Jastrow, Joseph (1863-1944)

Psychologist, educator, and author who was critical of psychoanalysis and psychical research. In 1910 he revealed trickery by the famous medium Eusapia Palladino during investigations of her phenomena by a committee of American stage magicians. Jastrow was born on January 30, 1863, in Warsaw, Poland, the son of Marcus Jastrow (1829-1903), a noted rabbi and Hebrew scholar. The family immigrated to the United States when Joseph was still a child. He was educated at Rugby Academy, the University of Pennsylvania, and John Hopkins University.

From 1888 to 1927 he taught psychology at the University of Wisconsin and then moved to the New School for Social Research, where he taught until his retirement (1927-33). He wrote a number of books on psychology and played a large part in popularizing the subject with the general public, editing the syndicated newspaper column "Keeping Mentally Fit" (1928-32) and giving regular radio broadcasts (1935-38).

Although Jastrow closely followed the work of psychical researchers, he was intensely skeptical of the possibility of establishing significant evidence for the existence of psychic phenomena, especially any that implied there was life after death. In 1926 he took part in a public symposium on the subject at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, at which Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, F. Bligh Bond, and L. R. G. Crandon spoke as individuals "convinced of the multiplicity of psychical phenomena." William McDougall, Hans Driesch, Walter F. Prince, and F. C. S. Schiller said they were "convinced of the rarity of genuine psychical phenomena." John E. Coover and Gardner Murphy claimed to be "unconvinced as yet." Jastrow and magician Harry Houdini spoke as individuals "antagonistic to the claims that such phenomena occur." The papers were published in The Case For and Against Psychical Belief (1927), edited by Carl Murchison.

Jastrow died at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on January 8, 1944.

Sources:

Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

Jastrow, Joseph. Error and Eccentricity in Human Belief. New York: Dover Publications, 1962.

——. Fact and Fable in Psychology. Boston; New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1900.

——. Freud, His Dream and Sex Theories. Cleveland; New York: The World Publishing Co., 1943.

——. The House That Freud Built. New York: Greenberg, 1932.

——. The Psychology of Conviction. Boston; New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1918.

——. Time Relations of Mental Phenomena. N.p., 1890.

——. Wish and Wisdom. New York; London: D. Appleton-Century Co. Inc., 1935.

Jastrow, Joseph ed. The Story of Error. N.p., 1936.

Murchison, Carl, ed. The Case For and Against Psychical Belief. Worcester, Mass., 1927.