ordinarily repressed from . . . conscious life” Using the energy from this connection with the unconscious, these latent thoughts find expression in an apparent or manifest dream, with the double result that an unconscious idea, through its connection with the latent ideas, has found its way into consciousness and that the latent thoughts, through their connection with the unconscious, have taken on properties of the unconscious. Through “the art” (265) of psychoanalysis, the analyst ascertains the latent dream thoughts, then compares them to the manifest dream to determine the extent and nature of their transformations Unlike late-nineteenth-century psychology, founded upon the investigation of automatisms mainly hypnotic or hysteric, “psycho-analysis is founded upon the analysis of dreams

Answer 132

terms this psychology “the First Dynamic Psychiatry.” Lasting from 1775–1900 and international in scope (110), its primary features were hypnotism as the “main approach” to the unconscious; attention to such disorders as somnambulism, lethargy, catalepsy, multiple personality, and hysteria; a “new model of the human mind” based (earlier) upon dual consciousness and (later) upon subconscious personalities; the theorization of nervous illnesses culminating in the concept of fragmented personality; and reliance on hypnotism for the psychotherapeutic treatment of nervous pathology (111). Ellenberger sees late-nineteenth-century psychology as the efflorescence of the First Dynamic Psychiatry, and he introduces Myers as a representative figure within it

Answer 133

reud displayed great caution and resistance, revealing a certain fear that psychoanalysis be associated with the fields of spiritualism and psychical research.

Answer 134

1860s/70s/80s

Answer 135

inequalities/ restrictions on women Increased job opportunities. Legal reforms. 1882 Married Women's Property Act - gave women rights and responsibility. Control over separate property social purity ethic waxing during the 1870s and 80s which stressed high moral standards for men and women. Extreme sexual respectability

Answer 136

Progressive spiritualists' concern w the woman question. Spiritualist culture held possibilities for attention, opportunity and status denied elsewhere. Modern Spiritualism develd amidst an atmosphere of optimism, radical ideas and democratic principles Mediumship, at least in theory, was stripped of all associations w mysticism and an élite caste. Firmly held that any individual cld become conduit for dialogue with spirits. Women flourished beneath this overarching rubric. Time and again, noted that women picked up techniques of mediumship more rapidly and effectively than men Spiritualism validated the female authoritative voice, Permitted women an active professional and spiritual role largely denied them elsewhere. Acceptance of women as powerful mediums was built on a 19th-C understanding of femininity. Paradoxically, this understanding also undercut and circumscribed the entire definition and operation of female power Distinction between relative spheres of operation for men and women. Suggestion women possessed innate moral and spiritual superiority. This representation owed a great deal to the earlier devel by the powerful Evangelical party w/in the Anglican church Spiritualist conception of women as uniquely gifted in spiritual matters was at once both liberating and restricting. Female rligious influence remained largely contained, Moral influence allowed for women, but not to be directly equated w social or political power. Power was for men, influence for women Spiritualist women became the embodiment of the Evangelical ideal: the medium of our intercourse with the heavenly world, the faithful repositories of religious principle. Spiritualist mediums = vessels. Spiritualists assumed was innate femininity, in partic female passivity, which facild this renunciation of self and cultivaton of mediumistic powers. Women suited to negation of self which mediumship demanded From the Shakers, Swedenborgians, and later Saint-Simonians came the notion of an androgynous Deity Within Spiritualism the more radical component fell pray, through successive shifts in emph, to contemp definitions of normative manhood and womanhood

Answer 137

Aspirations to 'respectability' among more prosperous working-classes. By the 1870s Spiritualism was more securely established amongst the ranks of respectable working- and middle-class ppl, precisely those who most closely ident w the dominant ideal of womanhood. Although certainly class tensions w/in the spiritualist movement, adherents across the spectrum of social class were committed to the amelioration of social abuses and w-c ills Spiritual gifts for working- and m-c girls and women alike. Usually the girls and women from working- or lower m-c homes who became public mediums, while those who had no need to earn wage remained in private category.

