Originally published in 1968 The Founders of Psychical Research is centred upon the lives and work of Henry Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney and Frederic Myers – prominent in the Society for Psychical Research (S.P.R) - during its early years: it is not a history of the Society. It passes over important aspects of the S.P.R.’s story and deals at some length with matters quite outside it. The book frequently gives accounts of ‘paranormal’ phenomena which if indeed they occurred, would not be explainable through any recognisable hypothesis, but are treated throughout as unexplained.

Psychologie / Grossbritannien / Geschichte.

Originally published in 1968 The Founders of Psychical Research is centred upon the lives and work of Henry Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney and Frederic Myers – prominent in the Society for Psychical Research (S.P.R) - during its early years: it is not a history of the Society. It passes over important aspects of the S.P.R.’s story and deals at some length with matters quite outside it. The book frequently gives accounts of ‘paranormal’ phenomena which if indeed they occurred, would not be explainable through any recognisable hypothesis, but are treated throughout as unexplained.

In this insightful new book on the remarkable William James, the American psychologist and philosopher, Krister Dylan Knapp provides the first deeply historical and acutely analytical account of James's psychical research. While showing that James always maintained a critical stance toward claims of paranormal phenomena like spiritualism, Knapp uses new sources to argue that psychical research held a strikingly central position in James's life. It was crucial to his familial and professional relationships, the fashioning of his unique intellectual disposition, and the shaping of his core doctrines, especially the will-to-believe, empiricism, fideism, and theories of the subliminal consciousness and immortality. Knapp explains how and why James found in psychical research a way to rethink the well-trodden approaches to classic Euro-American religious thought, typified by the oppositional categories of natural vs. supernatural and normal vs. paranormal. He demonstrates how James eschewed these choices and instead developed a tertiary synthesis of them, an approach Knapp terms tertium quid, the third way. Situating James's psychical research in relation to the rise of experimental psychology and Protestantism's changing place in fin de siecle America, Knapp asserts that the third way illustrated a much broader trend in transatlantic thought as it struggled to navigate the uncertainties and religious adventurism of the modern age.

The more than 50 articles, essays, and reviews collected here for the first time were published by James over a span of some 25 years. The record of a sustained interest in phenomena of a highly controversial nature, they make it amply clear that James's work in psychical research was not an eccentric hobby but a serious and sympathetic concern.

"A large part of the material used in this book was sent to the authors as representatives of the Society for Psychical Research; and the book is published with the sanction of the council of that Society ... Mr. Myers is solely responsible for the Introduction, and for the Note on a suggested mode of psychical interaction ... Mr. Gurney is solely responsible for the remainder of the book ... the collection, examination, and appraisal of the evidence--has been a joint labour, of which Mr. Podmore has borne ... a share ..."--Preface.

Hyman (psychology, U. of Oregon) critiques and analyzes the rationale, protocol, and construction of parapsychological experimentation. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

List of members in v. 1, 6, 12.