Talk:Frederic W. H. Myers

message: This article is unintelligible within its "SPR" section. There is no scholarly survey of Myers' work or theorisations in this field, no indication of his unique discoveries, etc., his theoretical exchanges with William James ... This section will require much work to render it to an even trivially encyclopedic form. Best it were put to bed until then. Rodgarton (talk) 10:44, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Psychical research work and theories

message: Under the subheading "Metetherial world," at the end of the paragraph is an incomplete sentence beginning with "But".  I hesitate to join it to the previous sentence because I am not sure if that would be correct.  Someone who knows this topic would need to decide how to complete that sentence.CorinneSD (talk) 02:09, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: It appears that someone fixed this grammatical error by joining the two sentences.  Today I fixed other syntax and word usage problems in this paragraph.CorinneSD (talk) 22:12, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Metetherial world 

message: Calling User:Shii: where are the sources that say this person was either a sexologist or a skeptic? I can't find mention of either in the Wikipedia biography, which just describes him as a prolific writer. MartinPoulter (talk) 14:11, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Because it's just a mass market book and not an academic publication, we should note what kind of person is doing the writing. I thought I made an accurate summary of his two-line biography, but if you can think of better words please use them. Shii (tock) 14:33, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  According to his obituaries he was an author, and was described as a "historian of Victorian sub-culture".  There is no evidence from any sources that he was a "skeptic" or "sexologist". Doubter12 (talk) 17:36, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Shii the comment from Pearsall is less controversial than it seems. Annie Marshall was the cousin of Myers and he a sexual affair with her. It appears Annie Marshall claimed to be a medium and Myers investigated her a number of times. So the statement that he had sexual interests in the mediums he investigated is not made up to attack Myers from a "skeptic". Annie commited suicide. I did some further research and it appears she committed suicide in 1875 by drowning herself. I will try and dig up some further references apparently Myers had homosexual relationships with his fellow SPR members as well as with other female mediums. Doubter12 (talk) 18:06, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

text: User:Shii, I asked, "where are the sources that say this person was either a sexologist or a skeptic?" You respond "I thought I made an accurate summary of his two-line biography" and so my question is unanswered. To call someone a sexologist I would expect there to be a source saying they held a research post in sexology, or published in relevant journals. To call someone a skeptic I would expect there would be sources linking them to the skeptical movement, unless you mean the older sense of "skeptic" in which case I'd expect a third-party source calling them that. I'm still in the dark as to why you chose those two terms to describe "what kind of person" Pearsall was. Thanks Doubter12 for the relevant sources and quotations. MartinPoulter (talk) 19:25, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Ronald Pearsall]] 

message: *Trevor H. Hall in his book The strange case of Edmund Gurney on page 28 wrote:
:"Arthur Sidgwick, Frederic Myers and John Addington Symonds were all linked by homosexual relationships."
:His source for that claim is John Addington Symonds: A Biography by Phyllis Grosskurth. I will have to dig up this biography to investigate this any further. 
* In the book Nameless Offences: Homosexual Desire in the 19th Century by H.G. Cocks on page 185 it is mentioned that Myers was an undergraduate of John Addington Symonds, so they both knew each other. The homosexuality of Symonds was well known. The chapter is entitled "Cosmic Consciousness and Homosexuality" and mentions the homosexuality of Walt Whitman and his poetry which Myers introduced Symonds to. Doubter12 (talk) 19:22, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Myers homosexual relationships

message: I've nominated the sub-page Talk:Frederic William Henry Myers/Comments for deletion as it seems to violate WP:NOTFORUM and does not advance improvement of the article. MartinPoulter (talk) 19:36, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The user Jamenta (talk) has been blocked for "Making legal threats: edit warring; personal attacks". He has now turned up on his IP address and is posting more abusive comments on this talk page. His essay is original research and should be deleted. I am a bit busy at the moment but will try and add some sources in the next week to the article. Doubter12 (talk) 22:34, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jamenta's essay up for deletion 

