Gurney, Edmund (1847-1888)

Distinguished English psychical researcher whose work was one of the mainstays of the early period of the Society for Psychical Research. Gurney was born March 23, 1847, at Hersham, Surrey, England. He was a classical scholar, a musician, and a student of medicine, but he did not definitely adopt any profession. Between 1874 and 1878 he attended a great number of Spiritualist séances. He never discussed what he had seen and learned, but when the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded in 1882 he readily assumed the post of honorary secretary.

It was the discovery of thought-transference that aroused his enduring interest in psychical research, and hypnotism the primary tool. According to F. W. H. Myers, "he was the first Englishman who studied with any kind of adequate skill the psychological side of hypnotism in England." Between 1885 and 1888 Gurney devised a large number of experiments by which he sought to prove that there is sometimes, in the induction of hypnotic phenomena, an agency at work that is neither ordinary nervous stimulation nor suggestion conveyed by any ordinary channel to the subject's mind.

He next attacked the problem of the relation of the memory in one hypnotic state to the memory in another hypnotic state and of both to the normal or waking memory. His research along this line preceded Pierre Janet's similar explorations in France.

Gurney then proceeded to consider hallucinations. His treatise on the telepathic induction of hallucination in Phantasms of the Living (1886) was the first serious discussion of the problem. His investigations were done in consultation with Myers and Frank Podmore. The actual writing of Phantasms of the Living (1886) was done by Gurney, and during the three years of sifting evidence and hearing witnesses he performed an immense amount of work. He was also editor of the SPR's Proceedings, to which he contributed many important papers. He died June 23, 1888.

His work did not, it seems, end with his death. Shortly afterward, communications were received by a lady through automatic writing that purported to come from him. The following year William James obtained similar messages in a sitting with Lenora Piper.

Other messages again pointed to the trance intelligence of the medium. Margaret Verrall also received occasional messages from Gurney, while "Mrs. Forbes" was entirely under a Gurney influence. The Gurney control of "Mrs. Holland" (pseudonym of Alice Kipling Fleming ) appeared to be a different type. Edmund Gurney, while alive, knew both Verrall and Forbes, but not Fleming.

Sources:

Gurney, Edmund. "Account of Some Experiments in Mesmerism." Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 2, no. 6 (1884).

——. "Hallucinations." Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 3, no. 8 (1885).

——. "Hypnotism and Telepathy." Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 5, no. 12 (1888-89).

——. "Peculiarities of Certain Post-Hypnotic States." Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 4, no. 11 (1886-87).

——. The Power of Sound. 1880. Reprint, New York: Basic Books, 1966.

——. "The Problems of Hypnotism." Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 2, no. 7 (1884).

——. "Recent Experiments in Hypnotism." Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 5, no. 12 (1888-89).

——. "Some Higher Aspects of Mesmerism." Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 3, no. 10 (1885).

——. "Stages of Hypnotic Memory." Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 4, no. 11 (1886-87).

——. "The Stages of Hypnotism." Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 2 (1884).

——. Tertium Quid: Chapters on Various Disputed Questions. London: K. Paul, Trench & Co., 1887.

Gurney, Edmund, F. W. H. Myers, and Frank Podmore. Phantasms of the Living. London: Trubner, 1886.

Hall, Trevor H. The Strange Case of Edmund Gurney. London: Duckworth, 1964.