The Professor and the Medium

Long after her death in 1918, Eusapia Palladino continues to be remembered in spiritualist circles as one of the most remarkable mediums of all time. Born in southern Italy in 1854, there are few independent details of her early life available but she was well-established as a prominent medium by 1872. In the many seances that she conducted across Europe, she would communicate with her spirit guide, John King, and display a range of impressive physical phenomena. Levitating tables was her specialty but she could also produce spirit hands and faces, play musical instruments without using her hands, make flowers and other objects appear out of thin air, and contact the dead. She was the talk of Europe in her day and was highly sought after (despite the enormous fees that she charged). It was only natural that she drew psychic researchers across the continent including leading scientists such as Pierre and Marie Curie and Theodore Flournoy. Although she appeared to welcome attempts at scientific validation of her powers, researchers who dealt with her came to fear Palladino's volatile temper and frequent tantrums, especially regarding various attempts to control the conditions under which she conducted her seances. It was common for her to storm out in a huff whenever things failed to go according to her expectations.

Despite the fact that she had been caught using fraud on a number of different occasions, Eusapia Palladino still continued to attract followers. She and her manager explained away the fraud as only occurring when her powers were not working at their best. This became more common as she grew older and her powers diminished (or skeptics began demanding tighter controls, your call). Enter Hugo Munsterberg, professor of psychology at Harvard University, whose skepticism towards spiritualists frequently put him at odds with his mentor and colleague, William James. James had written the seminal classic, The Varieties of Religious Experience, and had a lifelong fascination with mysticism and altered states of consciousness. He frequently accused Munsterberg of being overly analytical in rejecting supernatural explanations while Munsterberg in turn accused James of being naive. Munsterberg began attending seances and viewed Palladino as an alarming example of fraud masquerading as science. He wrote that Palladino was "a great artist, and as a vaudeville show she might be at the head of her profession, but I do not see how she can overcome in any cool observer, the feeling that it is trickery". It was during her American tour in 1909 when he attended a seance with Palladino and a "well-known scientist" (not named, but probably James). During the seance, he sat on Palladino's left side and his companion on her right holding her hands and feet when the table behind them was supposed to move. Suddenly, there was a "wildly yelling scream". What Palladino did not know was that Munsterberg had arranged for an agent to slip in unobserved and to lie flat on the floor behind them to block any attempts at trickery. It turned out that Palladino had slipped her foot out of her shoe and "with an athletic backward movement of the leg was reaching out and fishing with her toes" when the agent grabbed her foot (hence the scream).

Munsterberg was in his glory having caught Palladino in blatant fraud and many of his contemporaries viewed it as a refutation of James' views on psychic phenomena. As Josiah Royce later put it:

Eeny meeny, miny mo/Catch Eusapia by the toe/ If she hollers, then we know/That James' doctrine isn't so.

Suffice it to say, James was not amused although he acknowledged the fraud. By the time of his death in the following year, he and Munsterberg were largely estranged. While Palladino had been caught in fraud before, this latest revelation seemed to put the final nail in her coffin and her career never really recovered. Munsterberg's own abrupt death in 1916 put an end to his remarkable career as a psychologist and scientist but his legacy of skepticism lives on.

Comments

[Helena Constantine]

Very nice article. It would be useful, however, if you provided the relevant references.

[Romeo Vitelli]

Thank you. One of my primary sources was Bjork, Daniel. The Compromised Scientist: William James in the Development of Americal Psychology. Columbia University Press, 1983. It`s available throught questia.com.

[David Webb]

Really interesting post. I'm a big fan of Munsterberg so I'm keen to learn more about his take on Palladino.

Thought I'd draw your attention to a couple of related full text publications that I've made available as part of an initiative designed to make important public domain works in psychology freely available.

Hugo Munsterberg: On The Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology & Crime

http://www.all-about-psychology.com/psychology-ebook.html

On The Psychology & Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena

http://www.all-about-psychology.com/psychology-journal-articles.html

Cheers

David

[Romeo Vitelli]

Thanks for the information. I'll have to look through those articles.