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Journal of the Society for Psychical Research
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Book Review
REBEL WITH A CAUSE : THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HANS EYSENCK W. H. Allen &
Co., London, 1990. 310 pp.
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Hans Jürgen Eysenck was born in Berlin on 4th March 1916, of parents
who were both professional actors. In the first chapter of this autobiography,
we learn that his parents soon separated, and the young Hans eventually found
himself with a father who later embraced National-Socialism, a pretty, young
step-mother who danced in cabaret, a Jewish 'step-father' who had retired
from being a Professor of Aesthetics to become rich as a film director and
author, and an attractive, cultivated mother who guided his introduction to
literature and kindled his athleticism, yet without ever being able to relate to
him as a child. He actually lived for most of his childhood, in circumstances of
relative penury, in the devoted care of his maternal grandmother, a practising
Catholic. Physically venturesome to the point of folly, it was only by good
luck that he avoided entering adulthood with a shattered arm and one useless
eye. Precociously rational and intellectual, sceptical, self-reliant, adventurously
curious and distrustful of dogma, he avidly explored a confusion of Protestant,
Catholic, Jewish, Socialist and Nazi values.
The 'psychologising' that Eysenck explicitly forbids himself in the
Introduction to this autobiography might plausibly identify in this first
chapter the roots of the search for meaning and structure that was to direct so
much of his later development. He had fallen in love with science even before
he left school, and was looking forward to a career in physics.
Eysenck calls himself undisciplined, wild, a bad penny and a sanctimonious
prig at this stage of his development. For those schooled in the English art
of understatement where self-reference is involved, this exercise in objective
self-criticism may render more tolerable a narrative style which, even before
the end of this first chapter, they might otherwise find uncomfortably self-
congratulatory.
1
Leading into Chapter 2, a wealth of often amusing detail somewhat conceals
the heartbreak of voluntary exile, first in France and then in England, to
escape from an intolerable Fascist milieu. As an extra turn of the screw,
University College, London, found that his German qualifications did not
entitle him to read for a physics degree, so he perforce entered the only
vaguely 'scientific' course that would admit him-in psychology.
By the end of the chapter he has acquired a First Class Honours degree
and a wife. A son, a divorce, a second wife, and then more children, are
introduced later. In the realm of ideas, it appears that the particular stance
which has characterised all his work evolved quickly and early. Being a
physicist manqué, it is hardly surprising that his approach to psychology
should be 'hard-nosed'. This predisposition was reinforced by the college
where he obtained his degree. There, the powerful intellects of Pearson,
Haldane and Burt were wrestling with forms of statistical analysis designed for
studies in which no accurate control of variables could be achieved.
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Developing in such a climate, he evolved principles and assumptions which
he thought should govern a scientific psychology. For readers of this journal,
the most interesting of these is to be found in his assertion that psychologists
should "plump for" that resolution of the mind/body problem which treats
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both as aspects of a single continuum. 'Plump' seems exactly the rigl
verb here, in the sense of an abrupt plunge rather than a cautious choic
although he himself asserts that the reasons for rejecting Cartesian dualism a:
"too obvious to require any supporting argument". Later in this review, :
considering the views on parapsychology which he developed much later,
will be interesting to ask whether he considers that his plumping has remaine
ghost-proof.
Chapter 3 opens with Eysenck, most improbably, having afternoon tea wit
Aubrey Lewis, who promptly offered him a job as a research psychologis
Lewis, later knighted, was a psychologist manqué who had turned to medicir
as a second-best and then achieved pre-eminence as a psychiatrist, directir
the work of the world-famous Maudsley Hospital. Of immense ability an
influence, he planned to found a post-graduate Institute of Psychiatry withi
the University of London, and he eventually found in Eysenck the design(
and head of this Institute's psychology department. But there was no hint (
this at this first meeting.
Eysenck accepted the job, at the Mill Hill Emergency Hospital for W:
Neuroses, and found himself free to design his own programme of research
Using an innovative combination of experimental and statistical methods, an
with both the patients and the psychiatrists as his experimental subjects, h
started stripping psychiatry down to its nuts and bolts.