Answer 138

Females oft assumed a male role and sometimes also a trance persona at total odds w the Victorian idea of respectable womanhood. peak in the 1870s when a handful of renowned female mediums claimed to have finally produced 'materialised' spirit forms of both sexes. Spiritualist mediumship was capable of sabotaging the mechanics of power inherent in the Victorian codification of gender difference. Séance behaviour itself signified a transgression and transposition of normative femininity. Whilst speaking directly to the feminine ideal, mediumship succeeded in effectively undermining it. Renunciation of conscious personality was the price paid for the authoritative voice

Answer 139

Pre-millenialism. By 1860s this belief fast gaining ground in Eng. Strongly assoc w female preaching and saw signif rise in the number and influence of middle-class women who stood firmly by their right to preach. By 1866 when their activities reached a peak, these female preachers were addressing large, mixed public assemblies with ease and authority every effort made to contain their exposure to public life, and tho this period saw a rapid expansion of women's participation in church activities, much of it ws confined to mission work amongst the poor or other women and children

Answer 140

Spiritualism well received in those areas of the country that were primed for its message and to certain extent its practices. Yorkshire had already distinguished itself as receptive ground for dissenting religion. Primitive Methodists, New Jerusalem (Swedenborgian) Church. Yorkshire boasted group of secularist As 1860s wore on, London began to assume more central role. Establishment of popular Spiritualist press - James Burns's Human Nature, 1867, Medium and Daybreak, 1870. For yrs Medium and Daybreak had widest circulation. BNAS represented a wealthy and influential elite of London believers

Answer 141

When James Burns persuaded wife to write regular column for the Medium and Daybreak, it opened under the heading og The Domestic Department Tho anxious to repudiate any notion spiritualists did not approve of marriage itslf, Burns argued it shld be founded upon compatibility and mutual regard Second strand of thinking on spheres issue - critique of marriage and nuclear fam had formed central part of earlier Owenite socialist platform At same time, exposure to American Spiritualism familiarised British believers with progressive ideas on the subjects of marriage and gender relations Emma Britten hd spent youthful yrs in America where she had faced hardship and abuse in cause of women's rights and abolitionism. Objected to unqualified notion of marriage and domesticity as women's rightful sphere in culture emphasising secual respectability, American Spiritualism became something of an embarrasment. Became assoc w 'free love' principles.

Answer 142

In the wake of each successive exposure and scandal came humiliation and ridicule for spiritualists. Every debacle brought tension and division within Spiritualist circles, esp in London where influential Spiritualists and mediums all knew each other. Rival factions and quarrrels

Answer 143

During early 1880s, more spectacular style of mediumship and the star status of young materialisation mediums began to wane. Materialisation séance produced an innocence that was displaced within a Decade by the 'naughty nineties' and the Gaiety theatre. Height of the art of materialisation coincided w the beginning of the flowering of English theatre and the increasing availability of good female roles. Spiritualist interests had begun to change by then - major concern being w the psychological phenomena of thought transference and clairvoyance Showers lost respectability, drifted into alcoholism

Answer 144

Spiritual healing was essentially a gentle way, unmarred by barbarism or coercion. Was concerned that 'the people' shld have a choice in hlth matters, strove to serve the interests of men and women of every class, and, as a practice, was open to all. Belief in fundamental unity of mind body and spirit encouraged care and development of the whole person. Combined lofty ideals with attention to the practicalities of life. Undoubtedly democratic healing, the alternative tradition, and its practitioners represented a threat to orthodox medicine heterodox practice which was anathema to the League of professional gentlemen A heterodox healing practice on the other hand was open to the w-c and to w-c women in a way that has never been true of professional medicine

