by Donald West
The correspondence columns of the Society’s Journal began to bristle with expressions of discontent. Ideally, a society dedicated to impartial investigation should welcome the debunking of dubious claims, but anyone can join the SPR and some who do so have an already unshakeable faith in the supernatural and do not welcome reports that cast doubt. Unlike many groups using the name ‘Psychic’, including the nearby and more grandly housed “College of Psychic Studies”, the SPR is not a spiritualist organisation. Nevertheless, there has always been a tension within the SPR membership and within its Council between persons believing the existence of the paranormal to be well established, and others who consider the evidence as yet inconclusive. One noteworthy incident was the protest resignation in 1930 of the author Conan Doyle, a deeply committed spiritualist. Disagreement continues between those psychical researchers interested in potentially repeatable experiments, the common means of progress in the physical sciences, and others who think the analysis of reports of psychic experiences occurring naturally in everyday life should be the main focus. The latter argue that psychic impressions are essentially spontaneous and cannot be expected to be induced satisfactorily under laboratory conditions. I sided with the experimentalists and was thought to be unsympathetic towards mediums and altogether too sceptical of reports of personal experiences.
Members of Council became increasingly dissatisfied and support from Mollie Goldney, who was herself regarded by some as too sceptical, was no longer decisive, so I was advised to seek other employment. Under the heading “The Research Department” the announcement of my departure in the SPR Journal (Mar/April 1949) put a gloss on the situation: “For some time past the Research Officer has with the full approval of the Council been following a course in psychiatry… On the termination of his contract with the Society, Dr West intends to practise as a psychiatrist, while kindly offering to attend to the Society’s research as Hon Research Officer outside professional hours … to help him in doing this work he should continue to reside in the flat at 31 Tavistock Square”.
A Partial Conversion
Never a complete disbeliever, I was aware that, along with deliberate frauds and eager self-deceptions, there were on record some remarkably convincing historic cases, both of psychics producing information they could not have obtained by normal means, and of impressive experimental demonstrations of telepathy. [Examples of the former are to be found in the investigations of the medium Mrs Piper in early volumes of SPR Proceedings; in the work of the French investigator of ‘paragnostics’, Eugène Osty, in the Revue Métapsychique; and in accounts of the Polish psychic, Stefan Ossowiecki, conveniently reviewed in A World in a Grain of Sand, by M.R. Barrington et al, London, 2005.]
Following release from SPR employment, Father treated me to a return trip to America on the trans-Atlantic Cunard liners, returning on the old Queen Mary, the ship that I had been taken to see as a schoolboy. On departure, because I was known to be the son of the boss of catering, I was seated alone in the first-class dining room. On the next table, also alone, was the ship’s nurse. She agreed to join me, but immediately there were objections to a female member of the crew sitting with a passenger, so I was banished to a lower-class dining room. The Cunard Company was maintaining an official policy of heterosexual morality, but less visible contacts between waiters and gay male passengers (such as Tennessee Williams) were not infrequent, although I knew nothing of that at the time.
As an SPR official I was greeted warmly by leading US parapsychologists. First, Gardner Murphy, a prominent American psychologist and an active supporter of psychical research, who had recently served a spell as President of the SPR, put me up in his holiday home in a wealthy area of New Hampshire. His academic eminence, his conviction of the importance of investigating ‘paranormal’ phenomena, and his emphasis on an empirical, scientific approach, all had a powerful effect on my still impressionable youth. His dismissive reaction to reports of ‘poltergeist’ hauntings, as ‘gee whiz’ phenomena, sensational but not amenable to consistent observation or experimental testing, echoed my own thinking. He was also an outstanding example of success in combining a distinguished academic career with active participation in psychical research.
The next stop was New York, where I found some dedicated experimentalists following more or less the Rhine tradition and obtaining positive results. Notable among them was Gertrude Schmeidler, a clinical psychologist working at City College where Gardner Murphy headed the psychology department. He had attracted her to the subject through his seminars at Harvard some years previously and, unlike many others who have become discouraged by lack of progress, she went on to pursue a long and distinguished career in parapsychology. She discovered the ‘sheep-goat’ effect, that is to say the differing performance in ESP tests between believers and sceptics. Tests given to unselected groups of people might produce scores that were in aggregate close to chance expectation, but this was because sceptics were scoring below chance, that is ‘avoiding’ the target, thus cancelling out the positive scores of the believers. For a long time similar sheep-goat effects were reported so frequently, both in her own and other experimenters’ work, they were thought to amount to a repeatable demonstration of the reality of an ESP effect. Albeit small, the effects were detectable in groups of volunteers not selected for any special ability or characteristic, but with varying attitudes of belief or disbelief. However, with the passage of time, the results reported from such elementary comparisons seemed no longer so clear-cut, and often no difference whatsoever was found. This particular form of testing, like many other promising methods put forward over the years, is no longer expected to give repeatable results.
