The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-06-23
Probing The Occult
$ By H. ADDINGroN BRUCE

To three professors of psychology, taking lunch together, brought up the subject of psychical research. Their reaction was most interesting.
 One took an attitude of bored indifference. Others might probe the occult if they chose. but not he. He was interested in things of greater importance.
 The second was frankly hostile. It was foolish for any scientist, he held, to labor in field where he could not establish the conditions of rigorous scientific experiment and control.
 Just as frankly the third approved partici- patton in phychical research by men of science, and particularly by psychologists. Genuine or illusory, occult phenomena, he argued, bear directly on human thought and human behavior, and thus come unmistakably into the domain of psychology.
 unquestionably. they do. More than this. in the years that have passed since organized and systematic probing of the occult began, that probing has resulted in discoveries of as practical a significance as any modern psychology can boast. In fact, modern psychology itself is vastly indebted to the labors of psychical researchers unfairly made the targets for sneers by psychologists who ought to be the first to thank them.
 If psychology today has a clearer under. standing than it used to have of. the laws and mechanisms of dreams, of hallucinations of suggestion, of delusion. of mental dulling and mental quickening; if it is able, as it was not able even twenty-five years ago, to lay bare hidden motives of conduct, it is largely because of the pioneering work of the derived psychical researchers.
 From them psychology gained both stim- ulus to explore the subconscious life of man, and also sundry methods for it's more effec- tive exploration. Openly and generously this was acknowledged by one famous psychol- ogiSt, the eminent William James, at the time of the death of that greatest of early psychical researchers, F. W. H. Myers In tribute paid to Myers memory, James avowed:
 What iS the precise constitution of the subliminal-such is the problem which de- serves to figure in our science hereafter as the problem of Myers and, willy-nilly, in quiry must follow on the path which he has opened up. But Myers has not only pro- pounded the problem definitely, he has also invented definite methods for it's solution.
 "Post-hypnotic suggestion, crystal-gazing, automatic writing, and trance speech the willing game, etc., are now, thanks to his instruments of research, reagents like litmus paper and the galvano-meter for revealing what would otherwise be hidden. These are sO Lhdhy ways OA putting the SuDcOnScl0uS on tap"
 Surely it i'll becomes minor psychologists to scoff when a leader like William James was so outspoken in sympathy and praise And surely the fact that James was himself willing to be psychical researcher as we'll as psychologist should give all psychologists pause whenever they are tempted to con- demn psychical research, as not few of them do as a grievous waste of time. Undeniably there are uncommon difficult ties in the way of satisfactory study of oc- cult phenomena. The fact, too, that they often are associated with chicanery and fraud tends naturally enough to create sentiments of impatience and disgust. They remain none the less phenomena that have already yielded results of real value to science-and phe- nomena promising to yield still more valuable results if trained psychologists as a class can be persuaded to investigate them.