Answer 145

New specialists in insanity were swift to categorise a belief in Spiritualism as symptomatic of a diseased mind. Likened female mediumship to hysteria. Struggle that ultimately ensued between physicians and spiritualists circulated implicitly around the key issue of the construction of normalcy and by extension normative womanhood Medicine sought honoured status among the professions. 1858 medical reform bill. Underlying sense of superiority fo the investigator - the man of science who wld destroy retrogressive myths and illusions As they fought for recognition and status, alienists became increasingly hostile to any theory of causation which disregarded the basic principles of scientific naturalism. . Categories of behaviour that did not conform to a standardised norm were denounced as morbid and pathological. Degeneracy. Criminal class Lancet and BMJ adopted a critical stance. Strongly disapproved of Wallace, Crookes etc Prevailing medical view of the female personality was closely associated with the belief that the vagaries of female biology left women physically vulnerable and emotionally labile, a notion largely reinforced by the emergence of gynaecology as a med specialism during the 1850s Sexuality and hysteria intrinsically linked. Wandering uterus idea old fashioned. However, uterine doctrine still persisted in variety of guises When medicine pathologised a belief in Spiritualism w terms like 'psycholepsy' and 'mediomania' it was merely building on the hysterical model. Mediomania = one of the most common female nervous disorders. If the womb was only slightly off-balance the woman would be liable to embrace some strange ultra ism - Spiritualism, Socialism etc. Mediomaniacs were proverbially erotic, egotistical and religious, and they evinced the most anti-social of symptoms. By 1914-18, position of women had altered so drastically that it was no longer possible or appropriate to rake up the old arguments about female lability and the tendency to insanity. Indeed, 'hysterical' symptoms and other pathological disorders now so tragically prevalent amongst men that they cld no longer be ascribed to femininity Spiritualists firmly rejected medicine's attempts to equate mediumship with female deviancy and sickness, but it was never their intention to mount an overt challenge to received notions of womanhood

Answer 146

In everyday life the majority of believers held fast to conventional gendered attitudes. Séance room, however, was a distinct realm governed by different rules of conduct. Was Spiritualist practice which effected a truly radical challenge to cultural orthodoxy and the stunning subversion of the 19th-C feminine ideal. Unconventional behaviour of mediums during séances. Not liable for this bc it's the spirits What the séance promised was the ritualised violation of cultural norms. Through the development of mediumistic trance techniques Even as Spiritualists reaffirmed the normative feminine ideal, their practice undermined it. Passivity, a vital element in the construction of femininity, became, in Spiritualist hands, an invitation to power and subversion Was the medium's spiritual authority which gave her an unusual degree of access to public speech, but whilst the religious imperative got her the floor there was no telling how the spirits wld direct her words Unlike non-Spiritualist campaigners who had faith in their own viability and the justice of their cause, it wld seem that spiritualist women either cld not contemplate a public speaking career in which they had complete agency, or else fervently believed that their pronouncements were valid only when ratified by spirit presence and intent. concept of spirit inspiration or guidance provided a rationale for avoidance of personal responsibility. Cora Tappan was convinced she was merely the medium for the spirits' message Co-existence of wickedness and virtue was readily explainable by spiritualists in terms of shocking encounter with the other world, but it was also clear that such encounter cld constitute liberating experience Materialisations. Mediums oft exhausted after. Taken as sign of authenticity Although all materialised forms were given permission to act in ways unacceptable for adult women, the male spirits went further than most. Indulged in assertive, antagonistic, sometimes violent displays - at one of Miss Fairlamb's Newcastle séances the sitters heard what sounded like the medium being repeatedly slapped about the face as she sat w/in the cabinet very vocabulary of trance mediumship oozed sexuality. Mediums surrendered and were then entered, seized, possessed by another Incidence of beautiful spirits who took pleasure in bestowing caresses and kisses on gentlemen admirers was high, and in this sense a spirit representation of femininity ran counter to prevailing ideas of moral acceptability Séance as setting for desire - explains how several ppl can claim one anonymous spirit as loved one Great deal of attent and curiosity focused on the spirit's body Intense perusal, quite unthinkable in polite society beyond the context of the séance, was perfectly customary amongst sitters. Spirit's bare feet, arms, throat, gave suggestion of nakedness. Uncannily reminiscent of the 'naughty' theatrical tableaux which heralded the public appearance of the nude, and the pornographic photographs and stereoscopic slides then circulating in London Crookes' captivation w Katie King. Spiritualist observers noted how active he became when she appeared, swooping down to, or with face almost touching the face of Katie. Accusations of scandal Possible that psychical researchers gained more from their endeavours than scientific data. Predominantly male enterprise, older, higher social class

Answer 147

ediumship, because it so oft involved the disclosure of a multivalent and disruptive unconscious, revealed the inconsistency, heterogeneity and precariousness of human identity. None of this entered spiritualists' calculations. They regarded spirit 'otherness' in the most straightforward terms. Intense interest in physical conformation of the spirit's body

