Théodore Flournoy

Théodore Flournoy (1854 to 1920) was a Swiss professor of psychology at the University of Geneva and the author of books on parapsychology and spiritism. Born into a well-off Geneva family, he studied mathematics, natural sciences and medicine, attended lectures by Wilhelm Wundt in Germany, and became acquainted with William James and Alfred Binet before devoting himself to psychology. In 1891 he took the Chair of Experimental Psychology at Geneva, was given a laboratory after introducing a course in physiological psychology, and became the first professor of psychology in Europe to belong to the Faculty of Sciences rather than the Faculty of Philosophy. He presided over the Sixth International Congress of Psychology. He is best known for his research on psychical phenomena, in particular his study of a medium he called Helene Smith, whose trance utterances he recorded for five years and which he described in From India to the Planet Mars in 1900. His book Spiritism and Psychology, translated in 1911, argued that mediumship could be explained by suggestion and telepathy from the medium\u0027s subconscious, with no evidence for the spirit hypothesis.