Professor Elizabeth Valentine: Academic psychology and psychical research between the wars

Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit Invited Speaker Series, 2012/13

Abstract
This talk describes the involvement of six senior academic psychologists with the well-known amateur psychical researcher Harry Price, in the inter-war years. William McDougall and William Brown attended and assisted at a number of séances in his National Laboratory of Psychical Research. Jack Flugel, Cyril Burt, Alec Mace and Francis Aveling were members of his University of London Council for Psychical Investigation and supported psychical research in various ways. Why did these psychologists collaborate with someone the Economist described as “a rogue, a falsifier, and a manufacturer of evidence”? I will discuss personal, metaphysical and socio-historical factors and suggest that the main reason for their mutual attraction was their common engagement in a delicate balancing act between courting popular appeal on the one hand and the assertion of scientific expertise and authority on the other. This can be seen as typical boundary work at a transitional stage in the development of psychology as a discipline.

Biography
Elizabeth Valentine is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London and Honorary Senior Research Associate at University College London. Her main interests are in cognitive psychology and the philosophy and history of psychology. She is the author of many theoretical and empirical articles, and of Conceptual Issues in Psychology (London: Routledge, 1992) and Beatrice Edgell: Pioneer Woman Psychologist (New York: Nova, 2006). A volume of collected papers on the philosophy and history of psychology is in preparation, to be published by Psychology Press in their World Library of Psychologists series.

APRU Invited Speaker Programme

Dates & times

Date	Time	Add to calendar
12 Mar 2013	6:00pm - 7:30pm	apple google outlook

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