A laboratory and an unusual subject
Flournoy was born in Geneva in 1854 and trained in medicine. In 1891 he became professor of experimental psychology at the University of Geneva, where he established a laboratory. His work developed as psychology was finding a place among experimental sciences while also investigating experiences that resisted straightforward explanation.
In 1894 he began attending sittings with Catherine-Élise Müller, whom he named Hélène Smith in his published account. He recorded her narratives, drawings and unfamiliar speech, then considered how forgotten memories could combine with creative invention. His interpretation helped bring the concept of cryptomnesia into discussions of apparently extraordinary knowledge.
A language and landscape from Mars
From India to the Planet Mars reproduces Smith’s drawings of landscapes, figures and machines alongside an examination of the language she produced. Flournoy compares its construction with languages she already knew. He treats the material as evidence of capacities of the unconscious, while Smith understood her experiences differently. Daniel B. Vermilye translated the study into English in 1900. Lumitheca holds two scans of that translation, preserving the same investigation through separate copies.
