There’s certainly no shortage of books on the modern occult produced by academic historians, English literature scholars and other humanities researchers. However, it’s no secret that I feel that much of this literature is characterized by a sadly lax and superficial engagement with primary sources, and methodological aspects of empirical approaches to alleged parapsychological phenomena (for some exceptions, see my list of recommended readings in the history of science and magic).
I was therefore glad to learn that psychologist and historian Dr. Carlos Alvarado, who is well known as a walking encyclopaedia of the history of international psychical research, was about to publish his first book. After all, I always valued that Alvarado’s work, printed in countless journal articles over the past three decades or so, is marked by a much-needed rigorous appreciation of original ideas and empirical research produced by his historical actors.
One of the figures extensively treated by Alvarado is Charles Richet, the French Nobel Laureate in physiology whose long career inspired works of at least two generations of scientists studying reported occult phenomena. As I noted in a blurb which I contributed, I think that Alvarado’s book, a collection of his previous essays concerning Richet, “will be an indispensable and convenient starting point” for anybody interested in the nitty-gritty of Richet’s métapsychique (the French term Richet proposed for the subject area of psychical research in 1905).
Here’s a description and table of contents from the publisher’s website:
Charles Richet (1850-1935), the distinguished French physiologist who won a Nobel Prize for his work on anaphylaxis, was a renaissance man. In addition to physiology he wrote poetry and plays and took an interest in many topics including pacifism, eugenics, philosophy, psychology and psychical research, which he referred to as metapsychics—the subject of this book.
Richet, in his role of psychical researcher, investigated ESP, mental and physical mediumship, survival of death and hypnosis. While never publically accepting survival and communication with discarnate entities, he became fully immersed in the phenomena and wrote in a letter to British physicist, Oliver Lodge, who had accepted it, “Without being resolutely spiritist in the sense of Conan Doyle and Allan Kardec, I gradually get closer to your ideas. I say to you—which is absolutely true—that your deep and scientific conviction had great influence, a very great influence.”
Chapters include Richet’s ESP experiments where he used statistical evaluation in a bid to establish differences between scientific and non-scientific approaches to the subject—a novelty at the time. Also discussed is his defense of psychical research and a commentary on his celebrated and influential book Traité de Métapsychique (Thirty Years of Psychical Research).
The book has an extensive notes section and appendices, which contain Richet’s observations about mediums Leonora Piper and Marthe Béraud, his use of the term “ectoplasm,” and a reprint of his essay characterizing metapsychics as a science.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1: Interest in Psychic Phenomena
Chapter 2: Richet’s Metapsychic Autobiography
Chapter 3: Early Ideas and Tests of Mental Suggestion
Chapter 4: Presenting Psychical Research to Psychology (1905)
Chapter 5: The Traité de Métapsychique (1922)
Chapter 6: Richet on “The Limits of Psychic and Metapsychic Science”
Appendix A: Richet on Leonora E. Piper
Appendix B: Observations of Moving Ectoplasm with Medium Marthe Béraud
Appendix C: On the Term Ectoplasm
Appendix D: Is there a Science of Metapsychics?
Appendix E: Bibliography About and by Charles Richet with Emphasis on Psychic Phenomena, compiled by Carlos S. Avarado, PhD, and Renaud Evrard, PhD
Appendix F: Bibliography About the History of Psychical Research
Acknowledgements
References
Notes
Index
© Carlos Alvarado & White Crow Books
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