ABSTRACT
In a modern text on psychical research (Cerullo: 1982), it is argued that Western culture, particularly in its Protestant forms, is gradually undermining the traditional religious concept of the soul. It is said that the growth of scientism is slowly eroding the old familiar notions of a spiritual-psychic dimension, and supplanting them with a rationalized yet basically unsatisfactory brand of humanism. In some ways, this thesis is reminiscent of Peter Berger's charge that Christianity – again, especially in its Protestant guise – is 'its own gravedigger' (Berger: 1969). What he especially has in mind is that Christianity has become a rationalized form of Judaism, and that Protestant Christianity, in turn, has developed as a rationalized form of Catholicism. Each has helped to divest conventional religion of its miraculous content; by their questioning and scepticism, each has made a significant contribution to the evolution of the secularized consciousness. But what is more to the point is the additional contention that psychical research, especially in the view of its founders, was 'a gallant, nearly successful, bid to present an acceptable western vision of the secularised soul' (Gregory: 1983a). In other words, in their own ways, the early devotees of parapsychology – perhaps unwittingly – made their own peculiar contribution to the process of secularized thought.
