Society for Psychical Research

The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a non-profit organization which started in the United Kingdom and was later imitated in other countries. Its stated purpose is to understand "events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal 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, Frederic William Henry Myers, William Fletcher Barrett, Henry Sidgwick, and Edmund Dawson Rogers.

The Society's headquarters are in Marloes Road, London.

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 French Society for Psychical Research, publishes the Journale 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 or paranormal phenomena in order to establish their truth. Research was initially aimed at six areas: telepathy, mesmerism and similar phenomena, mediums, apparitions, physical phenomena associated with séances and, finally, the history of all these phenomena. The Society is run by a President and a Council of twenty people. The organisation 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), 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 (1838-1900), philosopher
1885-1887	Balfour Stewart (1827-1887), physicist
1888-1892	Henry Sidgwick (→ 1882)
1893	Arthur Balfour (1848-1930), later Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, originator of the well known Balfour Declaration
1894-1895	William James (1842-1910) psychologist, philosopher
1896-1899	Sir William Crookes (1832-1919), physicist, chemist
1900	Frederick William Henry Myers (1843-1901), philologist and philosopher
1901-1903	Sir Oliver Lodge (1851-1940), physicist
1904	Sir William Fletcher Barrett (1845-1926), physicist
1905	Charles Robert Richet (1850-1935), physiologist, 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), anthropologist and writer
1912	William Boyd Carpenter (1841-1918), Bishop
1913	Henri Bergson (1859-1941) philosopher; Nobel Prize winner for literature 1927.
1914	Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller (1864-1937), philosopher
1915-1916	George Gilbert Aime Murray (1866-1957), philologist
1917-1918	Lawrence Pearsall Jacks (1860-1955), professor of philosophy in Oxford
1919	John 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), 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 (→ 1908) and Oliver Joseph Lodge (→ 1901)
1933-1934	Edith Lyttelton (born Balfour; 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 (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 (1889-1975), mathematician
1952	Gilbert Murray (→ 1915)
1953-1955	Frederick Stratton (1881-1960), astrophysicist, professor in Cambridge
1956-1958	Guy William Lambert (1889-1984), diplomat
1958-1960	C. D. Broad (→ 1935)
1960-1961	Henri Habberley Price (→ 1939)
1960-1963	Eric Robertson Dodds (1893-1979), professor of Greek studies in Birmingham and Oxford
1963-1965	Donald James West (* 1924), psychiatrist and criminologist
1965-1969	Sir Alister Hardy (1896-1985), zoologist
1969-1971	W. A. H. Rushton (1901-1980), physiologist, professor in 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), technologist
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
1989-1992	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 University
1998-1999	Donald James West (→ 1963, → 1984)
2000-2004	Bernard Carr, professor of mathematics and astronomy at Queen Mary, University of London
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 scholarly journal, the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research,. 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, Peter Underwood, Charles Tart, Tom Ruffles, Ciarán O'Keeffe, and Louie Savva. Investigators of spontaneous phenomena (hauntings, etc.) include the late Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair who investigated reports of the Enfield Poltergeist.

References

• Vernon Harrison. (1997) H. P. Blavatsky and the SPR. ISBN 1-55700-119-7

External links

• SPR home page