M. Brady Brower, Unruly Spirits. The Science of Psychic Phenomena in Modern France

Extract

After historians like Lynne Sharp and John W. Monroe have provided interesting insights into the practice and reception of fin-de-siècle French spiritisme, M. Brady Brower's excellent study is the first English-language monograph on the history of French psychical research, the scientific evaluation of alleged psychic phenomena associated with spiritualism, mesmerism and hypnotism. Apart from offering a wealth of valuable original insights, Unruly Spirits transports findings of French historians of psychology and psychical research such as Régine Plas and Bertrand Méheust, which have been obscure to non-French readers to date, revealing the close links and strong overlaps between late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French psychology and psychical research. Although confined to France and French Switzerland, Brower's analysis thus complements related historical studies regarding psychical research in other countries, such as Laurence Moore's In Search of White Crows (Oxford University Press, 1977) and Eugene Taylor's William James: On Consciousness beyond the Margin (Princeton University Press, 1996) for the USA, Alan Gauld's Founders of Psychical Research (Kegan Paul, 1968) and Janet Oppenheim's The Other World (Cambridge University Press, 1985) for England, as well as two recent additions covering Germany, Corinna Treitel's A Science for the Soul (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) and Heather Wolffram's The Stepchildren of Science (Rodopi, 2009).