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Society for Psychical Research
 
 
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The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a non-profit organization
Non-profit organization

A nonprofit organization is any organization that does not aim to make a profit, and which is not a public body....
 which started in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
 and was later imitated in other countries. Its stated purpose is to understand "events and abilities commonly described as psychic
Psychic

The word psychic refers to a proposed ability to perception information hidden from the senses through what is described as extrasensory perception, or to those people said to have such abilities....
 or paranormal
Paranormal

Paranormal is a general term that describes unusual experiences that lack a scientific explanation, or phenomena alleged to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure....
 by promoting and supporting important research in this area" and to "examine allegedly paranormal phenomena in a scientific and unbiased way." It was founded in 1882 by a group of eminent thinkers including Edmund Gurney
Edmund Gurney

Edmund Gurney was an England psychologist and psychical researcher....
, Frederic William Henry Myers
Frederic William Henry Myers

Frederic William Henry Myers , was an England poet and essayist. He was the elder son of Frederic Myers ....
, William Fletcher Barrett
William Fletcher Barrett

Sir William Fletcher Barrett was an England physics.He was born in Jamaica where his father, William Garland Barrett, who was an amateur naturalist, Congregationalist minister and a member of the London Missionary Society, ran a station for saving the souls of emancipated African slaves....
, Henry Sidgwick
Henry Sidgwick

Henry Sidgwick was an England Utilitarian philosopher. He was one of the founders and first president of the Society for Psychical Research, a member of the Metaphysical Society, and promoted the higher education of women....
, and Edmund Dawson Rogers
Edmund Rogers

Edmund Dawson Rogers , was an England journalist and spiritualist....
.






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Encyclopedia


The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a non-profit organization
Non-profit organization

A nonprofit organization is any organization that does not aim to make a profit, and which is not a public body....
 which started in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
 and was later imitated in other countries. Its stated purpose is to understand "events and abilities commonly described as psychic
Psychic

The word psychic refers to a proposed ability to perception information hidden from the senses through what is described as extrasensory perception, or to those people said to have such abilities....
 or paranormal
Paranormal

Paranormal is a general term that describes unusual experiences that lack a scientific explanation, or phenomena alleged to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure....
 by promoting and supporting important research in this area" and to "examine allegedly paranormal phenomena in a scientific and unbiased way." It was founded in 1882 by a group of eminent thinkers including Edmund Gurney
Edmund Gurney

Edmund Gurney was an England psychologist and psychical researcher....
, Frederic William Henry Myers
Frederic William Henry Myers

Frederic William Henry Myers , was an England poet and essayist. He was the elder son of Frederic Myers ....
, William Fletcher Barrett
William Fletcher Barrett

Sir William Fletcher Barrett was an England physics.He was born in Jamaica where his father, William Garland Barrett, who was an amateur naturalist, Congregationalist minister and a member of the London Missionary Society, ran a station for saving the souls of emancipated African slaves....
, Henry Sidgwick
Henry Sidgwick

Henry Sidgwick was an England Utilitarian philosopher. He was one of the founders and first president of the Society for Psychical Research, a member of the Metaphysical Society, and promoted the higher education of women....
, and Edmund Dawson Rogers
Edmund Rogers

Edmund Dawson Rogers , was an England journalist and spiritualist....
. The Society's headquarters are in Marloes Road, London
London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
. It publishes the quarterly Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (JSPR), the irregular Proceedings and the magazine Paranormal Review. It holds an annual conference, regular lectures and two study days per year.

Its French equivalent, the Société Française pour Recherche Psychique, publishes the Journal de la Société Française pour Recherche Psychique (JSFRP), which means "Journal of the French Society for Psychical Research" in English. Its American counterpart, the American Society for Psychical Research, publishes the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research (JASPR).

