The ‘Wellcome Collection’ in
Euston Road, London, is currently running a free exhibition called Smoke and Mirrors: The Psychology of Magic. Divided into three sections, ‘The Medium’, ‘Misdirection’
and ‘Mentalism’, it considers the connections between stage magic, Spiritualism
and psychical research, and how collectively they laid the groundwork for
psychologists to study the vagaries of perception, memory and eyewitness
testimony.
Members of the Society for
Psychical Research were at the forefront of the scientific exploration of ways
witnesses can be misled when experiencing séance room phenomena, demonstrating
that what participants thought had occurred was often far from the
reality. Magicians also played a role
despite the mystical trappings of their acts, frequently using their expertise
to expose fraud and distinguishing what they did as entertainment from what
mediums often did to convince clients they possessed genuine paranormal
abilities.
The Society’s name appears
prominently at the start of the exhibition, where a panel, after mentioning
Spiritualism, includes the statement that:
‘Alongside this popular interest
in spirit communication, the disciplines and institutions of modern science
were being founded. In 1882 the Society
for Psychical Research became the first organisation to carry out research into
the phenomena witnessed in the séance room.
‘Psychical researchers
collaborated with magicians, who drew on their knowledge of conjuring tricks
and illusions to test the paranormal claims of mediums. They laid the foundations for important
discoveries about the nature of belief and memory that psychologists still draw
on today.’
Another panel, devoted to psychical
research, mentions researchers applying ‘rigorous scientific methods to
investigate claims of psychic and paranormal phenomena’, including the
development of a strict methodological approach to experimentation, and assessing
whether natural explanations could be found for phenomena, in terms of psychological
mechanisms rather than the paranormal.
There are some wonderful images
and artefacts on display, and the SPR has lent the Wellcome a number of items
from its archive, looked after by Cambridge University Library. The objects indicate a balanced approach,
neither gullible nor debunking, but demonstrating the intent, as the SPR has
always had, ‘to examine without prejudice or prepossession and in a scientific
spirit those faculties of man, real or supposed, which appear to be
inexplicable on any generally recognised hypothesis.’
There are photographs of Eusapia
Palladino during her visit to Cambridge in 1895 when she was investigated by
the SPR, and caught cheating. A fair
amount of space is devoted to the medium ‘Margery’ (Mina
Crandon), most strikingly a life-sized reproduction of the large box Harry
Houdini used to confine her during séances.
Numerous objects have been lent by the Libbet Crandon de Malamud
Collection, including the chair she sat on during séances and her lovely
kimono. The SPR supplied photographs,
and some book plates with annotated overlays analysing material Margery
produced during séances when she was tested in London by the Society, as
reproduced in Eric Dingwall’s report in the SPR’s Proceedings, June 1926.
Enlarged SPR photographs show
fingerprints in wax taken from sitters to distinguish them from those allegedly
left by Mina Crandon’s deceased brother Walter, and wax impressions possibly
claimed to be by Walter himself (the ‘Walter’ prints actually matched those of
her dentist, Dr Frederick Caldwell, given the pseudonym Kerwin in reports). A photograph from the SPR shows Margery with
a cloud of ‘ectoplasm’ and the bell box which was supposed to be rung by the
spirits – though Houdini was convinced Margery herself was responsible. An investigation kit that belonged to
Dingwall was lent by Senate House, where his archive is held in the Harry Price
library, but the information card refers to his membership of the SPR.
Another medium, Mrs Piper, is
represented by a large poster from 1901 advertising a statement she had given
to the New York Herald in which she made what they asserted was a confession
that spirits did not communicate through her (‘CONFESSION’ in huge type,
followed by ‘The world’s greatest clairvoyant’). What the poster did not include was her
statement to the newspaper not that she was a fraud, but that she thought she
was gaining information using telepathy from the living, rather than from
discarnate entities. Shortly afterwards
she spoke to the Boston Advertiser to say she did not know whether it was
spirits or her subliminal self at work.
The days when interest in mediums could justify billboard posters!
In a section devoted to ESP there
is a large frame containing post- and lettercards collected by the SPR
resulting from an experiment run on the BBC in 1967. The backs of ten playing cards were displayed
to viewers, who had to guess what was on the front. This is a sample of the hundreds sent in by
members of the public. The final
contribution by the SPR to the exhibition is a set of Telepatha cards from
1939. These were developed by Harry
Price as an alternative to the Zener cards used by J B Rhine, but they did not
catch on in the public imagination the way Zener cards had.
There is a lot more in the
exhibition, including a section on recent academic research using magic to examine
cognitive processes, and it is fascinating to see a through-line from the early
experiments of the SPR to the latest work elucidating how magicians can assist
in showing how we make sense – and sometimes fail to make sense – of the world. The clear implication is that we generally
overestimate our ability to spot deception, and those who seek to fool us can
call on a wide array of strategies which play on weaknesses in our processing
of incoming information, weaknesses of which we are not aware. We may feel we are in control of our choices,
while we are being cued to the desired outcome through the manipulation of our
assumptions and the power of suggestion.
The SPR can be proud that it played a pioneering role in such a key
aspect of psychology.
The exhibition runs until 15
September 2019.
