Professor of psychology at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and a noted psychical researcher. Flournoy was born August 15, 1854, and studied at the University of Strasbourg Medical School. From 1891 to 1919 he taught physiological psychology, experimental psychology, and the philosophy of science at the University of Geneva. He published many important works on medicine and psychology, including Des Phénomènes de Synapsie (Phenomena of Synapsis) (1893), Les Principes de la psychologie religieuse (1903), and Le Genie religieux (1904).
He became interested in mediumship, which led to his writing one of the more famous books in psychical research, Des Indes à la Planète Mars (1900), translated as From India to the Planet Mars in 1901. This was the sensation of the year, and the passage of time has in no way affected its unusual scientific worth or mitigated its absorbing interest. The book deals with the mediumship of Hélène Smith, to whose circle Flournoy was first admitted in the winter of 1894-95. It was published at a time when the work of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), London, and information on the mediumship of Lenora Piper had prepared a large part of the public for scientific revelation regarding another life.
Flournoy's book, written with erudition and a vivid sense of humor and irony, questioned many Spiritualistic beliefs and threw great doubt on the ascertainability of the extramundane existence of the entities that appear to communicate through mediums. He admitted many puzzling phenomena in the history of Smith's mediumship, however. He found the Hindu reincarnation remarkably real, and he could not offer an explanation for the medium's knowledge of remote historical incidents and traces of the Sanskrit language.
The arguments he advanced to prove that the communicators were subconscious impersonations were most impressive. He saw no reason to surrender this attitude in his subsequent Nouvelles Observations sur un cas de Somnambulisme (Geneva, 1902).
The reality of other psychic phenomena, such as telekinesis, telepathy, and clairvoyance, he did not doubt. He became convinced of telekinesis through his experiences with Eusapia Palladino and he found sufficient proof of telepathy in the re-search of the SPR.
Flournoy investigated the question of apparitions of the dying and the dead as early as 1898 by addressing a questionnaire to the members of the Societé des Études Psychiques and others concerning their personal experiences. He received 72 replies and published his conclusions in February 1899 in the Revue philosophique. Because he did not accept the narratives at their face value he was accused of suppressing evidence.
Feeling honor-bound to publish the correspondence in full, he included it in a later work, Esprits et Médiums, Mélanges de Métapsychique et de Psychologie (Paris, 1911), translated into English in an abridgment under the title Spiritism and Psychology in the same year. It is a book of reference and contains a detailed exposition of his conclusions regarding psychical re-search and survival. Flournoy believed in the survival of the soul but not in experimental communications with the dead. He referred briefly to Lenora Piper's mediumship and the evidence of cross-correspondence but was hesitant in offering telepathy as an explanation.
Flournoy died November 5, 1920.
Sources:
Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.
Flournoy, Theodore. Esprits et Médiums, Mélanges de Métapsychique et de Psychologie. Geneva: Libraire Kundig, 1911. Translated by Hereward Carrington and abridged as Spiritism and Psychology. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1911.
——. Des Indes à la Planète Mars. 1900. Translated as From India to the Planet Mars. New York: Harper, 1901.
——. The Philosophy of William James. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1969.
LeClair, R. C. The Letters of William James and Theodore Flournoy. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966.
