www.spr.ac.uk

Society for Psychical Research #fundie spr.ac.uk

The early SPR researchers established the main methodological principles and areas of research. The study of mediumship continued, providing much information on aspects of human personality and altered states of consciousness, and helping to perfect investigative techniques. Field investigations were carried out, and further collections, analyses and surveys of spontaneous phenomena were published.

Following the general trend – seen also in psychology – towards an experimental, more biological approach, experimental methods continued to undergo refinements. Pioneering work on free-response and quantitative experiments was carried out in the 1920s and 1930s by George Tyrrell, a British mathematician and physicist; he explored methods for inducing altered states of consciousness, designing techniques to differentiate between telepathy and clairvoyance and attempting to automate the randomisation of targets.

However, the centre of this activity shifted to America, with the establishment of JB Rhine’s Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University in the 1930s. While SPR researchers continued to experiment, the organisation evolved during this period from an investigative to a mainly educational body. From its earliest days the Society began creating a specialist library and an archive of original documents, housed both at its offices in London and at Cambridge University Library. Its Journal and Proceedings, published since the 1880s, offer a wealth of material relating to investigations and experiments past and present, as well as theoretical studies and papers discussing the relationship between psychical research and fields such as psychology, philosophy, physics, medicine, evolutionary biology and social sciences.

Today, the SPR continues to promote and support the main areas of psychical research, carrying out field investigations, surveys and experimental work. It holds no corporate view about the true origin and meaning of psi – as telepathic and other psychical phenomena are now collectively termed - and debate among its members with regard to particular subjects is often vigorous. However, it’s fair to say that from the earliest times the consensus view of its members – and of the psi research community in general – has been that psi is real, and that while the phenomena should certainly be explained in scientific terms, such a science does not at present exist.

The Society’s work has inevitably brought it into conflict with sceptics who believe that purely naturalistic explanations of psi phenomena can and must be found, and who strive to re-interpret researchers’ findings in terms of fraud and misperception. In recent years, the field has faced a growing campaign by ideologically-motivated activists determined to discourage interest in these matters, in order to support scientific naturalism against a perceived threat of superstition. Their work is particularly in evidence in the free encyclopedia Wikipedia, where articles on psi topics are now uniformly ‘balanced’ with the negative opinions of sceptical authors and campaigners, to the point where they have become confusing and misleading.

The SPR continues to argue the value of objective research and dispassionate elucidation of facts, regardless of their metaphysical implications. It has an important educational role to play, disseminating accounts of its work, and of psi research generally, for the benefit of individuals and for writers, journalists and broadcasters whose work may at times touch on these subjects.