Among the people I met was a young medic, prominent in the Harvard University undergraduate parapsychological society. He had obtained promising results with a machine for automatically registering guesses that supposedly obviated human recording errors. (This was long before the age of computers, when automation was to become standard practice in respectable ESP testing.) He invited me home and treated me to a culture shock. His father was a business magnate whose apartment, totally different from what I had expected in New York City, was made up of spacious panelled rooms, reminiscent of a baronial hall. A culture shock of a different kind occurred on leaving New York. I boarded a southbound Greyhound bus while it was still largely empty and unthinkingly chose a seat towards the rear. As more passengers arrived it became obvious that I was in the section designated for blacks. The seat next to me, the last to be filled, was taken by a large black lady. Nobody spoke, but there were numerous stares. I felt uncomfortably trapped. This was long before overt racial discrimination was outlawed and I could have been taken for some kind of social rebel, except that public protesters were not yet in evidence. On arriving in Durham, North Carolina, the seat of Duke University and Rhine’s Parapsychology Laboratory, further indications of segregation were all too obvious. Public toilets were in four sections, white male, white female, black male, black female. The railway tracks cut off the black housing area. In the University Hospital, which was well-equipped with pools and exercise machines for rheumatic and paralysing disorders, everything was in duplicate to avoid racial contamination. During my visit at that time I had no social contact with anyone non-white. That was to come later.
Duke, a private university, had a pleasant, spacious campus with buildings in vaguely classic style and a prominent gothic style chapel. The Parapsychology Laboratory occupied a small building of its own on the main University campus, with entrance steps large enough for group photographs. The publicity and funds Rhine attracted to his controversial work were not approved by everyone in the psychology department proper, which was separated from parapsychology both socially and territorially. Not counting the managing editor of the Journal of Parapsychology and the clerical staff, the Laboratory then included four research workers, three full time and one part time, and four research assistants. They seemed to outward appearance a happy team and I was
made to feel welcome. The British psychologist, Robert Thouless, who had visited the previous year, had also reported finding a happy social group free from suspicions and hostilities.
Notwithstanding Rhine’s bonhomie and democratic manner, and the obvious affection for him that some of his staff displayed, he was in firm control of Laboratory policy. He believed strongly in the value of the experimental approach and thought that the collection of reports of personal experiences of ESP in everyday life could never yield scientific proof. Cases in which mundane explanations, such as coincidence, faulty memory, unintended exaggeration, mistaken interpretation and lying could be completely ruled out were unobtainable. Nevertheless, the study of collections of cases of apparent ESP reported in good faith might reveal trends that suggest ideas for experiments. For example, since most spontaneous experiences occur when the person is alone and relaxed, it might help to have experimental subjects in a relaxed state without conscious straining or distracting influences. Rhine steered clear of professional mediums, who claimed to have great powers, while resisting the conditions needed for proper testing. Student volunteers were his preferred source of subjects. He emphasised the delicate psychological interplay of experimenter and subject required for successful results – a view which sceptics might regard as simply an excuse for failure. At the time of my visit he was no longer engaging in experimental work, devoting himself instead to public relations, dealing with visitors and fund givers, maintaining a voluminous international correspondence, and writing books for popular consumption.
Rhine’s high scoring ESP subjects of earlier days had long since faded away and not been replaced. Researchers at Duke were using subjects with no particular pretensions to psychic ability whose aggregate scores were often at chance level. Evidence for the presence of ESP relied upon contrasting the scores of sub-groups of subjects, defined by differences in personality or attitude, such as sheep/goat, extrovert/introvert; or by observing characteristic patterns in rate of scoring, such as a gradual decline over time or significant differences between scores at the beginning and the end of each run of twenty five calls. These anomalies, though providing evidence that the guesses were not random, were usually relatively small-scale and took time to emerge. Hopes of witnessing on the spot proof of ESP at work during my short visit were dashed.
Although lacking in the dramatic results of former years, the Journal of Parapsychology was still publishing a sufficient number of reports of small but apparently meaningful statistical effects to justify belief in the paranormal. I had no reason to doubt that, given a longer stay, I should have been able to see the positive outcome of some long-term project. Of one thing I did become convinced during the visit. The researchers appeared honest and dedicated and all reasonable precautions were being taken against such obvious errors as inadequate separation of target and subject, absence of independent checking of manual recording and counting, failure to ‘randomise’ the targets properly, or ‘optional stopping’ (i.e. premature cessation of an experiment without continuing to see if initial positive scoring was just a lucky streak). On returning to London I reported favourably on the work at Duke and felt confident enough to persist with ESP experiments. Being no longer an employee, and being a shade less sceptical, I could return to membership of the SPR’s governing Council and enjoy a kind of rehabilitation.
