Théodore Flournoy

Théodore Flournoy (15 August 1854 – 5 November 1920) was a Swiss professor of psychology at the University of Geneva and author of books on parapsychology and spiritism. He studied a wide variety of subjects before he devoted his life to psychology. He did extensive observations on a participant to investigate psychical phenomena. He was the President of the Sixth International Congress of Psychology, the Chair of Experimental Psychology at the University of Geneva in 1891 and was the first professor of psychology in Europe to become a member of the Faculty of Sciences instead of the Faculty of Philosophy.

Early life Theodore Flournoy was born on 15 August 1854, in Geneva, Switzerland. He was born into a well-off family. His father Alexander Flournoy was a stockbroker and his mother Caroline came from a long line of ministers, judges, and teachers. He attended the University of Strasbourg Medical School as well as the University of Geneva. He received bachelors degrees in mathematics, natural sciences, literature, and engineering.

Research Flournoy is most known for his research on psychical phenomena. This was the study of mediumship, apparitions, clairvoyance, healings, poltergeists, premonitions, and thought transference. Helene Smith was a woman with a regular job and had sound health and mind. Jung then used the autosuggestive writings of Miss Frank Miller (1905), made at Flournoy's request, as the starting-point for his 1912 book Psychology of the Unconscious. For Part II of that book, Jung took inspiration from Flournoy's concept of a purposeful component in the unconscious to preserve life, stated in his 1908 paper, "Anti-Suicidal Teleological Automatisms". Flournoy here presented cases "where persons contemplating suicide had last minute visions persuading them of the meaning and value of life."

Flournoy himself was influenced by William James. He was one of the few scholars of his time to embrace the prime reality of non-dual consciousness, a view James had dubbed "sciousness" in his essay, Radical Empiricism. Flournoy wrote the introductory work, The Philosophy of William James (1911).

Works

From India to Planet Mars, Théodore Flournoy, 1900.