Enrico Agostino Morselli | |
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Occupation(s) | Physician, Psychical researcher |
Enrico "Henry" Agostino Morselli (17 July 1852 - 18 February 1929) was an Italian physician and psychical researcher.
Morselli was professor at the University of Turin. He is best known for the publication of his influential book, Suicide: An Essay on Comparative Moral Statistics (1881) claiming that suicide was primarily the result of the struggle for life and nature's evolutionary process. [1] [2] [3] [4]
According to Edward Shorter "Morselli is known outside of Italy for having coined the term dysmorphophobia. In Italy, he is known for the psychiatry textbook, A Guide to the Semiotics of Mental Illness." [5]
Morselli was a eugenicist and some of his writings have been linked to scientific racialism. [6] [7] Morselli was also interested in mediumship and psychical research. He studied the medium Eusapia Palladino and concluded that some of her phenomena was genuine, being evidence for an unknown bio-psychic force present in all humans. [8]
Science
Psychical research
The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to conduct organised scholarly research into human experiences that challenge contemporary scientific models." It does not, however, since its inception in 1882, hold any corporate opinions: SPR members assert a variety of beliefs with regard to the nature of the phenomena studied.
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Eusapia Palladino was an Italian Spiritualist physical medium. She claimed extraordinary powers such as the ability to levitate tables, communicate with the dead through her spirit guide John King, and to produce other supernatural phenomena.
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