Answer 148

But spiritualism was a deeply contradictory discourse. Founded as it was on the doctrine of female moral influence and a specific understanding of the feminine, spiritualist mediumship was a power strategy predicated on the notion of female frailty and wielded from a position of social inferiority. Great irony of spirit mediumship lay in the fact that the most powerful medium was the most powerless of women. Interacted with notions of femininity - medium sacrificed her 'self' to another. Possessed woman was inert, inactive, never responsible. This too meshed perfectly w contemp views of and attitudes towards women. Mediumship operated as both acquiescence and resistance, conformity and transgression Medium attained power because of qualities which were associated with powerlessness, but such power allowed her to move beyond the confines of the ordained female role and into new or forbidden territory

Answer 149

New possibilities opening up to women in the 1870s. Flagrant aspects of female mediumship slowly lessened as women's prospects improved. Emph on figurative and expressive phenomena all but disappeared. Materialisation became a rarity as newcomers showed little interest in it. By the 1890s materialisation bore the stamp of an earlier age.

Answer 150

decline of what Frank Podmore called the classic period of English Spiritualism. Spiritualists now turned to questions of organisation and standards, seeing to consolidate their grassroots base. Restraint in spiritualist practice combined w planned growth and social responsibility = the order of the day. Extravagances of materialisation = part of Victorian fascination with the body and image of Woman

Answer 151

Charcot exhibited the body to reveal to the watching world By the close of the century largely outmoded. Increasingly psychologists, psychical researchers and spiritualists themselves were seeking the key to the mysteries in the mind alone. Turned to 'mental' mediums like Leonore Piper, Rosina Thompson

Answer 152

psycho-pathological interp was more acceptable to the scientific community because it 'does not lay its supporters open to the implication of belief in supernormal happenings' W exception of Carl Jung's work, all notion of a transcendental self was lost in scramble for professionalisation

Answer 153

widespread emer- gence of a new esoteric spirituality and a proliferation of spiritual groups and identities that together constituted what contemporaries called the new “spiritual movement of the age.” Characteristic of this “spiritual move- ment” was an upsurge of interest in medieval and Renaissance Christian mysticism, heterodox inspirational neo-Christianity, and, most notably, a nondenominational—sometimes non-Christian—interest in “esoteric phi- losophy,” or occultism.

Answer 154

fate of our times is charac- terized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the ‘disenchantment of the world. intended as an impartial commentary on the social realities of modern life. It was the culminating statement of an argument in which Weber suggested that a slowly evolving “process of intellectualization” in the Western world, an “intellectualist ra- tionalization, created by science and by scientifically oriented technology,” had destroyed the “mysterious incalculable forces” of earlier times. Instead of “mysterious powers,” and the “magical means” by which to control or in- fluence them, moderns believe that all things might be mastered through ra- tional calculation and technological application. According to Weber, gods and spirits had faded before the divining rod of the rationalizing human in- tellect. Modernity spelled the end of the possibility of “living in union with the divine,” and as Weber suggested elsewhere, this implies an ambiguous freedom. More particularly, a modern rational perspective characterized by lack of belief in the external forces of the supernatural makes it impossible to invest the world with certain kinds of meaning Disenchantment implies the emergence of a particular structure of consciousness developed in accordance with the secularizing logic of the rationalizing process. This modern consciousness is characterized by an in- strumental reason that can only disavow that which does not accord with its own conceptual dictates. By this reckoning, scientific rationality becomes simultaneously the only legitimate means of interpreting the world and the sole arbiter of objective world meaning. It is for this reason that Weber regarded science not as the antithesis of religion but as itself a religion

Answer 155

if religion no longer operated at the heart of the social fabric in the way that it once had in Britain, belief itself was capable of renegotiating the rationalism and even scientism of the period without sacrificing the ultimate claims to meaning that surely lie at the heart of religious experience. In other words, the “new” occultism was one manifestation of a secu- larizing process that spells neither the inevitable decline nor the irreconcilable loss of significant religious beliefs and behaviors in a modern age The notion of “enchant- ment” conjures the domain that has increasingly been construed in the modern period as “the irrational,” but fin-de-siècle enchantment was com- mitted to the guiding principle of reason and played to a formalized concept of rationality even as it contested a strictly secular rationalism. The new “spiritual movement” and its concomitant enchanted world- view represented a profoundly spiritual impulse that ran counter to the ra- tionales of Victorian positivism, but it was equally caught up in refashioning spirituality in ways that were distinctly modern. The “new” occultism in particular co-opted the language of science and staked a strong claim to ra- tionality while at the same time undermining scientific naturalism as a world- view and rejecting the rationalist assumptions upon which it depended might be said that the place of enchantment was the enlightened self.

