Traite de Metapsychique

Traite de Metapsychique, Charles Richet's 1922 synthesis from Felix Alcan, is the Nobel laureate physiologist's own summation of his decades of psychical research, including his 1894 coinage of the term ectoplasm during sittings with the medium Eusapia Palladino. Its strength is that it is a primary document by a serious scientist who lent his own scientific standing to the field, in his own words. Its limit is that Richet was himself a convinced advocate for the phenomena he investigated, not a disinterested evaluator, and later analyses of the Palladino sittings raised serious questions about fraud that this primary source does not itself address.