Psoriasis

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

scaly tetter. It is often hereditary, and a cutaneous disease-the is akin to lepra. PSYCHE. In the later Greek writings the word psyche occurs as a personification of the human soul. PSYCHICAL plied to the process of inquiry into the RESEARCH, a term ap- "phenomena designated by such as mesmeric, psychical, and spiritualisterms tic," to use the words of the programme of the British Society for Psychical Research. The object ect of the inquiry , as described mine the nature and extent of any inby this society, was to deterfluence which might be exerted by one mind upon another apart from any generally recognized mode of Inquiry had to be made into hypnotism, perception. the so-called mesmeric trance, clairvoyance, reports of apparitions and haunted houses, and the phenomena of spiritualism. 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 reported channels of thought that might exist outside the known channels of perception. 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 to impressions so received. re sensibilit The evidence gathered is designed to sensibilty 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 accumulated 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 attempts at thought transference, the societies of psychical psychical research have systematically gathered all available data relating to human experience in the telepathic field. This group of experiences has been in the main of a spontaneous character, arising without any preparation of milieu or conditions on the part of the percipient. The larger division relates to the transference of presentiments in connection with crises in the lives of persons involved in the presentiment. 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. Th y. The sum total of inquiry up to the present time 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 potentialities in the human mind, it has at least aided in defining more clearly hu man limits in the perception and communication 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 association. The society issues a monthly journal, and has for some years published 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.