Answer 156

Occultism rewrote the rules of engagement with the self. Occultism opened up the unconscious to rational self-exploration in an attempt to know the unknowable in a way that exemplified the logic of Enlightenment reason and its dynamic of colonization and control Committed to a rationalized understanding of the irra- tional, involved with the elaboration of a worldview that claimed allegiance to much older religious and magical traditions, and caught up in some of the most avant-garde preoccupations of the day, fin-de-siècle occultism exem- plified the spiritualized investments of modern disenchanted subjectivity

Answer 157

marked by unresolved tension between the spiritual and secular

Answer 158

certain forms of mediumship assoc w youth. Puberty as disrupting powers

Answer 159

Between the 1890s and the early 1930s, new technologies occupied a prominent place in British and German public life. Time and again, new technologies came to be hailed as stupefying ‘modern wonders’ Film also appeared to possess miraculous properties. Cameramen were referred to as ‘modern magicians,’ contemporaries were struck by the way films could ‘change [audiences’ moods] as if by a magic wand’ and leave patrons ‘vibrating with emotions’ as they entered the fictional world of feature presentation photographic realism was partly responsible for the power that flickering images exerted over audiences crediting ‘science’ with a prominent role in technological innovation inspired trust in new technologies. Concern about the epistemic consequences of technological innovation was particularly virulent with respect to the ‘illusions’ created by film technology whose power eluded scientific explanatory efforts. In conjunction with widespread fears about the detrimental moral effects which supposedly resulted from the rise of a commercial ‘mass’ culture, film technology appeared to have given birth to a mysterious industry with the ability to spread powerful visual fictions among a clientele numbering in millions. A tension therefore existed between demands for rational conduct in the face of innovations and the fact that many contemporaries could only very partially found this conduct on an informed, or scientifically grounded, knowledge of new technologies ambivalence should be understood as an integral element of British public debates

Answer 160

character of Sherlock Holmes represented and celebrated the central tenets of modernity adumbrated at the time - in contrast to widespread pessimism – not just rationalism and secularism, but also urbanism and consumerism Holmes demonstrated how the modern world could be re-enchanted through means entirely consistent with modernity utilized reason in a manner magical and adventurous ‘the scientific use of the imagination' ‘animistic reason’ because it imbues its objects with meaning. It was through his animistic reason that Holmes the private detective bested professional detectives on cases modernity and enchantment as compatible rather than antagonistic At the level of mass culture, this effort took on momentum with the increasing popularity of detective fiction in the wake of Holmes. It was aided by the establishment of ‘ science fiction’ as a defined literary genre in 1926, when Hugo Gernsback published Amazing Stories in America, the first magazine devoted entirely to what he initially termed ‘ scientifiction’. extension of leisure and the spectacularization of culture in the forms of mass literature, films, and radio, individuals were both encouraged and enabled to play without relinquishing their grip on reality buffering roles of animistic reason and the ironic imagination, which inhibit complete acceptance or acquiescence into any particular cultural construct This rational and ironic stance distinguishes modern enchantment from earlier forms of enchantment: the distinction between Conan Doyle’s premodern belief in preternatural fairies, and his readers’ modern, ironic belief in the fictional Sherlock Holme Doyle + Holmes were confused in public imagination. When Holmes received obituary notices in 1893, many thought that Doyle had died Holmes re-enchanted modernity without compromising the central tenets of modernity: rationalism, secularism, urbanism, mass consumerism. new, ‘aestheticist’ episemology that gave adults greater latitude to indulge their imaginations than had been the case in the early to mid-nineteenth century modernist self-reflexivity was part of mass culture activities of the Sherlock Holmes societies contain deliberate notes of self-parody. The self-reflexivity of the ironic imagination is not incompatible with provisional belief, and permits a wide range of enchantments to be enjoyed without necessarily incurring the dangers often imputed to modern entertainment: from aimless ‘escapism’ to insidious ‘false consciousness’. Cultural pessimists of the fin-de-sie`cle promoted a concept of instrumental rationality that distinguished reason and the imagination, rendering modernity as disenchanted. But at the same moment a countervailing trend