Purpose and organization

Its purpose was to encourage scientific research into psychic
Psychic

The word psychic refers to a proposed ability to perception information hidden from the senses through what is described as extrasensory perception, or to those people said to have such abilities....
 or paranormal
Paranormal

Paranormal is a general term that describes unusual experiences that lack a scientific explanation, or phenomena alleged to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure....
 phenomena in order to establish their truth. Research was initially aimed at six areas: telepathy
Telepathy

Telepathy describes the purported transfer of information on thoughts or feelings between individuals by means other than the Senses#Five classical senses ....
, mesmerism and similar phenomena, mediums
Mediumship

Mediumship is believed by its adherents to be a form of communication with spirits.It is a practice in religious beliefs such as Spiritualism , Spiritism, Espiritismo, Candombl?, Louisiana Voodoo, and Umbanda....
, apparitions, physical phenomena associated with séance
Séance

A s?ance is an attempt to communicate with Souls. The word "s?ance" comes from the French language word for "seat," "session" or "sitting," from the Old French "seoir," "to sit." In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "une s?ance de cin?ma" ....
s and, finally, the history of all these phenomena. The Society is run by a President and a Council of twenty people. The organization is divided between London and Cambridge (where the archives are located), 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" in English. Later, an American branch of the Society was formed as the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) in 1885, becoming an affiliate of the original SPR in 1890. American writers sometimes incorrectly call the SPR the British Society for Psychical Research (BSPR), to distinguish it from the American SPR, but the modifer should not be added.

List of Presidents

The presidents of the Society for Psychical Research
1882-1884   Henry Sidgwick
Henry Sidgwick

Henry Sidgwick was an England Utilitarian philosopher. He was one of the founders and first president of the Society for Psychical Research, a member of the Metaphysical Society, and promoted the higher education of women....
 (1838-1900), philosopher
1885-1887 Balfour Stewart
Balfour Stewart

Balfour Stewart was a Scotland physicist.Stewart was born in Edinburgh, and was educated at the University of Edinburgh. The son of a tea merchant, he was for some time engaged in business in Leith and in Australia, but, returning to his studies of physics at Edinburgh, he became assistant to James David Forbes in 1856....
 (1827-1887), physicist
1888-1892   Henry Sidgwick
Henry Sidgwick

Henry Sidgwick was an England Utilitarian philosopher. He was one of the founders and first president of the Society for Psychical Research, a member of the Metaphysical Society, and promoted the higher education of women....
 (again)
1893 Arthur Balfour
Arthur Balfour

Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, Order of the Garter, Order of Merit , Privy Council of the United Kingdom was a United Kingdom Conservative Party politician and statesman....
 (1848-1930), later Prime Minister
1894-1895 William James
William James

William James was a pioneering American psychology and philosophy trained as a medical doctor. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religion experience and mysticism, and the philosophy of pragmatism....
 (1842-1910) psychologist, philosopher
1896-1899 Sir William Crookes
William Crookes

Sir William Crookes, Order of Merit , Fellow of the Royal Society was an England chemist and physicist who attended the Royal College of Chemistry, in London, and worked on spectroscopy....
 (1832-1919), physicist, chemist
1900 Frederick William Henry Myers (1843-1901), philologist and philosopher
1901-1903 Sir Oliver Lodge
Oliver Joseph Lodge

Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, Fellow of the Royal Society , born at Penkhull in Stoke-on-Trent and educated at Adams' Grammar School, was a physicist and writer involved in the development of the wireless telegraph....
 (1851-1940), physicist
1904 Sir William Fletcher Barrett
William Fletcher Barrett

Sir William Fletcher Barrett was an England physics.He was born in Jamaica where his father, William Garland Barrett, who was an amateur naturalist, Congregationalist minister and a member of the London Missionary Society, ran a station for saving the souls of emancipated African slaves....
 (1845-1926), physicist
1905 Charles Robert Richet
Charles Robert Richet

Charles Robert Richet was a France physiologist who initially investigated a variety of subjects such as neurochemistry, digestion, thermoregulation in homeothermic animals, and breathing....
 (1850-1935), physiologist, Nobel Prize winner
1906-1907 Gerald Balfour
Gerald Balfour, 2nd Earl of Balfour

Gerald William Balfour, 2nd Earl of Balfour Privy Council of the United Kingdom , known as Gerald Balfour until 1930, was a British nobleman and Conservative Party politician....
 (1853-1945), politician
1908-1909 Eleanor Sidgwick
Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick

Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick, n?e Balfour was an activist for the higher education of women, Principal of Newnham College and a leading figure in the Society for Psychical Research....
 (1845-1936), mathematician
1910 Henry Arthur Smith (1848-1922), lawyer
1911 Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang was a prolific Scotland man of letters. He was a poet, novelist, and literary critic, and contributor to anthropology. He now is best known as the folkloristics of folklore and fairy tales....
 (1844-1912), anthropologist and writer
1912 William Boyd Carpenter
William Boyd Carpenter

Sir William Boyd Carpenter was an English people clergy of the State religion, Bishop of Ripon.He was born in Liverpool, was educated at the Royal Institution, Liverpool, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, Cambridge University, and was appointed Hulsean lectures at Cambridge in 1878....
 (1841-1918), Bishop
1913 Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson

Henri-Louis Bergson was a French philosophy, influential in the first half of the 20th century....
 (1859-1941) philosopher; Nobel Prize winner
1914 Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller
Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller

Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller was a Germany-United Kingdom pragmatism philosopher. Born in Altona, Hamburg in the Duchy of Holstein , Schiller studied at the University of Oxford, and later was a professor there, after being invited back after a brief time at Cornell University....
 (1864-1937), philosopher
1915-1916 George Gilbert Aime Murray
Gilbert Murray

George Gilbert Aim? Murray was a United Kingdom classical scholar and public intellectual, with connections in many spheres. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece, perhaps the leading authority in the first half of the twentieth century....
 (1866-1957), philologist
1917-1918 Lawrence Pearsall Jacks
L. P. Jacks

Lawrence Pearsall Jacks , abbreviated L. P. Jacks was an England educator, philosophy, and Unitarian Christianity minister who rose to prominence in the period from World War I to World War II....
 (1860-1955), professor of philosophy
1919 John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh
John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh

John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh Order of Merit was an England physicist who, with William Ramsay, discovered the element argon, an achievement for which he earned the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904....
 (1842-1919), physicist, Nobel Prizewinner
1920-1921 William McDougall
William McDougall (psychologist)

William McDougall was an early twentieth century psychology who spent the first part of his career in the United Kingdom and the latter part in the United States....
 (1871-1938), psychologist
1922 Thomas Walter Mitchell (1869-1944), editor of the British journal of medical psychology
1923 Camille Flammarion
Camille Flammarion

Nicolas Camille Flammarion was a France astronomer and author. He is commonly referred to as 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 (1885-1955)
1930-1931 Walter Franklin Prince (1863-1934), clergyman
1932 Eleanor Sidgwick (again) and Sir Oliver Lodge
Oliver Joseph Lodge

Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, Fellow of the Royal Society , born at Penkhull in Stoke-on-Trent and educated at Adams' Grammar School, was a physicist and writer involved in the development of the wireless telegraph....
 (again)
1933-1934 Edith Lyttelton
Edith Lyttelton

Dame Edith Lyttelton, Order of the British Empire was a British novelist, World War I-era activist and spiritualist....
 (1865-1948), playwright
1935-1936 C. D. Broad (1887-1971), philosopher
1937-1938 Robert Strutt, 4th Baron Rayleigh (1875-1947), physicist
1939-1941 Henri Haberley Price (1899-1984), philosopher
1942-1944 Robert Henry Thouless
Robert H. Thouless

British academic Robert H. Thouless is best known as the author of Straight and Crooked Thinking , which describes flaws in reasoning and argument....
 (1894-1984), psychologist
1945-1946 George N. M. Tyrrell (1879-1952), mathematician
1947-1948 William Henry Salter (1880-1969), lawyer
1949 Gardner Murphy (1895-1979), psychologist
1950-1951 Samuel George Soal
Samuel Soal

Samuel George Soal ? known as S.G. Soal ? was a British parapsychologist.Samuel Soal is mostly, today, remembered as the most prominent researcher in academic parapsychology to have been charged with fraudulent production of data....
 (1889-1975), mathematician
1952 Gilbert Murray (again)
1953-1955 Frederick Stratton
F. J. M. Stratton

Frederick John Marrian Stratton Fellow of the Royal Society was a United Kingdom astrophysicist and Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge from 1928 to 1947....
 (1881-1960), astrophysicist
1956-1958 Guy William Lambert (1889-1984), diplomat
1958-1960 C. D. Broad (again)
1960-1961 Henri Haberley Price (again)
1960-1963 Eric Robertson Dodds
Eric Robertson Dodds

