ABSTRACT
The birth of psychology as a science has been traced at various moments of history. Sonu Shamdasani writes, at the end of the nineteenth century, many of the leading psychologists—S. Freud, C. G. Jung, Ferenczi, Eugen Bleuer, W. James, F. W. H. Myers, P. Janet, Henri Bergson, Stanley Hall, Schrenck-Notzing, Moll, Berlin M. Dessoir, Charles Richet, and Theodore Flournoy—frequented mediums. If mediums were the centre of attention of scientific psychology, only a few psychologists believed in spirits at the end of the nineteenth century. C. G. Jung's first two lectures—November 1896 on "The border zones of exact science" and May 1897 on "Some thoughts on psychology"—give an accurate picture of the contemporary conflict between science and spiritualism, the novelty of which appealed the young scientist. Esotericist John Patrick Deveney explains both the "recurrent" meaning of Spiritualism and its historical context.
