New Book: Selections from the Correspondence of J. B. Rhine

Hot off the press: A selection of the correspondence of J. B. Rhine, the biologist who famously established a laboratory for experimental studies of telepathy and other occult phenomena at Duke University in the 1930s. Among Rhine’s correspondents whose letters are included in the volume are renowned psychologists such as Carl G. Jung and B. … Read more

Anti-Fascist Holism and Jewish Parapsychology: Another Look at Hitler’s Monsters

The latest issue of Aries, the prime academic journal for the study of Western esotericism, includes a comprehensive assessment of Eric Kurlander’s Hitler’s Monsters by Eva Kingsepp at Karlstad University, Sweden. Whereas the first part of my own review here on Forbidden Histories was concerned with Kurlander’s evidence-free depiction of ‘mainstream’ science’s relationship with parapsychology … Read more

Can Psychotherapists Benefit from History of Science Scholarship?

Historians rarely have the opportunity to say something that might be of practical relevance to clinicians or workers in other fields of applied scientific knowledge. As mentioned previously, I was therefore particularly chuffed when psychotherapist Nick Totton invited me last year to contribute an article to an envisaged special issue of the European Journal of … Read more

Carl Gustav Jung and the Clairvoyant, Frau Fäßler

The investigation of ‘occult’ phenomena associated with spiritualism and mesmerism occupied the minds of representatives of modern psychology much more than this has been reflected in standard histories of modern psychology. From Gustav Theodor Fechner and William James to Théodore Flournoy and Hans Eysenck, many prominent psychologists were not only interested in the psychodynamics of … Read more

Pre-Print Introduction to SHPSC Special Issue Now Available: Psychical Research in the History and Philosophy of Science

The final pre-print article from the SHPSC special issue on psychical research, which I had the privilege of guest-editing, is now available online. Although it is not strictly meant as a normative contribution to the philosophy of science, I hope it will still be useful for philosophers interested in the demarcation problem. It basically boils … Read more