Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library's
Victoria College Material Culture Internship Project by Sophia Arts
The Collector: Adam Crabtree
Psychology and Trance Therapy
During my work on this project, I had the opportunity to speak with the curator and donor of the Psychical Research Collection, Dr. Adam Crabtree. Dr. Crabtree is a psychotherapist and scholar based in Toronto. He put together this collection to gain more knowledge about mesmerism and psychical research, an often overlooked and even concealed topic in the history of psychology. He has written several books on the topic, as well as about his experiences as a psychotherapist. You can learn more about him on his website.
What I learned from talking to Dr. Crabtree was that his collection did not just sit on the shelves, rather he actively used these books in his research and practice. He has an in-depth knowledge of Mesmerism, hypnotism, and parapsychology. His goal was not to confirm or deny people’s experiences like the Society for Psychical Research, rather understand how modern psychological theory has been influenced by Mesmerism and Spiritualism. This topic is still taboo in many spheres of psychology, who dismiss such theories as pseudoscience and refuse to acknowledge their impact. As a result of his interests, the collection was more of a working one than an intellectual one based around any specific theme. The books in the collection range from the 18th century to the 1980s and cover everything from black magic to Freudian psychology to psychic archaeology. It is truly a wealth of resources for anyone who wants to understand the human mind, or anyone like me who just really likes ghosts.
Adam Crabtree. From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychological Healing. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1993.
Dr. Crabtree curated his collection to create a deeper understanding of the workings of the human mind. In contrast, I have approached the collection from a very different material culture and historical perspective. I also am more interested in Victorian spiritualism than mesmerism, while his research focuses on the later. I don’t think the two necessarily contradict each other, rather it shows the diversity in the way this collection can be studied. I still feel there are so many topics I didn’t research in depth on like spirit writing, spirit photography, lives of specific mediums, religious responses to these movements, influences on popular culture and artistic movements, and its impact on politics. Talking to Dr. Crabtree opened me to another side of this collection and I was inspired by his commitment of taking the ideas of people from the past seriously instead of dismissing them.