Bull, Titus (1871-1946)

New York physician. He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the director of the James H. Hyslop Foundation for the treatment of cases of obsession by psychic methods.

Bull was a close friend of the distinguished psychic researcher James H. Hyslop (1854-1920). Hyslop had already concluded that some individuals believed to be insane might be victims of spirit obsession. When Hyslop was dying, he requested Bull to carry on investigating this hypothesis. As a responsible physician, Bull first sought conventional explanations and treatment of mental breakdowns, but in certain instances where normal diagnosis and treatment seemed ineffective, he looked for a psychic cause. His procedure in such cases was to bring the patient into contact with a medium who had no prior knowledge of the patient to elicit forgotten memories and sometimes describe obsessing entities.

Helen C. Lambert, secretary to Bull, wrote in Psychic Science (July 1927):

"Of patients whom I have seen cured by Dr. Bull's method, three had been in State institutions for the insane, and one of these had to be restrained in a straight jacket. This last is a young girl who is now trying to obtain a position that will enable her to leave the difficult home environment which had much to do with her breakdown. Another is a woman who had been in five different institutions, twice in the Boris Sidis Sanitorium, and was considered incurable when she came to Dr. Bull. Some of the patients are persons who had not reached the point of being put under restraint, and whose condition was only incipient. Certain nervous cases have been persons who were not actually obsessed, but rather overshadowed by entities who pressed too close to them, casting on the patients a reflection of their bodily memories and ills, and causing dissociation."

Mrs. Duke, Dr. Bull's medium through whom he pleaded with the obsessing entities, was a woman of education. At first she was completely conscious of the messages that were given through her, but later speech control developed and proceedings became easier and more efficient. Under the title Analysis of Unusual Experiences in Healing Relative to Diseased Minds and Results of Materialism Foreshadowed (1932), Bull published his conclusions after 20 years of research. He ascribed the possibility of obsession to some accidental alteration in the nervous system and fully endorsed the Spiritualistic methods of cure. Somewhat similar work to that of Bull was carried out by Dr. Carl A. Wickland in Los Angeles, California.

Sources:

Bull, Titus. "Mental Obsession and the Latent Faculty." Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 32 (1938): 260. ——. "Resistance to Metaphysical Science." Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 17 (1927): 645.