Unruly Spirits : The Science of Psychic Phenomena in Modern France
Book Details
Format
Paperback / Softback
ISBN-10
0252077512
ISBN-13
9780252077517
Publisher
University of Illinois Press
Imprint
University of Illinois Press
Country of Manufacture
US
Country of Publication
GB
Publication Date
Oct 7th, 2010
Print length
232 Pages
Weight
354 grams
Dimensions
22.40 x 15.40 x 1.70 cms
Product Classification:
FranceParapsychological studies
Ksh 4,300.00
Werezi Extended Catalogue
0 in stock
Delivery Location
Delivery fee: Select location
Secure
Quality
Fast
A fascinating history of parapsychic phenomena in France during the age of Sigmund Freud
Unruly Spirits connects the study of sÉances, telepathy, telekinesis, materializations, and other parapsychic phenomena in France during the age of Sigmund Freud to an epistemological crisis that would eventually yield the French adoption of psychoanalysis. Skillfully navigating experiments conducted by nineteenth-century French psychical researchers and the wide-ranging debates that surrounded their work, M. Brady Brower situates the institutional development of psychical research at the intersection of popular faith and the emergent discipline of psychology.
Brower shows how spiritualist mediums were ignored by French academic scientists for nearly three decades. Only after the ideologues of the Third Republic turned to science to address what they took to be the excess of popular democracy would the marvels of mediumism begin to emerge as legitimate objects of scientific inquiry. Taken up by the most prominent physicists, physiologists, and psychologists of the last decades of the nineteenth century, psychical research would eventually stall in the 1920s as researchers struggled to come to terms with interpersonal phenomena (such as trust and good faith) that could not be measured within the framework of their experimental methods.
In characterizing psychical research as something other than a mere echo of popular spirituality or an anomaly among the sciences, Brower argues that the questions surrounding mediums served to sustain the scientific project by forestalling the establishment of a closed and complete system of knowledge. By acknowledging persistent doubt about the intentions of its participants, psychical research would result in the realization of a subjectivity that was essentially indeterminate and would thus clear the way for the French reception of psychoanalysis and the Freudian unconscious and its more comprehensive account of subjective uncertainty.
Get Unruly Spirits by at the best price and quality guaranteed only at Werezi Africa's largest book ecommerce store. The book was published by University of Illinois Press and it has pages.