Answer 161

role played by a diverse population of “elites” in promulgating the discourse of modern disenchantment. They did this as a way to maintain distinctions between themselves and the masses in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to secure the predominance of “normal science” against both religion and alternative forms of knowledge between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, and to retain their cultural authority against the challenges posed to it by the new mass culture of the nineteenth The discourse of modernity as disenchanted, and enchantment itself as infantile, could be maintained only so long as mass culture was marginalized as an inferior and less rational arena than that of so-called “high” or “elite” culture. But for all the real and potential flaws of mass culture, this categorical dismissal is no longer tenable. The mature sciences tend to be disenchanted, because they are able to provide empirically supportable answers to their queries that, if not fully complete, nonetheless yield “intelligibility and practical competence.”The interpretive disciplines, including the humanities and social sciences, are less able to produce such neat explanations, and often resort to invisible or mysterious agents to account for the phenomena they investigate. “Modernity” itself is an enchanted category that we have created to help explain the world's behaviour in an area where neither science nor practical knowledge seem of much utility. So too is the discourse of “modern disenchantment”. Will haunt us until reunited with its antinomial partner, “modern enchantment.”

Answer 162

Binary discourse: - used to be most prevalent - defined enchantment as the residual, subordinate “other” to modernity’s rational, secular, and progressive tenets - late 19th Century, 'revolt against positivism' - characterized by a fascination with spiritualism and the occult, a vogue for non-Western religions and art, and a turn to aestheticism, neopaganism, and celebrations of the irrational will. Many participants in these movements seemed to accept the binary distinction between modernity and enchantment no less than their critics 'dialectical' approach: - posits modernity itself as inherently irrational, a mythic construct no less enchanted than the myths it sought to overcome - modernity is exposed as dangerously oppressive and inhumane. - modernity = enchanted in negative sense - thinkers e.g. Marx, Nietzsche, Horkheimer, Adorno Antinomial approach: - modernity defined by implicit hierarchy and unresolved contradictions and oppositions - antinomies Modern enchantment often depends upon its antinomial other, modern disenchantment, and a specifically modern enchantment might be defined as one that enchants and disenchants simultaneously: one that delights but does not delude.

Answer 163

Dr. Edward C. Rogers of Boston who argued in 1853 that the ability of mediums to manipulate material objects had nothing to do with spirits certain the apparent clairvoyance and telepathy of mediums could be explained by die recently elaborated doctrine of "unconscious cerebration" popularized in the 1840s by Thomas Lay cock and William B. Carpenter made spiritualism mundane. In place of the supernatural, readers were presented with an explanation couched in the vocabulary of medical science and based on the recognized natural phenomena of Reichenbach's odylic force, phrenological neurophysiology, and unconscious cerebration interest of physicians in spiritualism, as in the case of the general public, diminished after i860 only to be revived in heightened form from 1870 to the mid-i880s group of prominent Anglo-American medical men, whose major professional interest might conveniently be designated neuroscience, launched a polemical attack on spiritualism Carpenter, Hammond, Beard, Maudsley Wanted to preserve the intellectual domain of neurology from incursion by supernatural interpretations Dr. Frederic Marvin of New York gave what was doubtless the most detailed clinical description of the spiritualist's disease, an entity to which he gave the name "mediomania." The major symptom, in addition to hallucinations and delusions, was convulsion, and laboratory investigation was likely to reveal excessive urinary phosphates but deficient urea According to W. B. Carpenter, it was simply a new form of the familiar monomania in which the normal functions of mind, in a constitutionally predisposed individual, were pushed aside by an obsessive concern with a particular idea Spiritualism, they clearly believed, raised major epistemological questions What these individuals lacked was the recognition that inquiries into the validity of allegedly spiritualistic phenomena demanded empirical method, an approach which required the investigator to remain skeptical until irrefutable experimental evidence had been obtained to support his conclusion Honesty of purpose and good character, George Beard concluded, counted for little in matters of true scientific debate; radier, in his phrase, "only the testimony of experts can be of value." heart of the neuroscientists' case: expertise in assessing the claims of spiritualists could only come from a rigorous and lengthy scientific training Science and religion, they believed, were separate realms of knowledge. Spiritualists, in attempting to employ science to prove their religion, were guilty of replacing faith with materialism This transformation in the human component of the scientific enterprise, though by no means complete by 1870, was sufficiently advanced to permit scientists to challenge on matters of natural knowledge the intellectual authority of the theologians and metaphysicians with whom they had so recently kept harmonious company Within the medical profession a specific sub-field, neuroscience, was in particular need of aggressive defense emphasized the utility of psychological medicine as a reservoir of expertise in the Victorian debates over social issues such as criminal responsibility or racial degeneration. This explains why, in the 1870s, beleaguered alienists joined representatives of the nascent but ambitious discipline of neurology to launch a vitrolic attack on the new social peril—spiritualism

