Medical History

Table of Contents - April 2012 - Volume 56, Special Issue 02 (Sexology, Medical Ethics and Occultism: Albert Moll in Context)  

Articles

Policing Epistemic Deviance: Albert von Schrenck-Notzing and Albert Moll1

Andreas Sommera1 c1

a1 UCL Centre for the History of Psychological Disciplines, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK

Abstract

Shortly after the death of Albert von Schrenck-Notzing (1862–1929), the doyen of early twentieth century German para psychology, his former colleague in hypnotism and sexology Albert Moll (1862–1939) published a treatise on the psychology and pathology of parapsychologists, with Schrenck-Notzing serving as a prototype of a scientist suffering from an ‘occult complex’. Moll’s analysis concluded that parapsychologists vouching for the reality of supernormal phenomena, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, telekinesis and materialisations, suffered from a morbid will to believe, which paralysed their critical faculties and made them cover obvious mediumistic fraud. Using Moll’s treatment of Schrenck-Notzing as an historical case study of boundary disputes in science and medicine, this essay traces the career of Schrenck-Notzing as a researcher in hypnotism, sexology and parapsychology; discusses the relationship between Moll and Schrenck-Notzing; and problematises the pathologisation and defamation strategies of deviant epistemologies by authors such as Moll.

Key Words:

  • Academic Freedom;
  • Boundary Work;
  • Epistemic Deviance;
  • Hypnotism;
  • Parapsychology;
  • Psychical Research

Correspondence:

c1 Email address for correspondence: a.sommer@ucl.ac.uk

Footnotes

A.S. was grateful to Andreas-Holger Maehle, Lutz Sauerteig and the anonymous reviewers for helpful feedback. His work is funded by a Wellcome Trust History of Medicine PhD studentship.

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