Society for Psychical Research
The Society for Psychical Research (abbreviated to SPR ) is an association for researching parapsychological phenomena. It was founded in London in 1882 and was the first of its kind.
Founding members were William F. Barrett , Edmund Gurney, Frederic WH Myers and George John Romanes, all associated with Trinity College (Cambridge) . Barrett gave the suggestion as early as 1876 out of an interest in spiritualism . The results of the research are published in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research and in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research . The most well-known, but also most controversial, study to date (2006) was the so-called Hodgson Report from 1884/85.
1889–1905 she was affiliated with the American Society for Psychical Research .
| The Presidents of the Society for Psychical Research | |
| 1882-1884 | Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900), philosopher |
| 1885-1887 | Balfour Stewart (1828-1887), physicist |
| 1888-1892 | Henry Sidgwick (→ 1882) |
| 1893 | Arthur Balfour (1848–1930), later Prime Minister, best known for the Balfour Declaration |
| 1894-1895 | William James (1842–1910) American psychologist and philosopher |
| 1896-1899 | Sir William Crookes (1832-1919), physicist and chemist |
| 1900 | Frederic WH Myers (1843–1901), classical philologist and philosopher |
| 1901-1903 | Sir Oliver Lodge (1851-1940), physicist |
| 1904 | Sir William F. Barrett (1844-1925), physicist |
| 1905 | Charles Richet (1850–1935), French physiologist and Nobel Prize winner |
| 1906-1907 | Gerald Balfour (1853–1945), politician, brother of Arthur Balfour |
| 1908-1909 | Eleanor Sidgwick (1845–1936), mathematician, wife of Henry Sidgwick, sister of Arthur Balfour |
| 1910 | Henry Arthur Smith (1848-1922), lawyer |
| 1911 | Andrew Lang (1844–1912), classical philologist, religious scholar and writer |
| 1912 | W. Boyd Carpenter (1841-1918), Bishop |
| 1913 | Henri Bergson (1859–1941) French philosopher; Nobel Prize in Literature 1927. |
| 1914 | FCS Schiller (1864–1937), philosopher |
| 1915-1916 | Gilbert Murray (1866–1957), classical philologist |
| 1917-1918 | Lawrence Pearsall Jacks (1860–1955), Professor of Philosophy at Oxford |
| 1919 | John William 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), French 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 (1885–1955) |
| 1930-1931 | Walter Franklin Prince (* 1863; † 1934), cleric |
| 1932 | Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick (→ 1908) and Oliver Lodge (→ 1901) |
| 1933-1934 | Edith Lyttelton (born Balfour; 1865–1948), writer |
| 1935-1936 | CD Broad (1887–1971), philosopher |
| 1937-1938 | Robert John Strutt, 4th Baron Rayleigh (1875–1947), physicist |
| 1939-1941 | Henry Habberley Price (1899–1984), philosopher |
| 1942-1944 | Robert Henry Thouless (1894-1984), psychologist |
| 1945-1946 | George NM Tyrrell (1879–1952), mathematician |
| 1947-1948 | William Henry Salter (1880–1969), lawyer |
| 1949 | Gardner Murphy (1895-1979), psychologist |
| 1950-1951 | Samuel George Soal (1889–1975), mathematician |
| 1952 | Gilbert Murray (→ 1915) |
| 1953-1955 | Frederick Stratton (1881–1960), astrophysicist, professor at Cambridge |
| 1956-1958 | Guy William Lambert (1889-1984), diplomat |
| 1958-1960 | CD Broad (→ 1935) |
| 1960-1961 | Henri Habberley Price (→ 1939) |
| 1960-1963 | Eric Robertson Dodds (1893–1979), Graecist, professor at Birmingham and Oxford |
| 1963-1965 | Donald James West (* 1924), psychiatrist and criminologist |
| 1965-1969 | Sir Alister Hardy (1896-1985), zoologist |
| 1969-1971 | WAH Rushton (1901–1980), physiologist, professor at Cambridge |
| 1971-1974 | Clement William Kennedy Mundle (* 1920), philosopher |
| 1974-1976 | John Beloff (1920–2006), psychologist at the University of Edinburgh |
| 1976-1979 | Arthur J. Ellison (1920-2000), engineer |
| 1980 | Joseph Banks Rhine (1895–1980), biologist and parapsychologist |
| 1980 | Louisa Ella Rhine (1891–1983), parapsychologist, wife of Joseph Rhine |
| 1981-1983 | Arthur J. Ellison (→ 1976) |
| 1984-1988 | Donald James West (→ 1963) |
| 1988-1989 | Ian Stevenson (1918-2007), psychiatrist |
| 1992-1993 | Alan Gauld, psychologist |
| 1993-1995 | Archie Roy, Professor of Astronomy in Glasgow, founded the Scottish SPR in 1987 |
| 1995-1998 | David Fontana, Professor of Psychology at Cardiff |
| 1998-1999 | Donald James West (→ 1963, → 1984) |
| 2000-2004 | Bernard Carr, Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy in London |
| 2004-2007 | John Poynton, biologist |
| 2007-2011 | Deborah Delanoy, psychologist |
| since 2011 | Richard Broughton, psychologist |
literature
- Deborah Blum: Ghost Hunters. William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death. Penguin Press, 2006, ISBN 978-1594200908
- Ghost hunters. William James and the Hunt for Evidence of Life after Death. Goldmann, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-442-33773-6
- Troy Taylor: The Society for Psychical Research and Other Early Investigators of Ghostly Phenomena . In: Ghosts by Gaslight. The History & Mystery of the Spiritualists & The Ghost Hunters. Whitechapel, 2007, ISBN 1892523493
Web links
Commons : Society for Psychical Research - collection of images, videos and audio files
- Official website
- Society for Psychical Research ( Memento August 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) by Garth Haslam in Anomalies