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The first numbers of this new periodical have reached us. As its title indicates, it is concerned with the various aspects of spiritism.
From an editorial article entitled 'The Special Technique of Psychical Research' we take the following passages (p. 193). 'The light which modern investigations, and especially psycho-analytic methods, have thrown on the unconscious motives which determine seemingly causeless actions is in itself a contribution of first-rate importance to the subject. It has been proved up to the hilt that even the apparently most senseless actions of the deranged have a raison d'être which is perfectly comprehensible when once the mechanisms concerned are laid bare. Henceforward all arguments in favour of the genuineness of phenomena which are based on lack of motive for their fraudulent production must be considered worthless, for no mediumistic activities are more irrational than many compulsive acts whose secret causes have been discovered … Psycho-analytic methods in particular are the most powerful which have yet been devised for the investigation of those transformations of personality which so closely resemble some of the conditions with which Psychical Research is concerned'.
In No. 4 is a paper by Dr. William Brown entitled 'Psycho-Pathology in Relation to Psychical Research', in which he quotes some of his hypnotic experiences in France; he points out how these could erroneously have been interpreted in a spiritistic sense.
We understand that this journal is about to change its character into that of a general psychological one.