The inner life
Society for Psychical Research
Direct answer
Society for Psychical Research: The Society for Psychical Research is a learned society founded in London in 1882 to investigate telepathy, apparitions, mediums and similar claims without prejudice and by scientific methods.
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At a glance
- Also called
- SPR, psychical research society
- Found in
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Related
- Telepathy, Parapsychology, Extrasensory Perception
The Society for Psychical Research is a learned society founded in London in 1882 to investigate telepathy, apparitions, mediums and similar claims without prejudice and by scientific methods.
A plain educational schematic; it does not diagnose a condition or replace professional care.
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When was the Society for Psychical Research founded?
The Society was the first organisation set up to examine such claims systematically. Its founders included the philosopher Henry Sidgwick, its first president, the classicist Frederic Myers and the physicist William Barrett. Later presidents included the physicist Oliver Lodge, the psychologist William James and Arthur Balfour, afterwards prime minister. What united them was the wish to treat the question as open and to test it.
Society for Psychical Research’s work was of two kinds. It gathered and sifted reports from the public, and it investigated individuals, many of whom it exposed as frauds. The word telepathy and much of the field's later vocabulary came out of its publications. It still exists, keeps a library and archive, and publishes a journal.
On the tree of the hidden arts: The sixth sense.
What sets Society for Psychical Research apart
The Society was unusual from the start in who belonged to it: fellows of Cambridge colleges, physicists and a future prime minister, sitting on committees for thought reading, mesmerism, apparitions and haunted houses. It was neither a spiritualist body nor a debunking one, and it has kept the rule that it holds no corporate opinion. Much of its lasting work was negative, the careful exposure of fraud.
- Founded: London, February 1882
- First president: Henry Sidgwick, professor of moral philosophy at Cambridge
- Early landmark: Phantasms of the Living, 1886, some seven hundred cases
- Census: Census of Hallucinations, 1894, about seventeen thousand replies
- American branch: American Society for Psychical Research, 1885
Often mistaken for something else: Spiritualist churches hold that the dead communicate; the Society was founded to examine that claim and others, and takes no position on whether any is true.
The story behind Society for Psychical Research
Society for Psychical Research was founded in February 1882 after a conference called by William Barrett. An American society followed in 1885. Phantasms of the Living appeared in 1886 and a census of hallucinations, with some seventeen thousand answers, in 1894. In 1885 its investigator Richard Hodgson reported that the marvels claimed by Helena Blavatsky were fraudulent, a finding a later member of the Society criticised in 1986.
Why Society for Psychical Research matters
Society for Psychical Research set the pattern of asking for evidence that every later inquiry into the sixth sense has followed.
How to read Society for Psychical Research
Its Journal and Proceedings are the standard source for older cases, and its archive is consulted by historians of science and religion.
Society for Psychical Research in practice: an example
A report of a vision at the hour of a death is sent to the Society, which questions the witnesses and checks the dates before filing it.
Where readings of Society for Psychical Research go wrong
The Society holds no corporate opinion; a case printed in its pages is a report examined, never a verdict that it was real.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Aliases
- SPR, psychical research society, Society for Psychical Research London, psychical research
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
When was the Society for Psychical Research founded?
In London in February 1882. Its first president was the Cambridge philosopher Henry Sidgwick, and its founders included Frederic Myers, Edmund Gurney and William Barrett.
Does the Society for Psychical Research still exist?
Yes. It is based in London, maintains a library and archive, holds lectures and publishes a peer reviewed journal. It states that it holds no collective view on whether the claims it studies are true.
What did the Society for Psychical Research discover?
It collected thousands of reports, coined the word telepathy, and exposed many fraudulent mediums. It did not reach an agreed conclusion that any paranormal faculty exists.
