Psychological Society, The

An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)

The Psychological Society came into being in April, 1875, having as its founder and president Sergeant Cox, and numbering among its members the Rev. William Stainton Moses, Mr. Walter H. Coffin, and Mr. and Mr. C. C. Massey. The avowed aim of the Society, as set forth in the president's inaugural address, was the elucidation of those spiritualistic and other problems now grouped under the term " psychical research ," and to which the Society somewhat loosely attached the designation of psychology. To this end they proposed to collect and consider the available material bearing on psychic phenomena, but in reality they accomplished little of any practical value, as may be seen from their published Proceedings (London, 1878). The president himself had not the necessary scientific qualifications for an investigator of such phenomena. In November, 1879, on the death of its president, the Society came to an end. But though the Psychological Society regarded the psychic phenomena from a more or less popular standpoint, and conducted its investigations in a somewhat superficial manner, nevertheless it contained that germ of scientific enquiry into the domain of psychic science which, a few years later, in the Society for Psychical Research, was to raise the study to a level where it became worthy of the attention of philosopher and scientist. Hitherto those who were satisfied of the genuineness of the spiritualistic marvels had for the most part been content to accept the explanation of spirit intervention, but the Psychological Society was the crystallisation of a small body of " rationalist" opinion which had existed since the days of Mesmer. Sergeant Cox, in his work, The Mechanism of Man states that spirit is refined matter, or molecular matter split into its constituent atoms, which thus become imperceptible to our physical " " organism; a view which was possibly shared by the Psychological Society.