The Definitive Account of Early Mediumship

A Review of The Heyday of Mental Mediumship: 1880s-1930s: Investigators, Mediums and Communicators

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31156/jaex.24984

Keywords:

mediumship, channeling, psychical research, history of psychical research, parapsychology, survival, society for psychical research, anomalous cognition, Society for Psychical Research

Abstract

Following his acclaimed earlier study on mediumship and survival, Alan Gauld provides a more complete account of about 50 years of early studies on mediumship with a select group of mediums (e.g., Mrs. Piper, Mrs. Leonard, Mrs. Dowden). He describes in detail why many if not most of the criticisms against extraordinarily accurate accounts by these mediums do not hold water when analyzed in detail. Gauld does not provide easy answers, but in his masterwork does something much more important by offering a justification to those who may want to base their belief of potential survival on empirically defensible grounds.

Author Biography

Etzel Cardeña, Lund University

Etzel Cardeña was born and raised in México. He has been elected Fellow of APS and APA, among other organizations, and holds the endowed Thorsen Chair in psychology at Lund University, Sweden, where he leads the Center for Research on Consciousness and Anomalous Psychology (CERCAP). His areas of research include alterations of consciousness and anomalous experiences (including psi), dissociative processes and posttraumatic reactions, the neurophenomenology of hypnosis and transcendent experiences, and the stream of consciousness during waking and altered states. His Ph. D. is from the University of California, Davis (under Charles Tart) and he was a postdoctoral fellow and scholar resident at Stanford University. He has more than 400 publications, some in top journals in psychology and related disciplines such as American Journal of Psychiatry,  American Psychologist, Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Psychological Bulletin, and others. Various professional organizations have given him awards for his research, theoretical, historical, and pedagogical work. He was the Founding Editor of Mindfield, Past Editor of Journal of Parapsychology, and Senior Editor of the books Varieties of Anomalous Experiences, Altering Consciousness, and Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century. He has also worked professionally as a theatre director, actor, and playwright.

References

Acree, M. C. (2021). The myth of statistical inference. Springer.

Bakan, D. (1969). On method. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Beischel, J., & Zingrone, N. (2015). Mental mediumship. In E. Cardeña, J. Palmer, and D. Marcusson-Clavertz (Eds.), Parapsychology: A handbook for the 21st century (pp. 301–313). McFarland.

Beischel, J., & Schwartz, G. E. (2007). Anomalous information reception by research mediums demonstrated using a novel triple-blind protocol. Explore, 3, 23-27.

Bergman, L. R., & Lundh, L.-G. (2015). Introduction: The person oriented approach: Roots and Roads to the future. Journal for Person Oriented Approach, 1(1-2). https://doi.org/10.17505/jpor.2015.01

Cardeña, E. (2014). A call for an open, informed, study of all aspects of consciousness. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00017.

Cardeña, E. (2015). Eminent people interested in psi. https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/eminent-people-interested-psi.

Cardeña, E. (2019). “The data are irrelevant”: Response to Reber and Alcock. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 33(4), 593-598.

Cardeña, E., Palmer, J., & Marcusson-Clavertz, D. (2015). Parapsychology: A handbook for the 21st century. McFarland.

Cardeña, E., Schaffler, Y., & Van Duijl, M. (2023). The other in the self: Possession, trance, and related phenomena. In M. J. Dorahy, S. N. Gold, & J. A. O’Neill (Eds.), Dissociation and the dissociative disorders: Past, present, future. 2nd ed. (pp. 421-432). Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781003057314-31

Fischer, A., & Knoefel, T. (Eds.) (2007). Okkulte stimmen – mediale music: Recording of unseen intelligence (3 cds) Supposé.

Gauld, A. (1982). Mediumship and survival. Heinemann.

Gauld, A. (1968). The founders of psychical research. Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Gurney, E., Myers, F. W. H., Podmore, F., Sidgwick, H., Stack, J. H., Sidgwick, H., Mrs., & Hodgson, R. (1885). Report of the committee appointed to investigate phenomena connected with the Theosophical Society. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 3, 201–400.

Hövelmann, G. H. (2015). On the usefulness of parapsychology for science at large. In E.

Cardeña, J. Palmer, & D. Marcusson-Clavertz (Eds.), Parapsychology: A handbook for

the 21st century (pp. 389-398). McFarland.

Hövelmann, G. H. (2015). On the usefulness of parapsychology for science at large. In E.

Cardeña, J. Palmer, & D. Marcusson-Clavertz (Eds.), Parapsychology: A handbook for

the 21st century (pp. 389-398). McFarland.

Hövelmann, G. H. (2015). On the usefulness of parapsychology for science at large. In E.

Cardeña, J. Palmer, & D. Marcusson-Clavertz (Eds.), Parapsychology: A handbook for

the 21st century (pp. 389-398). McFarland.

Hövelmann, G. H. (2015). On the usefulness of parapsychology for science at large. In E.

Cardeña, J. Palmer, & D. Marcusson-Clavertz (Eds.), Parapsychology: A handbook for

the 21st century (pp. 389-398). McFarland.

mann, G. H. (2015). On the usefulness of parapsychology for science at l

Hövelmann, G. H. (2015). On the usefulness of parapsychology for science at large. In E. Cardeña, J. Palmer, & D. Marcusson-Clavertz (Eds.), Parapsychology: A handbook for the 21st century (pp. 389-398). McFarland.

Jarrell, R. (1953). Reflections on Wallace Stevens. In Poetry and the age. Faber and Faber.

Keller, E. F. (1983). A feeling for the organism: The life and work of Barbara McClintock. Freeman.

Monteiro de Barros, M., Camelo Leão, F., Vallada Filho, H., Lucchetti, G., Moreira-Almeida, A., & Prieto Peres, M. F. (2022). Prevalence of spiritual and religious experiences in the general population: A Brazilian nationwide study. Transcultural Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1177/13634615221088701

Sarraf, M., Woodley Of Menie, M. A., & Tressoldi, P. (2021). Anomalous information reception by mediums: A meta-analysis of the scientific evidence. Explore, 17(5), 396–402. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2020.04.002

Sidgwick, M. H. (1915). A contribution to the study of the psychology of Mrs. Piper’s trance phenomena. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 28, 1–657.

Sidgwick, M. H. (1922). Phantasms of the Living: An Examination and Analysis of Cases of Telepathy between Living Persons Printed in the "Journal" of the Society for Psychical Research since the Publication of the Book "Phantasms of the Living," by Gurney, Myers and Podmore in 1886. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 33, 23-429.

Thomas, J. F. (1937). Beyond normal cognition. Boston Society for Psychic Research.

Williams, B. J. (2019). Reassessing the “impossible”: A critical commentary on Reber and Alcock’s “Why Parapsychological claims cannot be true.” Journal of Scientific Exploration, 33(4), 593-616.

Downloads

Published

2023-04-03

How to Cite

Cardeña, E. (2023). The Definitive Account of Early Mediumship: A Review of The Heyday of Mental Mediumship: 1880s-1930s: Investigators, Mediums and Communicators. Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition, 3(1), 204–214. https://doi.org/10.31156/jaex.24984

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2023)

Section

Book reviews

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Etzel Cardeña

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

All articles published in JAEX are open access, freely and universally accessible online, and archived in the open journal’s Lund University website (https://journals.lub.lu.se). Articles in JAEX can be distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License CCBY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, with appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, a link to the Creative Commons license, and an indication if changes were made.