Reimagining the poltergeist in twentieth-century America and Britain
cIRcle (University of British Columbia) 2016 Christopher Laursen 2 citations
In creating the psychokinesis hypothesis, twentieth-century American and British psychical researchers, psychoanalysts, and parapsychologists moved the poltergeist away from centuries of religious and spiritual attribution – that it was actions of unseen spirits of the dead, elementals, or demonic forces – into the realm of scientific boundary-work that explored unseen worlds: the human mind,...