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Psychology experiments: Spiritism at the sorbonne
Author(s) -
Parot FrançOise
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/1520-6696(199301)29:1<22::aid-jhbs2300290104>3.0.co;2-t
Subject(s) - militant , positivism , psychoanalysis , psychology , newspaper , character (mathematics) , sociology , social science , epistemology , media studies , philosophy , political science , law , politics , geometry , mathematics
During the years which followed World War I, psychologists of the Sorbonne organized “control experiments” to question the reality of parapsychological phenomena. They worked with well‐known mediums and the results of their investigations were published in widely‐read French and American newspapers. Despite the melodramatic and somewhat humorous character of these episodes, the researchers involved were engaged in efforts toward genuinely scientific psychology. Henri Pieron and Henri Laugier, both positivists and militant rationalists, were leaders in the institutionalized development of psychology in France.