I will begin this paper by stating in rough outline what I consider to be the relevance of psychical research to philosophy, and I shall devote the rest of it to developing this preliminary statement in detail.

Originally published in 1968 The Founders of Psychical Research is centred upon prominent members in the Society for Psychical Research - during its early years. It passes over important aspects of the S.P.R.'s story and deals at some length with outside matters.

A sober account of some striking examples of various "para-normal phenomena," like telepathy, clairvoyance, materializations, and poltergeists. The author tries to show that "here in para-psychology are facts which completely undermine the complacent materialism of the past century." He adduces interesting evidence derived from experiments and controlled observation, but the explanatory hypotheses put forward are less convincing.--R. G. S.

The noted Cambridge philosopher, who has twice served as President of the British Society for Psychical Research, discusses a representative summary of the most impressive cases of experience which seem to refute some of the generally conceived limits of possible personal existence and experience. The subject matter is divided into experiments in card-guessing, cases of veridical but paranormal quasi-perception, and mediumship. Painstaking distinctions in the interpretations and estimates of credibility occasionally make for tedious reading, though they amply prove (...) their advisability as a corrective the tempting imaginative leaps and careless inferences with which some people react to the trans-commonsensical. Occasional flashes of Broad's ironic humor, delightfully testy, lighten the reading considerably. The focus of interest is on the relevance of this material to the question of human survival after death. For someone interested in knowing the current state of psychic science on this question, the book is invaluable. Mr. Broad is not concerned with building a case for any one position. Though he believes that paranormal phenomena strongly suggest some sort of persistence of personality in some cases, he concludes that "one can only wait and see, or alternately wait and not see."--E. W. (shrink)

Psychical research has failed to establish itself as a respected area of scientific inquiry, to resolve its many controversies or to contribute to our understanding of human nature. The progress of psychical research is reviewed with particular reference to the six topics of the original research committees of the SPR. Some of these topics were dropped while others went on to form the basis of modern psychical research and parapsychology. But although research (...) techniques have greatly improved, the same questions are still being asked after one hundred years. (shrink)

This article adds to contemporary analyses of neoliberalism by shedding light on its psychic life. Writers in the Foucauldian tradition have explored how subjectivities are reconstituted under neoliberalism, showing that the neoliberal self is an entrepreneurial subject. Yet, there has been little empirical research that explores entrepreneurial subjectivity and, more specifically, its psychic life. By drawing on over 60 in-depth interviews with individuals who may be entrepreneurial subjects par excellence, this article adds to our understanding of how neoliberalism is (...) lived out. The article is divided into 10 sections, with each section exploring a distinct contour of entrepreneurial subjectivity. They show, for example, that competition is not only other-directed under neoliberalism, but also directed at the self, and that exclusionary processes lie at the heart of the constitution of entrepreneurial subjectivities. By providing a theoretically informed analysis of a wealth of empirical data, the article makes an original contribution to our understanding of the psychic life of neoliberalism. (shrink)

Focusing on the reception of Maine de Biran by Alexis Bertrand in his thesis, L’aperception du corps humain par la conscience (1880), I will demonstrate how the “corps propre” (one’s own body) becomes a key concept in order to re-orientate the French spiritualist movement. To do so, Bertrand’s neo-Biranism uses a new methodology with phenomenological issues. The image of the body, the primitive space or the engagement within the world becomes new research themes for spiritualism. His interpretation of (...) Biran’s philosophy leads him to criticize mechanistic epistemology, and especially the concept of reflex. In this context, Bertrand proposes an animist metaphysics, aiming to reconcile his Biranism with the advances of science. As a consequence, the history of the concept of one’s own body must take into account metaphysical perspectives and not only scientific and experimental researches. (shrink)

Amidst the current profusion of research on consciousness, discussions of the historic origins of the topic are frequently overlooked. At the beginning of the nineteenth century in the West, the nature of consciousness was barely understood, nor differentiated from its esoteric and religious contexts. By the end of the century, however, novel ideas about the structure of consciousness were proposed by Janet, James, and the Society for Psychical Research. This article proposes that these discoveries were intrinsically linked (...) to popular nineteenth-century explorations of unorthodox religious experiences and trance states. Operating outside mainstream religious, medical, and academic settings, alternative spiritual and medical sub-cultures such as Mesmerism, Mind Cure, Spiritualism, Transcendentalism and Orientalism provoked scientific discourse about consciousness that advanced the field. Examining these developments sheds light on the current renaissance in consciousness research and its relation to popular interest in states of consciousness, meditation and powers of mind. (shrink)

