Society for Psychical Research

The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a non-profit organization in the United Kingdom whose purpose is to research and investigate supernatural, magical, paranormal, and occult phenomena in a scientific and unbiased manner. It was founded in 1882 by three dons of Trinity College, Cambridge, Edmund Gurney, Frederic William Henry Myers, and Henry Sidgwick, because of their interest in spiritualism.

The Society has a membership of 5,500 and an average revenue of 5.2 million pounds per year. Its headquarters is in Marloes Road, London.

The Society holds no corporate opinions: all opinions expressed are those of the individual members. It publishes the quarterly Journal of The Society for Psychical Research (JSPR) and irregular Proceedings, and holds an annual conference.

History

Its purpose was to encourage scientific research into psychic or paranormal phenomena in order to establish their truth. Research was initially aimed at six areas: telepathy, mesmerism and similar phenomena, mediums, apparitions, physical phenomena associated with séances and, finally, the history of all these phenomena. The Society is run by a President and a Council of twenty people. The organisation is divided between London and Cambridge, the London headquarters were initially at 14 Dean's Yard. A French branch of the Society was formed in 1885 as the Société Française pour Recherche Psychique (SFRP), which means "French Society for Psychical Research". Later, an American branch of the Society was formed as the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR), becoming an affiliate of the original SPR in 1890. Famous supporters of the society have included Alfred Lord Tennyson, Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, Carl Jung, J. B. Rhine and Arthur Conan Doyle (who was shamefully duped on at least one occasion by tricksters).

The Society was especially active in the thirty years after it was founded, gaining fame for the Hodgson Report in 1884. Most initial members were spiritualists but there was a core of 'professional' investigators - the Sidgwick Group, headed by Henry Sidgwick, a formation pre-dating the SPR by eight years. The Society was weakened by internal strife, a large part of the members (the Spiritists) left as early as 1887 in opposition to the non-spiritualist approach taken by most intellectuals.

The presidents of the Society for Psychical Research
1882-1884	Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900), philosopher
1885-1887	Balfour Stewart (1827-1887), physicist
1888-1892	Henry Sidgwick (→ 1882)
1893	Arthur Balfour (1848-1930), later prime minister, originator of the well known Balfour Declaration
1894-1895	William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
1896-1897	Sir William Crookes (1832-1919), physicist and chemist
1900	Frederick William Henry Myers (1843-1901), philologist and philosopher
1901-1903	Sir Oliver Lodge (1851; †1940), physicist
1904	Sir William Fletcher Barrett (1845-1926), physicist
1905	Charles Robert Richet (1850; †1935), French Physiologist und Nobel Prize winner
1906-1907	Gerald Balfour (1853-1945), politician
1908-1909	Eleanor Sidgwick (1845-1936), parapsychologist
1910	Henry Arthur Smith (1848-), Anwalt
1911	Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
1912	W. Boyd Carpenter (1841-1918), Bischof
1913	Henri Bergson (1859-1941) French philosopher; Nobel Prize for literature 1927.
1914	Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller (1864-1937), philosopher
1915-1916	George Gilbert Aime Murray (1866-1957), philologist
1917-1918	Lawrence Pearsall Jacks (1860-1955), professor of philosophy in Oxford
1919	John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (1842-1919), physicist, Nobel Prize 1904
1920-1921	William McDougall (1871-1938), psychologist
1922	Thomas Walter Mitchell (1869; †1944), editor of the British journal of medical psychology
1923	Camille Flammarion (1842-1925), astronomer
1924-1925	John George Piddington (1869-1952), businessman
1926-1927	Hans Driesch (1867-1941), German biologist and natural philosopher
1928-1929	Sir Lawrence Jones (1885-)
1930-1931	Walter Franklin Prince (1863-1934), founded the Boston SPR in 1925
1932	Eleanor Sidgwick (→ 1908) and Oliver Lodge (→ 1901)
1933-1934	Edith Lyttelton (1865-1948), playwright
1935-1936	Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887-1971), philosopher
1937-1938	John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (→ 1919)
1939-1941	Henri Haberley Price (1899-)
1942-1944	Robert Henry Thouless (1894-), psychologist
1945-1946	George Tyrell (*1879; †1952), mathematician
1947-1948	William Henry Salter (1880-), lawyer
1949	Gardner Murphy (1895-1979), psychologist
1950-1951	Samuel George Soal (1889-1975), mathematician
1952	George Murray (→ 1915)
1953-1955	Frederick Stratton (1881-), astrophysicist, professor in Cambridge
1956-1958	Guy William Lambert (1889-), diplomat
1958-1960	Charlie Dunbar Broad (→ 1935)
1960-1961	Henri Habberley Price (→ 1939)
1960-1963	Eric Robertson Dodds (1893-), professor of Greek studies in Birmingham and Oxford
1963-1965	Donald James West (1924-), psychiatrist and criminologist
1965-1969	Sir Alister Hardy (1896-1985), zoologist
1970	W. A. H. Rushton (1901-1980), physiologist, professor in Cambridge
1971-1974	Clement William Kennedy Mundle (1916-), philosopher
1974-1976	John Beloff (1920-2006), psychologist at the University of Edinburgh
1976-1979	Arthur J. Ellison (-2000)
1980	Joseph Banks Rhine (1895-1980)
1980	Louisa Ella Rhine (1891-)
1981-1983	Arthur J. Ellison (→ 1976)
???	???
1992-1993	Alan Gauld
1993-1995	Archie Roy, professor of astronomy in Glasgow, founded the Scottish SPR in 1987
1996-1999	David Fontana, professor of psychology at Cardiff University
1999-2004	Bernard Carr, professor of mathematics and astronomy at London University
2004-	John Poynton, Biologist

Remark concerning the persons in italics: Eleanor Sidgwick was the wife of Henry Sidgwick and the sister of both Arthur Balfour and Gerald Balfour.

Today

The Society still exists and states its principal aim as "understanding events and abilities commonly described as 'psychic' or 'paranormal' by promoting and supporting important research in this area." Of its initial aims, the most successful has been the gathering of data relating to the history of the paranormal - the SPR has built up an extensive library and archive, part of which is held at the University of Cambridge. The Journal is peer reviewed and respected in the field of parapsychology. However, it is not vetted in its peer-review process for any scientific claims and has been criticized as promoting pseudoscience by detractors.

The Society still has many well known figures among its members, including parapsychologists Susan Blackmore, Ciarán O'Keeffe, and Louie Savva. Investigators of spontaneous phenomena (hauntings, etc.) include Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair who are best known for the Enfield Poltergeist.

References

• Vernon Harrison. (1997) H. P. Blavatsky and the SPR. ISBN 1-55700-119-7

See also

• Perrott-Warrick Fund[1]

External links

• SPR home page
• The Society for Psychical Research Scandal
• The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Paranormal Claims
• The Need for Responsibility in Parapsychology: My Sixty Years in Psychical Research by Eric Dingwall, a history and evaluation
• The Society for Psychical Research: an outline of its history By William Henry Salter, 1948
• Journal of the Society for Psychical Research By Society for Psychical Research (Great Britain)., Harry Houdini Collection (Library of Congress),1884