Crumbaugh, James C(harles) (1912-)

American psychologist and parapsychologist. He was born December 11, 1912, in Terrell, Texas, and educated at Baylor University (B.A., 1935), Southern Methodist University (M.A., 1938), and the University of Texas (Ph.D., 1953). Crumbaugh's education was interrupted by World War II, when he served as an assistant psychologist in the U.S. Army Air Force Aviation Cadet Classification Program (1941-45). After the war he became an instructor in psychology at Memphis State University, a post he held while finishing his doctorate (1947-56). He served in the Veterans Administration Post-Doctoral Training Program in Clinical Psychology (1956-57); as chairman of the Department of Psychology, MacMurray College, Jacksonville, Illinois (1957-59), and as research director of the Bradley Center, Columbus, Georgia (1959-64). In 1964 he became a staff psychologist at the VA Hospital at Gulfport, Mississippi.

During the 1960s Crumbaugh received two grants from the Parapsychology Foundation for work on the repeatability of experiments in ESP. In spite of many years of experimentation, Crumbaugh did not discover significant psi effects, but stressed the importance of the experimenter and repeatability in parapsychology. His research resulted in articles contributed to various psychological and parapsychological journals.

Sources:

Crumbaugh, James C. "A Scientific Critique of Parapsychology." Behavior Psychology 2 (September-October 1966).