Answer 164

To students of physics, the conceptual leap from the imponderable ether, thought to unite force and matter, to spirit materializations was relatively small

Answer 165

Expurgated spiritualism, now dubbed psychical research, was highly congruent with medicine's new-found interest in the unconscious, a development symbolized by Charcot's work on hypnosis in the early 1880s and spread by students such as Freud, Jung, and Pierre Janet, all of whom had connections with the Society for Psychical Research. In effect, medicine was in the process of replacing the static nineteenth-century paradigm of mind, centered on the notion of omniscient Will, with die concept of a dynamic unconscious, an explanatory model into which the residue of spiritualism was readily assimilated. Just as an earlier generation of physicians had attempted to incorporate spiritualism into prevailing systems of medical understanding—phrenology in the 1850s, hereditarian theory in the 1870s—medicine once again, and this time with greater authority, expanded its borders to encompass the unorthodox. Domesticated in this manner, spiritualism ceased to threaten—indeed, to interest—physicians.

Answer 166

actively involved in the making of the fledgling science of psychology. Psychical researchers initiated and organized the International Congresses of Physiological/Experimental Psychology they devised methodological innovations such as randomized study designs They contributed important empirical findings by conducting the first experiments investigating the psychology of eyewitness testimony, empirical and conceptual studies illuminating mechanisms of dissociation and hypnotism, and experiments and large-scale surveys undermining the notion of dissociation and hallucinations as intrinsically pathological phenomena

Answer 167

prior to authors like Ellenberger and Taylor, professional historians of psychology – the majority of who were and still are trained psychologists – were simply not interested in these issues (James and psychical research) pre-1990s James scholarship is perhaps the most conspicuous example of what might be called passive or boundary-work pace the historiography of psychology the unloved sibling of modern psychology has been dissociated from its history mainly by editorial fiat

Answer 168

Spirit photographers and supporters employed procedural conventions to portray photographs as objective Victorian spiritualists and photographers credited the British press coverage of Mumler case with stimulating interest in spirit photography. New technical devices and expanded social audiences for spirit photography transformed the notion of practice in spirit photography in the 1880s and 1890s. Dry-plate photography, invented around 1871, simplified photographing of spirits ``` Supporters of spirit photography in Victorian Britain appealed to the honesty, competence and moral integrity of individuals like Duguid and Taylor who were assoc w it. Supporters of David Duguid pointed to his working-class background as evd that he cld not deceive others so thoroughly ``` Question at issue was not medium's morality, but Taylor's competence. In raising problems assoc w the use of photography to represent facts, spirit photography was not unusual in Victorian Britian. Questions of impartiality, objectivity and honesty also arose in connection w use of photography in other research fields (e.g. meteorology, bacteriology), albeit in diff ways

Answer 169

Shakers Mesmerism held US in thrall by the 1840s 19th C, ppl on the move, more isolated when confronted with the deaths of their loved ones Funerals more elaborate. Increased focus on each person's specialness made it more difficult to let someone go. Rise of magnificent rural cemetaries in the 1830s. Encouraged by the culture to dwell on their feelings Mourning = way of life that pervaded everything