In the introduction to hisAllgemeine Psychopathologie, published in 1913, Karl Jaspers stated that psychology has little value for the psychopathologist because it focuses on all kinds of interesting matters, but not on normal psychic life. In this article we argue that today, in the year 2013, little has changed in this respect. During the past century, normal psychic life (non-pathological psychic life) has rarely been a topic of research. Clinical psychology has focused primarily on studying three other topics: the (...) mind-body problem (does the mind actually exist, or are we exclusively the result of brain function?), the methodological debate (should psychology use quantitative or qualitative research results as a basis for its expertise?) and the psychotherapy debate (Is psychotherapy effective? If so, which form is the most effective?). Due to this focus, our knowledge in the above-mentioned areas has increased significantly, but the issue raised by Karl Jaspers about normal psychic life has still not been addressed. In this article, we propose that normal psychic life should indeed become the new focus of clinical psychology. We illustrate the importance of this new focus with three examples from clinical psychology: the Global Assessment of Functioning scale, empathy and the emergence of positive psychology during the past decade. We then explore the efficacy of phenomenology for studying this normal psychic life, thereby discovering a useful epistemological basis in Husserl’s systematic phenomenology. Various phenomenological research methods are evaluated in the light of this systematic phenomenology. (shrink)

This paper explores the formative role of substances of intoxication in the social and scientific establishment of the biological subject in late nineteenth-century Germany. Sourcing the emergence of substances of intoxication as “vital substances” from Brunonianism, this narrative traces their initial significance for Romantic physiology, followed by their rejection from neo-mechanical scientific physiology. Emphasis is placed on late nineteenth-century psychological research on the effects of intoxicants on the mind as the site of a dynamic encounter between theories of the (...) mind and the body, particularly through Kraepelin’s concept of intoxication as model psychosis, and his related research. The biological subject, here, is anti-vitalistic, and, yet, conceptually distinct from neo-mechanism. (shrink)

The 21st century might well be called the age of hatred. This is not because there is more violence in the world but because hatred has been transformed from a concept perceived to be a by-product of personal or collective violence into a discursive field. But what if longstanding antagonisms, especially those between social groups, turned out to involve desire rather than revulsion? The Ideology of Hatred develops a psychosocial framework for understanding this new phenomenon by interrogating unconscious mechanisms within (...) national discourse. It opens new and timely venues for thinking about the paradoxes of love and hate while raising questions about social attachment and otherness. Is it possible that hatred operates by maintaining a safe closeness, enhancing the illusion of separateness as well as a sense of proximity at one and the same time? Could it be that love actually survives through the discourse of hatred as an invisible relation of attachment, necessary but unthinkable? A key term in the book is the "political unconscious," a concept signifying the transformation of the unthinkable into a language that disavows the desire of and for the Other. Invoking this and other psychoanalytic concepts, the book proposes that at the heart of all national conflicts lies a riddle: the enigma of desire. The discourse of hatred works today as both a defense mechanism and as a political fantasy whose dream is to annihilate the Other of desire, that familial and different, threatening and intimate Other. Yet because love-in-hatred is denied but not erased, love can therefore also be reimagined. This suggests that untying and recognizing relations of intimacy and dependency can, under certain circumstances, change the discourse of hatred into relations of peace and even friendship. In addition to its strong theoretical component, the book is also based on extensive empirical research, especially into hate relations among Jews and between Jews and Palestinians in Israel. (shrink)

The Journal of Scientific Exploration is devoted to the open-minded examination of scientific anomalies and other topics on the scientific frontier. Its articles and reviews, written by authorities in their respective fields, cover both data and theory in areas of science that are too often ignored or treated superficially by other scientific publications. This issue of the Journal is devoted to a single multifaceted topic: mediumship, and mental mediumship in particular. The authors of the lead paper describe several varieties of (...) mediumship, and propose that the psychosocial and cultural aspects of mediumship are as important as its psychophysiological features. They consider the differences between spiritism and spiritualism, the relevance of the trance state to mediumship, and the extent to which processes properly considered mediumistic infiltrate many everyday human activities. The next paper surveys some of the major nonparapsychological issues that have fascinated researchers into mediumship. These include the nature and prevalence of the mediumistic trance, the varieties of mediumistic mentation, the evolution of mediumship over time, the dramatic capabilities of the subconscious, and the relationship between mediumship and psychopathology. The third paper focuses on positive aspects of mediumship, and in particular its connection with various forms of artistic and practical creativity, as well as its potential for personal development or transformation. The fourth paper considers whether mediumship ever indicates that human personality survives bodily death, or whether even the best cases instead indicate psychic functioning among the living. The author surveys types of mediumship that have been especially relevant to this question, and advocates the revival of so-called proxy sittings with mediums. The final paper recounts a period in France's recent history during which a group of researchers lobbied to have parapsychology broadened into a multidisciplinary field embracing (in additional to strictly experimental and proof-oriented investigations) wide-ranging enquiries that could be applied to mediumship and other apparent instances of psychic functioning in real-life settings. This issue of the JSE is then filled out, as usual, with correspondence and substantive book reviews. (shrink)