“Never sacrifice anything to laboratory work”: The “physiological psychology” of Charles Richet (1875–1905)

TL;DR

The article argues that Charles Richet’s physiological psychology (1875–1905) was a major but underplayed contribution to the institutionalization and methodological development of French psychology, and that his later metapsychics continued rather than contradicted that program. It calls for integrating Richet into the history of psychology while not rehabilitating his controversial conclusions or his eugenics.

Key findings

• Richet played a leading role in the habilitation of hypnosis, the institutionalization of psychology in France, and methodological innovation; his key psychological works include *Du somnambulisme provoqué* (1875), *L’homme et l’intelligence* (1884/1887), and *Essai de psychologie générale* (1887).
• He co-founded the Society of Physiological Psychology in 1885 and helped organize the first International Congress of Physiological Psychology in Paris in 1889, which drew 203 members representing 20 nations over 6 days.
• The paper hypothesizes “strong continuity” between Richet’s physiological psychology and his metapsychics: he considered metapsychics an advanced branch of physiology and another branch of psychology, alongside physiological and comparative psychology.
• The article credits Richet with introducing probability theory to test divination through playing cards in 1883, and notes that in 1878 he demonstrated a psychic reflex producing gastric juice in a fifteen-year-old boy, Marcellin, before Pavlov’s classical conditioning.

Methods

• Historical and archival analysis of Richet’s published works, memoirs, correspondence, and secondary historiography, using a symmetrical/integrative approach to psychology and psychical research.
• The paper focuses on 1875–1905, with later context through Richet’s death in 1935; it is a narrative historical reconstruction rather than an experimental or statistical study.

Limitations

• The paper states that Richet’s role “cannot be taken as representative” of all protagonists in French parapsychology, and that its argument does not justify rehabilitating all his conclusions, especially his later scientific eugenics.
• Evident from the text: the analysis relies heavily on Richet’s retrospective memoirs and autobiographical accounts, and the paper itself discusses retrospective bias and the difficulty of separating orthodox from heterodox narratives.