Abstract
THE author deals with the more debatable classes of psychical phenomena discussed at the Paris Congresses of Experimental Psychology of 1911 and 1913, and defined as “the phenomena which, produced in animate beings or as an effect of their action, do not seem to beentirely explicable by the laws and forces of nature already known.” They are classified as: Hypnoidal, including dissociation of personality and “cryptopsychism” (subconscious action); magnetoidal, which are supposed to comprise mesmerism, telepathy, and “hyloscopic” phenomena (unexplained actions of inanimate objects on animate beings); and spirit-oidal, which imply agents of a psychological nature more or less analogous to human intelligence. The author proposes the term “bi-actinism” (bio-actinism?) for any phenomena in which a radiating influence is apparently exerted at a distance over other animate beings. For “clairvoyance,” or knowledge obtained by certain individuals apparently independently of the normal senses, he prefers the term “meta-gnomy.”" On the question of the spiritistic hypothesis the author maintains a non-committal attitude.
The Psychology of the Future. (“L'Avenir des Sciences Psychiques.”).
Emile
Boirac
By. Translated and edited with an introduction by W. de Kerlor. Pp. xiii + 322. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, and Co., Ltd., n.d.) Price 10s. 6d. net.
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The Psychology of the Future (“L'Avenir des Sciences Psychiques”) . Nature 105, 323 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/105323c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/105323c0