Conclusion-b

Wickstead, is another book which gives chapter and verse for personal experience instead of citing authorities and theorising about them. It is the record of an asylum doctor whose wife is a trance medium, and who made a most remarkable series of investigations concerning the nature of obsessing entities. In Dr. Moll’s book on hypnotism some remarkable phenomena are recorded such as do not find their way into modern books, whether because the investigators are less expert at eliciting them, or more cautious in communicating them, having profited by the experience of the earlier investigators. Some of the earlier books on hypnosis and mesmerism yield some very interesting reading to the psychic investigator. Dr. T. W. Mitchell’s Medical Psychology and Psychical Research is another book of value to the student, who should be familiar not only with the signs of psychic attack, but also with the signs of pseudo-attack in order that he may distinguish between them and not be misled into some very uncomfortable errors. To find one has been successfully hoaxed by a lunatic is a humiliating experience. Myers’ Human Personality is of course a classic with which every student of psychic phenomena ought to be familiar. There is an excellent abridged edition available for those who do not feel equal to coping with the two massive volumes of its original form. Nicholl’s Dream Psychology and Hart’s Psychology of Insanity are two exceedingly illuminating little books, both written for the layman and readily comprehensible by him. They throw a great deal of light upon the mechanisms of the mind, and no one should attempt to deal with a psychic attack unless he understands those mechanisms. My own little book, Machinery of the Mind, written under my maiden name of Violet M. Firth, will, I think, be found a useful general introduction to modern psychology. Let us approach the subject of modern witchcraft neither in a spirit of incredulity nor of superstition, but from the standpoint of the psychologist, seeking to understand the workings of the mind and prepared to discover much that had hitherto passed unsuspected.