Professor of psychology successively at Oxford University, Harvard University, and Duke University who made important contributions to parapsychology. He was born June 22, 1871, in Lancashire, England, and was educated at Owens College, Manchester, St. Thomas Hospital, London, and Cambridge, Oxford, and Göttingen universities. He was a fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge (1898; hon. fellow, 1938), a reader at University College London, and a reader in mental philosophy and fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, before becoming a professor at Harvard.
In 1920 he became president of the Society for Psychical Research, and the following year became president of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR). He sat on the Scientific American Committee for the investigation of the mediumship of "Margery" (Mina S. Crandon) and was a keen but reserved investigator who took great care initially not to commit himself to affirming the genuine occurrence of the supernormal. McDougall later came to believe that Margery's phenomena were created fraudulently and joined with other members of the ASPR to protest the organization's public identification with her. In 1925 he joined with others in the founding of the Boston Society for Psychical Research.
McDougall was one of the leading psychologists of his time and the author of numerous books. He contributed an article on hypnotism to the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1910), as well as articles on hallucination, suggestion, and trance (11th-14th editions).
His continuing interest in psychical research was a dominant influence in the development of modern parapsychology. He is most remembered for the period he spent as head of the Psychology Department at Duke University (1927-38), and he encouraged J. B. Rhine in the founding of the Parapsychology Laboratory, from which modern research in laboratory controlled experiments developed. He also authored a variety of articles on parapsychology, defended the place of parapsychology as an academic discipline, and co-edited the Journal of Parapsychology (1937-38). He died November 28, 1938.
Sources:
Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.
McDougall, William. Body and Mind: A History and Defense of Animism. London: Methuen, 1911.
——. "The Case of Sally Beauchamp." Proceedings of the Society of Psychical Research 19-20 (1905-07).
——. "Further Observations on the 'Margery' Case." Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 19 (1925).
——. "The Margery Mediumship." Psyche 26 (1926).
——. Modern Materialism and Emergent Evolution. New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1929.
——. "The Need for Psychical Research." Harvard Graduate Magazine. Reprinted in ASPR Journal 17 (1923).
——. The Riddle of Life. London: Methuen, 1938.
Pleasants, Helene, ed. Biographical Dictionary of Parapsychology. New York: Helix Press, 1964.
