Fact and Fable in Psychology

by Joseph Jastrow

It is pertinent to add that after Mr. Davey's death, Mr. Hodgson felt free to publish a precise account of what Mr. Davey actually did during the slate-writing séances.[7] The description from before the footlights may thus be compared with the account from behind the scenes; and although verbal accounts must always be weak and lack the realistic touch of the mise en scène, yet this account makes possible a kinetoscopic reproduction, as it were, of the original sitting; we may observe the point at which the several sitters committed their faults of defective observation or report; we may examine at leisure the several steps in the performance which the eyes overlooked in the hasty single glimpse afforded by the sitting itself; we may attend to details which in the original sitting reached only the outlying and evanescent phases of consciousness. But, on the whole, the psychological comprehension of the "séance" was sufficiently manifest without this disclosure of the modus operandi; the disclosure has its value, however, in removing the possibility of certain forms of criticism of the results, in presenting data by which the specific nature of mal-observation may be more concretely studied, and in convincing the more obstinate and skeptical of how natural it is to err in matters beyond the range of one's intimate experience.

A corroborative illustration of the subjective contribution to deceptions of this type—the part that "always comes out of our head," in Professor James's phrase—is furnished by M. Binet's series of photographs, taken at the rate of ten or twelve per second, of the hands of the performer during a sleight-of-hand performance; for the photographs do not show the essential illusion which the eyes seem to see, but which is really supplied by the fixed interpretative habits of the spectators.

The conclusion thus experimentally arrived at by Messrs. Hodgson and Davey is reinforced by other investigators. After witnessing a séance that was merely a series of the simplest and most glaringly evident tricks, Mrs. Sidgwick was expected to have had all her doubts entirely removed, and was assured that what she had seen was better than the materializations at Paris. "Experiences like this make one feel how misleading the accounts of some completely honest witnesses may be; for the materializations in Paris were those which the Comte de Bullet had with Firman, where near relatives of the Count were believed constantly to appear, and which are among the most wonderful recorded in spiritualistic literature. And, after all, it appears that these marvelous séances were no better than this miserable personation by Haxby."

The Seybert Commission finds that "with every possible desire on the part of spiritualists to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, concerning marvelous phenomena, it is extremely difficult to do so. Be it distinctly understood that we do not for an instant impute willful perversion of the truth. All that we mean is that, for two reasons, it is likely that the marvels of spiritualism will be, by believers in them, incorrectly and insufficiently reported. The first reason is to be found in the mental condition of the observer; if he be excited or deeply moved, his account cannot but be affected, and essential details will surely be distorted. For a second reason, note how hard it is to give a truthful account of any common, everyday occurrence. The difficulty is increased a hundredfold when what we would tell partakes of the wonderful. Who can truthfully describe a juggler's trick? Who would hesitate to affirm that a watch, which never left the eyesight for an instant, was broken by the juggler on an anvil; or that a handkerchief was burned before our eyes? We all know the juggler does not break the watch, and does not burn the handkerchief. We watched most closely the juggler's right hand, while the trick was done with his left. The one minute circumstance has been omitted that would have converted the trick into no-trick. It is likely to be the same in the accounts of the most wonderful phenomena of spiritualism."

If we desire a concrete instance of this omission of an important detail, we may turn once more to Dr. Furness's narrative. Certain highly intelligent observers had described to him the marvelous accomplishments of a Boston medium; and this is his own account: "There are two tables in the room of séance, at one of which sits the medium, at the other, the visitor. The visitor at his table writes his question in pencil at the top of a long slip of paper, and, after folding over several times the portion of the slip on which his question is written, gums it down with mucilage and hands it to the medium, who thereupon places on the folded and gummed portion his left hand, and in a few minutes with his right hand writes down answers to the concealed questions; these answers are marvels of pertinency, and prove beyond a cavil the clairvoyant or spiritual powers of the medium." Dr. Furness went to the medium, prepared his slip of paper about as described, and thus continues: "As soon as he took his seat, and laid the strip on his table before him, I rose and approached the table so as to keep my paper still in sight; the row of books entirely intercepted my view of it. The medium instantly motioned to me to return to my seat, and, I think, told me to do so. I obeyed, and as I did so could not repress a profound sigh. Why had no one ever told me of that row of books?"