message: In this section on how Myers' work was received, there are two sentences.  The first one is serious and to the point.  The second one is less serious, and does not speak directly to how his work was received at that time, but also, no connection was made between the first and second sentences.  I even wonder why this second sentence is there in the first place, unless it became some kind of scandal or detracted from his reputation, in which case there should be evidence cited to support it.  Does anybody have any ideas for improving this paragraph or any evidence that can be cited?CorinneSD (talk) 22:17, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reception 

message: I'm just wondering why the following paragraph was deleted from the article:
:"Frederic Myers has been described as an "important early depth psychologist" who influenced William James, Pierre Janet, Théodore Flournoy and Carl G. Jung.Book review:Irreducible Mind, The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Vol.29, No 4, Autumn 2008.
Since I am not an expert in this field, I will wait to see if the edits made today by Fodor Fan stand.  If they do, then in a while I will edit the added material to improve syntax and punctuation. – CorinneSD (talk) 21:12, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: It was deleted because it's undue weight to a fringe view (Myers was not a psychologist) and there's no evidence he influenced any scientists, the sentence is just plain flat wrong and contradicted by practically every other reference out there. Also the reference is a book review for a paranormal book by Bruce Greyson. Irreducible Mind is a pseudoscience book. It's been negatively reviewed by the scientific community. See Mitchell G. Ash, Horst Gundlach, Thomas Sturm. (2010). Book Review: Irreducible Mind. American Journal of Psychology. Volume 123, Number 2. pp. 246-250 etc. Myers views on spirits were never accepted by the scientific community. Fodor Fan (talk) 01:17, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: CorinneSD I just spent about 20 minutes looking on Google books for Myers being described as a "psychologist" could not find a single reliable reference. It's misleading to call Myers a psychologist because he wasn't one, but I agree about him influencing William James. Fodor Fan (talk) 01:45, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for your reply.  As I mentioned above, I am not an expert, and I defer to your greater knowledge and appreciate the search you made.  I just want to point out that "depth psychologists" were not exactly the same as general, or even modern, psychologists.  (I have personal knowledge regarding that; my grandmother was one.) I will try to do some reading on my own to see what I can find.CorinneSD (talk) 01:55, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

text:  I have read all Myers books, they are interesting, unfortunately he was seriously duped by fraudulent mediums. See  for an introduction to how he was fooled by Eusapia Palladino. I apologize for my bad spelling, obviously feel free to correct any mistakes. Fodor Fan (talk) 02:00, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have put the reference back in which describes Myers as a depth psychologist. The journal is itself notable The Journal of Mind and Behavior. I believe it's wrong but I'm not going to moan about one line. I'm not working on this article anymore, perhaps you can fix the spelling errors. I apologize for the error with the full stop in the image description. Thanks. Fodor Fan (talk) 02:04, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't mind reviewing the article for spelling errors and such.  Please don't feel you have to apologize for things like the full stop/period in the image description.  Even I wasn't sure about that and had to ask a fellow editor who is more of an expert on things like that.  This is a collaborative effort.  Also, it is very possible you are correct about that reference.  I think it would be interesting to find out exactly what Myers was.CorinneSD (talk) 15:32, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edits of November 29, 2013, by Fodor Fan 

message: There is a long section on Eusapia Palladino which seems only tangentially relevant to Myers. So I've added an off-topic tag, and suggest that most of it is removed. Much of it already appears in the Palladino article, which is a better place for it. Johnfos (talk) 02:37, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Off-topic material

message: I made a controversial pro-Myers edit here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Frederic_W._H._Myers&diff=785836912&oldid=784762089#Early_life
this will no doubt arouse the opprobrium of skeptics, but there are many good sources here, that could be included for a more balanced article. With the full spectrum of sources, Myers comes out looking very good, and his critics - not so good.
This just exists here for future reference.Psychicbias (talk) 18:00, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  more corrections 

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thread_title:  External links modified