PSYCHICAL RESEARCH, a term ap plied to the process of inquiry into the "phenomena designated by such terms as mesmeric, psychical, and spiritualis tic," to use the words of the programme of the British Society for Psychical Re search. The object of the inquiry, as described by this society, was to deter mine the nature and extent of any in fluence which might be exerted by one mind upon another apart from any gen erally recognized mode of perception. Inquiry had to be made into hypnotism, the so-called mesmeric trance, tNrvoy.
ante, reports of apparitions and haunted houses, and the phenomena of spiritual ism. The British society was established in 1882, and an American society on similar lines two years later. Since that time continued inquiry has been made for the purpose of testing all the re ported channels of thought that might exist outside the known channels of per ception. The methods employed include arrangements by which an agreed-upon individual is led to concentrate his mind on some simple idea or object and to seek by methods distinct from those employed by the senses to transfer the idea to a second individual, who is usually chosen as being endowed with a supposed acute sensibility to impressions so received. The evidence gathered is designed to show that impressions of various kinds have been communicated from one mind to another in this way. On occasions the person acting the part of recipient has been put into a hypnotic condition, and experiments have been considered as showing that acute sensibility so induced has made thought transference more easy. The evidence that has been ac cumulated up to the present as a result of experiment has, however, not been such as to establish any process of telepathy.
Apart from the evidence that has been derived from repeated experimental at tempts at thought transference, the so cieties of psychical research have syste matically gathered all available data relating to human experience in the tele pathic field. This group of experiences
has been in the main of a spontaneous character, arising without any prepara tion of milieu or conditions on the part of the percipient. The larger division relates to the transference of presenti ments in connection with crises in the lives of persons involved in the presenti ment. Only a small proportion of the cases so recorded, however, were bereft of elements that tended to doubt as to the actual connection between the event and the presentiment. The investigation, however, showed how subject the human mind is to ideas of this kind, even in a state normal and healthy. The sum to tal of inquiry up to the present Vine has not established the telepathic hypothesis on a scientific basis, but it has at least explored mental conditions that before the introduction of psychical research had remained unexplored, and if it has not shown with certainty telepathic po tentialities in the human mind, it has at least aided in defining more clearly hu man limits in the perception and com munication of ideas.
The American Society for Psychical Research was for some years connected with the British society, but in 1906 it was reorganized into an independent as sociation. The society issues a monthly journal, and has for some years pub lished its proceedings. It participated in the census of hallucinations, initiated by the British society and carried on for three years ending in 1892. The society does not aim at the classification of a recognized body of knowledge, but at an investigation and interpretation of groups of psychical phenomena.