Eric Robertson Dodds was an Ireland classics scholar. He signed all his publications E. R. Dodds....
 (1893-1979), professor of Greek
1963-1965 Donald James West (b. 1924), psychiatrist and criminologist
1965-1969 Sir Alister Hardy
Alister Hardy

Sir Alister Clavering Hardy, Royal Society was an University of Oxford-educated marine biologist, expert on zooplankton and marine ecosystems. He founded the Religious Experience Research Centre in 1969, after retiring as a professor at Oxford....
 (1896-1985), zoologist
1969-1971 W. A. H. Rushton (1901-1980), physiologist
1971-1974 Clement William Kennedy Mundle (b. 1920), philosopher
1974-1976 John Beloff (1920-2006), psychologist
1976-1979 Arthur J. Ellison (1920-2000), technologist
1980 Joseph Banks Rhine
Joseph Banks Rhine

Joseph Banks Rhine was a pioneer of parapsychology. Rhine founded the parapsychology lab at Duke University, the Journal of Parapsychology, and the Rhine Research Center....
 (1895-1980), biologist and parapsychologist
1980 Louisa Ella Rhine (1891-1983), parapsychologist, wife of Joseph Rhine
1981-1983 Arthur J. Ellison (again)
1984-1988 Donald James West (again)
1988-1989 Ian Stevenson
Ian Stevenson

Ian Pretyman Stevenson, Doctor of Medicine, , was a Canadian psychiatrist. His research included reincarnation claims, near-death experiences, apparitions , the mind-brain problem, and survival of the human Personality psychology after death....
 (1918-2007), psychiatrist
1989-1992 Alan Gauld, psychologist
1993-1995 Archie Roy
Archie Roy

Archie E. Roy is Professor Emeritus of Astronomy in the University of Glasgow....
, astronomer, founded the Scottish SPR in 1987
1995-1998 David Fontana, professor of psychology
1998-1999 Donald James West (for the third time)
2000-2004 Bernard Carr, professor of mathematics and astronomy
2005-2007 John Poynton, biologist
2007- Deborah Delanoy, parapsychologist


Today

The Society states its principal aim as "understanding events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal by promoting and supporting important research in this area." The Society has gathered and disseminated a great deal of data relating to the paranormal. The SPR publishes a journal, the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research which includes reports of ongoing laboratory and fieldwork, as well as methodological, historical, and theoretical works covering a wide range of specialIties related to the field of parapsychology. The Society has built up an extensive library and archive, part of which is held at the University of Cambridge.

The Society has many well known figures among its members, including Dean Radin
Dean Radin

Dean Radin is a researcher and author in the field of parapsychology. He is Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, in Petaluma, California, USA, on the...
, Peter Underwood
Peter Underwood (parapsychologist)

This article is about the English paranormalist. For the Chief Justice of Tasmania, see Peter Underwood .Peter Underwood FRSA is an England author, Presenter and paranormalist....
, Charles Tart
Charles Tart

Dr. Charles T. Tart is a United States psychologist and parapsychologist known for his psychological work on the nature of consciousness , as one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology, and for his research in scientific parapsychology....
, Tom Ruffles, Ciarán O'Keeffe, and Louie Savva
Louie Savva

Louie Savva is an England former parapsychologist.He studied for his undergraduate degree in psychology at Goldsmiths College, and undertook his PhD under Professor Chris French, a noted UK skeptic....
. Investigators of spontaneous phenomena (hauntings, etc.) include the late Maurice Grosse
Maurice Grosse

Maurice Grosse was a UK paranormal investigator famous for his involvement in the Enfield Poltergeist case....
 and Guy Lyon Playfair
Guy Lyon Playfair

Guy Lyon Playfair is a freelance writer and translator best known for his books about parapsychology.Additionally, he's worked for several U.S., United Kingdom and Brazilian magazine, newspapers and publishing houses....
 who investigated reports of the Enfield Poltergeist
Enfield Poltergeist

The Enfield Poltergeist was a period of apparent poltergeist activity in England between August 1977 and September 1978, with an added outburst in August 1980....
.

External links