PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENTS: SPIRITISM AT THE SORBONNE.

During the years which followed World War I, psychologists of the Sorbonne organized “ control experiments ” to question the reality of parapsychological phenomena. They worked with well-known mediums and the results of their investigations were published in widely-read. French and American newspaper. Despite the melodramatic and somewhat humorous character of these episodes, the researchers involved were engaged in efforts toward genuinely scientific psychology. Henri Pieron and Henri Laugier, both positivists and militant rationalist, were leaders in the institutionalized development of psychology in France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]