III

I have thus passed in review a series of facts and considerations in pursuance of the general inquiry as to why the manifestations produced in evidence of spirit agency deceive, and as to the origin of the vast testimony in favor of spiritualistic marvels. It is not necessary for the purposes of the psychological discussion to demonstrate that all such manifestations are fraudulent; it is not even necessary—although with limitless time and energy it might be desirable—to examine all of the various kinds of manifestations which the ingenuity of mediums has devised, or which have been presented through mediumistic agency.[8] All that is necessary is to examine a sufficient number of manifestations of acknowledged standing and repute among spiritualists,—manifestations, be it clearly understood, which have actually brought hundreds and thousands of converts to its ranks, which have been persistently brought forward as indisputable evidence of supernatural agency—and to show that in reference to these, actual and extensive deception has taken place. It would not be proper to declare that at this point the psychologist's interest ends; for the centre of interest in such problems may shift from one point to another. The central point in the present discussion, however, is not what is the evidence in favor of the spiritualistic hypothesis logically worth,—although the considerations here presented have obvious and radical bearings upon that question. If that were our quest, we should put the spiritualists upon the defensive; for the burden rests upon them to show the inadequacy of the natural explanation of the phenomena, and to present the special facts that point to the correctness of the spiritualistic as opposed to other explanations. We may recognize, in passing, to what sorry excuses they are driven in its defense: writing, they are driven to explain, is best produced in the dark, because dark is "negative," and light is "positive"; if the spirit that appears resembles the medium, that is an effect of the materializing process; if a piece of muslin is found in the medium's cabinet (and obviously used as drapery in the materializations), it is supposed to have been brought by the spirits to clothe their nakedness, or that the spirit which had brought the muslin "had to vanish so quickly that it had no time to dematerialize the muslin;" if writing does not appear when the slates are looked at, that is because the "magnetism" of the eye interferes with this spiritual process of writing; and did not Slade receive an express command from the spirits forbidding him, on penalty of cutting off all communication, to attempt to write on sealed slates? Some even claim that fraud and genuine manifestations go hand in hand, or that the former are the work of evil spirits counterfeiting conjuring tricks. A prominent spiritualist openly announces that Slade "now often cheats with an almost infantile audacity and naïveté, while at the same or the next séance, with the same investigators," genuine spiritualistic phenomena occur; while another disciple holds that the true spirit in which to approach the study is an "entire willingness to be deceived." Surely there is no duty resting upon scientific men to consider the claims of a system that resorts to such idle and extravagant hypotheses, and that fosters and prospers in such a moral atmosphere.

We may therefore profitably confine our attention to the psychological lessons to be drawn from the record of fraud and deception which the exploitation of Spiritualism has produced.[9] When the day comes when the manifestations above considered shall be definitely conceded to have a natural explanation along the general lines here presented, and the spiritualists shall have taken refuge in other and distinctively different manifestations, then it may become advisable to prepare a revised account of the psychology of Spiritualism.

There remains an important series of considerations that form an essential factor in the psychological comprehension of the phenomena of Spiritualism; this is the effect of bias and prepossession. When by one means or another a strong faith in the reality of spiritualistic manifestations has been induced; when the critical attitude gives place to a state of extreme emotional tension; when, perhaps, special griefs and trials give undue fervor to the desire for a material proof of life after death, of communion with the dear departed; when the convert becomes a defendant of the faith, anxious to strengthen the proofs of his own conviction,—then we have no longer mere unintentional lapses of observation and memory to deal with, but actual mental blindness to obvious fraud and natural explanations; then caution is thrown to the winds and marvels are reported that are the result of expectant attention and imagination, or of real illusion and hallucination. The blamelessness that may be conceded for one's mystification by conjuring performances cannot be extended to the present class of experiences; here it is not unusualness of external arrangements that forms the main factor in the deception, but the abnormal condition of the observer's mind. The materialization séances offer a sufficient example of this form of manifestation. To recognize a departed friend in the thinly disguised form of the medium is most naturally interpreted as a mark of weak insight or of strong prejudice. "Again and again," writes Dr. Furness, "men have led round the circles the materialized spirits of their wives and introduced them to each visitor in turn; fathers have taken round their daughters, and I have seen widows sob in the arms of their dead husbands. Testimony such as this staggers me. Have I been smitten with color-blindness? Before me, as far as I can detect, stands the very medium herself, in shape, size, form, and feature true to a line, and yet, one after another, honest men and women at my side, within ten minutes of each other, assert that she is the absolute counterpart of their nearest and dearest friend; nay, that she is that friend. It is as incomprehensible to me as the assertion that the heavens are green, and the leaves of the trees deep blue. Can it be that the faculty of observation and comparison is rare, and that our features are really vague and misty to our best friends? Is it that the medium exercises some mesmeric influence on her visitors, who are thus made to accept the faces which she wills them to see? Or is it, after all, only the dim light and a fresh illustration of la nuit tous les chats sont gris?" In the confessions of an exposed medium we read: "The first séance I held, after it became known to the Rochester people that I was a medium, a gentleman from Chicago recognized his daughter Lizzie in me after I had covered my small mustache with a piece of flesh-colored cloth, and reduced the size of my face with a shawl I had purposely hung up in the back of the cabinet." With such powerful magicians as an expectant interest and a strong prepossession, the realm of the marvelous is easily entered; but the evidence thus accumulated may be said to have about the same scientific value as the far more interesting entertainments of the "Thousand and One Nights." "Sergeant Cox," Mr. Podmore tells us, "adduced the hallucinatory feeling of a missing limb in proof of a spiritual body; and a writer in the 'Spiritualist,' 'not yet convinced of the spiritualistic theory,' could even pronounce the after-images produced by gazing at a straw hat to be 'independent of any known human agency.' From all of which it may be gathered that the conscientious spiritualist, when on marvels bent, did not display a frugal mind." Such opinions certainly justify Mr. Podmore's remark that there are spiritualists, "not a few, who would be capable of testifying, if their prepossessions happened to point that way, that they had seen the cow jump over the moon; and would refer for corroborative evidence to the archives of the nursery."