While still pursuing part-time training in psychiatry, there was time available for active involvement in parapsychology. I negotiated an invitation for two of Rhine’s workers to the SPR in London. They were Dr Betty Humphrey and Elizabeth McMahon. In years to come, like many others who worked for a time under Rhine, both later relinquished active participation in parapsychology, McMahon to become a distinguished entomologist. At the time of their visit Humphrey was using a personality test based on drawings made by subjects when asked to attempt to reproduce hidden targets. Two groups, classified as “expansive” or “compressive” on the style of their drawings, produced contrasting scores on ESP tests, the one significantly above and the other significantly below chance level. Humphrey contributed a review of her work to the SPR Journal (36, 453–67). Although she found very positive trends when sufficient numbers of subjects were tested, the trends were in opposite directions according to the type of ESP test applied. Betty McMahon carried out with me some card guessing experiments with a variety of volunteers, to test the idea that some people tend to score negatively and others positively, in which case their individual scores, though in total close to chance, might show a significant individual ‘dispersion’ from chance levels (i.e. increased variance). We did find the effect we were looking for in this brief experiment. Like so many promising results in parapsychological experiments, neither of these effects has proved a reliable means for detecting ESP.
The visit of these two young ladies was eventful in other ways. They met S.G.Soal, by now a psychic celebrity, who had been awarded a DSc degree from London University for his work in telepathy experimentation and who was about to become President of the SPR. Experiments with his second star subject, Mrs Gloria Stewart, were in train, but he did not invite them to witness the procedure. They also met Dr Eric Dingwall, a Cambridge scholar, who had been SPR Research Officer many years before. He was a great authority on the history of the subject, but not a fan of modern styles of experimentation. He had left his SPR post under a cloud and was now regarded as a troublesome critic, embarrassing the SPR Council by asking awkward questions at annual General Meetings. He had been hospitable to me since my appointment as Research Officer, inviting me to his flat in Cambridge, perhaps because he liked to hear gossip about what was happening at the SPR. He introduced me to the magnificent Cambridge University Library, a facility I was to make use of for the rest of my life. He was Hon. Curator of the British Museum’s extensive collection of erotica and he had written a number of books on sexual topics including historic studies of The Girdle of Chastity and Male Infibulation. His predilection for sexual gossip was well known. He had on numerous occasions made hints about the homosexual interests of one of the SPR’s presidents. These foibles no doubt contributed to his unpopularity among some of the leading figures in the SPR. These did not include Mollie Goldney, who co-authored with him a critical review of the poltergeist haunting of Borley Rectory, a case given great publicity by Harry Price. Dingwall was a wealthy man and gave money for me to accompany the two young ladies on a car trip round the Continent. This sealed my friendship with them, in particular with the younger Elizabeth McMahon, whom some people suspected (wrongly, of course) was going to become my ‘girlfriend’, although I have happily retained contact with her until her recent death. Dingwall continued making inflammatory criticisms of the SPR administration, not always totally unjustified. At one point he accused me of fraudulently pocketing the residue of an exhausted SPR research fund. Actually, the money had been allocated to a research worker with whom I had had no particular connection. Nevertheless, I remained on friendly terms with Dingwall until his death at a ripe old age.
My closest friend in the SPR at the time of the Americans’ visit was Fraser Nicol. He was a practising osteopath, with a home nearby in the medical area around Harley Street. He had a long-standing devotion to psychical research and during the early forties had collaborated with the then recently deceased Cambridge psychologist Whately Carington in some famous distance telepathy tests using drawings as targets. This was a rare example at that time of a British experimenter obtaining positive results in a substantial series of statistically controlled tests. Fraser and I used to enjoy long discussions, sometimes strolling repeatedly between our two homes until the small hours, pausing for a drink (non-alcoholic in those days), first at his place and then at mine.
Introducing Fraser to the Americans had fateful consequences. He formed an attachment to Betty Humphrey and, leaving his wife and daughter behind, followed her to the US, married her and accepted a post in the Duke Parapsychology Lab. Before long he quarrelled with Rhine, writing back to the
SPR Council long diatribes about the alleged defects of Rhine’s approach and his dishonesty in suppressing information detrimental to his over-optimistic claims for ESP. For a time he and Betty continued publishing results of correlations between ESP scores and personality measures. Fraser found employment first with the American SPR and later with the American Parapsychology Foundation, headed by a famous medium, Eileen Garrett. Increasingly unconfident about the uncertain statistical results from ESP experiments, he turned his attention to bibliographical work and the history of psychical research. He wrote a devastatingly dismissive commentary on the inaccuracies in the attempted character assassinations of some famous psychical researchers of the past, published by Trevor Hall. This led to litigation involving his employers. This lost him his job and soured relations all round. Parapsychologists generally tolerate enormous differences of opinion between each other about the validity or even honesty of the findings they publish, but occasionally matters get out of hand.
The year after the visit by the two Bettys, Rhine and his wife visited England and I was able to renew friendly contact and also to interview him for BBC TV at the old Alexandra Palace studios. The discussion was limited to polite, respectful questions; only the atmosphere was heated, from the intense lighting in use. When the cameras briefly turned away an assistant would produce a sponge on the end of a long arm with which to dab the sweat off one’s brow. Following these visits, I wondered whether Rhine might offer me a post in his Lab. Perhaps it was for the best that he did not. I continued with training as a psychiatrist, but so long as I remained working in London I was able to continue active participation in SPR affairs and in further experimentation.