Answer 170

In an era that valued m-c privacy and feminine purity and that damned public expressions of sexuality, the Fox sisters not only had offended morality by daring to appear onstage but had allowed themselves to be physically handled in a way that was considered highly unseemly Fox sisters retreated to the parlor - private arena where women of the day typically exercised power and wielded spiritual authority. There they pursued more typically masculine activity of earning income and making a living. Three sisters held large gatherings for public in Leah's cottage Troup Street

Answer 171

Anything seemed possible. Technological leaps. Proliferation of steam-powered machines. Authority of the Bible undermined. Weakened by historical explanations, geological explorations and liberal theologians who stressed human goodness rather than sinfulness.

Answer 172

Desire to establish proof of spirit communication found a hopeful symbol in a great technological achievement of the age, the telegraph. One of the first individuals to draw the analogy, Reverend Jervis, was a machinist and Methodist minister New technology for mass-producing images turned famous names into familiar faces. 1852, Currier issued a print of the three spirit-rapping sisters

Answer 173

Séance room = increasingly private retreat from the realities of the outside world rather than, as in the past, a gathering place for mortals actively seeking to understand the relationship between the concerns of this world and the next

Answer 174

Interest in spirit communication predated Hydesville, but the passion for it might not have spread so widely without someone coming along who telegraphed what these three sisters did. Fox sisters collaborated. Were storytellers who created an exciting, involving forum - the séance - in which all participants cld tell themselves different versions of the tale

Answer 175

We tend to think of scientific work as the most professionalized and centralized of activities, most distant from the popular and from common views of the world. The recognition that this status has a history in representations of 'popular' knowledge underlines the benefits to be gained by striving more fully to integrate this history both into the study of projects which we now regard as marginal, like mesmerism, and more routinely into our studies of past knowledge generally. Far from being inherently a peripheral area of historical study, the study of the constructions of 'popular' is crucial to our understanding of how the identity of scientific orthodoxy was constructed and is maintained.

Answer 176

- Scientists, by criticising, were engaging in the debate themselves. - Both scientists and spirtualists were using empirical data to discover spirits real - Believers and unbelievers were engaged in same enterprise

Answer 177

more women, or was religion becoming feminised in terms of religion taking on more aspects assoc w women

Answer 178

most devoted advocates of the new phenomena, drawing on the vocabulary of Mesmerism, tended to ascribe them to an invisible “fluid” emitted by the human will, which seemed to function in ways similar to electricity most widely read of all pamphlets on the tables tournantes, Dr. Félix Roubaud argued that this “magic fluid” was an entirely “positive” and “indisputable” force, the properties of which anyone could observe in experiments of their own If the men and women in the circle felt attraction for one another, the phenomena would start considerably more quickly. In this way, Roubaud handily transformed tableturning from a pastime for amateur scientists into a titillating party game

Answer 179

A scandal exerts various costs on third parties in the form of contaminations and provocations. Hence, especially in cases where the transgression does not involve an immediate and identifiable victim, the anticipation of scandal may discourage audiences and authorities from sanctioning offenders. The norm will then be underenforced as long as its transgressions are committed in, or remain, private. Once a scandal breaks, however, the externalities that are put in motion by the publicity of the transgression may prod polluted or provoked third parties into showing extraordinary zeal vis-a`-vis the offender, to signal rectitude or resolve. Scandal is a polysemic word. A significantly offensive normative violation, the reaction to this violation, and the discredit heaped on persons and institutions as a result are all referred to as scandal in everyday parlance. Despite different usages, however, scandal, as a social occur rence, assumes the publicization of an apparent transgression to a “norm audience,” to use Ellickson’s term (2001). The norm audience is a public united by some level of identification with the norm that has apparently been violated, and it is in some capacity attentive and negatively responsive to the publicized transgression scandal is the disruptive publicity of transgression Combining disruptiveness with salience, scandals like Watergate or the Dreyfus affair can galvanize popular passions (Posner 1999), become central references in the collective consciousness of societies (Birnbaum 1994; Schudson 1992), and function as “historical events” transforming social structures (Sewell 1995).