Psychical Research

James was involved in the London Society for Psychical Research from its founding in 1882, joining eminent British colleagues, including philosopher Henry Sidgwick; Frederic W. H. Myers; Arthur Balfour, who became England’s prime minister; and physicist William Fletcher Barrett.

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- In 1884, James helped to found the American Society for Psychical Research, “under which innocent sounding name,” he wrote to his cousin Kitty Prince, “ghosts, second sight, spiritualism, & all sorts of hobgoblins are going to be ‘investigated’ by the most high toned & ‘cultured’ members of the community. . . .”
  
  Indeed, the ASPR attracted among its members astronomer Simon Newcomb of Johns Hopkins, anthropologist Charles Sedgwick Minot of Harvard; biologist Asa Gray; Andrew White, president of Cornell; and minister Phillips Brooks. They believed, with James, that scientific methodology could yield significant insights about the unseen world.
  
  Heading the committee to investigate mediums, James attended séances, sometimes in the company of his colleague Josiah Royce, often with his wife. Their motivation was more than intellectual after the death of their son Herman in 1885. In grief, they yearned, James said, to know “where or what he is” after passing through “that dark portal” of death.
  
  Although many mediums seemed obviously fraudulent, Leonora Piper truly seemed able to transmit communications from the dead. For James, she was the “white crow” that proved not all crows were black. Piper became central to the ASPR’s investigations, conducted mostly by British researcher Richard Hodgson (2).
  
  In one of his last published essays, James admitted that although psychical phenomena remained baffling, he believed that future investigations would confirm the existence of a “cosmic consciousness”—perhaps containing individual spirits and earth’s memories-- that transcends material reality.

In this section

	Henry Sidgwick. Photograph, undated. From the James family album.	F.W. Myers. Mrs. F.W. Myers, photographer. Photograph, undated.

	WJ. [Proposal for an American Psychopathological Society]. Autograph manuscript, signed, undated.	American Society for Psychical Research. Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research.

	Mrs. Leonora Piper in a trance. Mrs. F.W. Myers, photographer. Dry plate photograph, ca. 1895.	Richard Hodgson. Photograph, undated. From the James family album.

	WJ. [Report on Mrs. Piper's Hodgson-control]. Autograph manuscript, signed, and typescript with autograph revisions; Cambridge, 15 January 1909.	WJ. “The confidences of a ‘psychical researcher’.” Autograph manuscript, signed, [1909].

	William James and Theodore Flournoy in Geneva. René-Édouard Claparède, photographer. Photograph, 18 May 1905.	Hereward Carrington. Eusapia Palladino and her phenomena. New York: B.W. Dodge & Co., 1909.

	WJ. Letter to Théodore Flournoy. Chocorua, 18 June 1909.	WJ. “Telepathy once more” [letter to the Editor], published in The Nation, 76: 1973 (23 April 1903).

	Automatic writing by Mr. Arnold. [Cambridge] 31 October 1889.