Théodore Flournoy

Born in Geneva on August 15, 1854, Théodore Flournoy trained in medicine before turning more fully toward psychology and philosophy. He studied in Geneva, Freiburg im Breisgau, Strasbourg, Leipzig, and Paris, then returned home and gradually built a career around the emerging science of the mind.

At the University of Geneva, he became a key early figure in the field, holding a chair in physiological psychology from 1891 and creating an experimental psychology laboratory in 1892. He also helped found Archives de psychologie with his cousin Édouard Claparède, and later taught the philosophy of science.

Flournoy is best known today for his investigations of psychic and spiritualist phenomena, especially his study of the medium Hélène Smith in From India to the Planet Mars. Rather than simply mocking such claims, he tried to explain them through memory, imagination, and unconscious mental processes, an approach that made him an important bridge between early experimental psychology and the psychology of religion. He died in Geneva on November 5, 1920.