Enrico Morselli

1852-1929

          Professor of Psychiatry at Genoa University from 1889 (previously at the University of Turin), a bitter sceptic of psychic phenomena until Eusapia Palladino in 30 sittings, completely convinced him of their reality. His book Psicologia e Spiritismo, published in two volumes in Turin in 1908 was described by Lombroso as "a model of erudition." In 1907 in the Annals of Psychic Science (Vol. V., p. 132) he wrote:

"The question of Spiritism has been discussed for over fifty years; and although no one can at present foresee when it will be settled, all are now agreed in assigning to it great importance among the problems left as a legacy by the nineteenth century to the twentieth. If for many years academic science has depreciated the whole category of facts which Spiritism has, for good or ill, rightly or wrongly, absorbed and assimilated to form the elements of its doctrinal system, so much the worse for science. And worse still for the scientists who have remained deaf and blind before all the affirmation, not of credulous sectarians, but of serious and worthy observers such as Crookes, Lodge and Richet. I am not ashamed to say that I myself, as far as my modest power went, have contributed to this obstinate scepticism, up to the day on which I was enabled to break the chains in which my absolutist preconceptions had bound my judgment."

His psycho-dynamic theory of materialisation phenomena is a compromise between psychological orthodoxy and the spirit theory. It forms an important chapter in research history.

An earlier book, more or less on supernormal phenomena was published by Morselli under the title: Le Magnetisme, la fascination et les etats hypnotiques.

Articles by Enrico Morselli

• Mediumship and Conjuring (in Connection with Eusapia Paladino)
• An Interview with Enrico Morselli on Mediumistic Researchers

Source (with minor modifications): An Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science by Nandor Fodor (1934).