After years of work, his results challenged dogmatic beliefs in psychiatry
psychology, education and politics. When he went on to investigate the relativ
influence of biological and social factors in determining human characteristic:
his conclusion that genetic factors were important aroused hostilities whic
on at least one occasion led to physical assault.
Chapter 3 tells of all this, sketches in some of the science involved an
charts progress up to the stage where he is about to be appointed Reader
although not yet as head of his own department, in the Institute which
Aubrey Lewis has just successfully established. He tells also of the progressiv
breakdown of his first marriage and the beginning of the relationship tha
succeeded it.
In Chapter 4, he tells of his survey of the available evidence on the value o
the psychotherapies, and in particular of psychoanalysis, as treatments for th
neuroses. He concluded that such therapies seemed to have little demonstrabl
value, and Aubrey Lewis agreed. Eysenck then went on to claim that the onl
function of psychiatry should be to make practical use of the fundamenta
insights achieved by psychology. Clinical psychologists should be recognised
quite independently of psychiatrists, as being qualified to design and us
treatment regimes properly grounded in psychological theory. He propose
one such regime himself, evolved from the work of Alexander Herzberg. Thi
was the method of 'behaviour therapy', based on the view that neuroti
disorders are concatenations of conditioned emotional responses, which can b
extinguished by applying techniques fully described in any standard textboo.
on learning and conditioning.
Working in a psychiatric institute, Eysenck's study of this therapy, an
of the possibility that it could be administered by psychologists rather tha
When he eventually made it public a
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a meeting of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association, all hell was let
loose, since the idea that psychologists could treat, except under psychiatric
supervision, was an anathema. And on this issue Aubrey Lewis was whole-
heartedly with Eysenck's opponents.
In the power-struggle that followed, Eysenck's survival was helped by the
fact that, by that time, he had achieved the cherished status of Professor,
with his own independent post-graduate Department of Psychology within
the Institute's structure. And not only did he survive but, against all the
probabilities, he won. The research on behaviour therapy, and the training of
psychologists to develop and use it, became one of the Department's main
activities.
In Chapter 5 he describes the part he played, and continues to play, in
the controversy over the role of tobacco-smoking in the causation of cancer,
cardio-vascular diseases and so on. His stance here reflects some very basic
characteristics - his concern for the quality of data, and for the statistical
adequacy of its analysis, his rejection of facile interpretations of complex
evidence, his essentially combative (but certainly not aggressive) nature, and
(to quote one of his closest colleagues and admirers) his mastery of "the
strategies of fair and unfair debate". In agreeing with, and extending, the
criticisms of Doll, and others advanced by authorities such as the statistician
.R. A. Fisher, Eysenck has sometimes been represented as asserting that smoking
is in no way implicated in the aetiology of cancer and cardio-vascular diseases.
In this chapter he disowns any such view, but states that the quality of
the evidence usually adduced is inadequate to establish the relationships
beyond reasonable doubt. One might ask, of course, what level of doubt is
too unreasonable to tolerate in matters of life or death. Nevertheless, his
fascinating account of his own more recent studies in collaboration with
Kissen and with Grossarth-Maticek, seems to show unequivocally that smoking
has to be considered in interaction with personality and stress, if its effects are
to be understood.
In Chapter 6, Eysenck talks about his theory-building in the areas of
intelligence and personality. These were the fields in which the writer of this
review (himself a renegade physicist) had, for fifteen years, the privilege of
collaboration. The friendship then engendered of gratitude and admiration
must inevitably show through in this review, all attempts at objectivity
notwithstanding!
Chapter 7 is of particular interest to readers of this journal. Here we find
him demonstrating qualities that only a few adventurous scientists exhibit in
any generation - in his case, by insisting that well-attested data in the fields
of astrology and the paranormal should not be dismissed without proper
examination. He considers that his own contributions to the field of para-
psychology have been modest - one substantial investigation which failed
to find any evidence for precognition in rats, one theory (suggesting that
extraverts should show more evidence of parapsychological phenomena than
introverts), which has been well supported by subsequent experimental work,
and one book (Eysenck & Sargent, 1982) reviewing the experimental evidence
in the field. In the area of astrology, he concludes that, even when well-
designed and properly-analysed experiments at first seem strongly suggestive
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October 1991]
of astrological tradition, further investigation will usually lead to en
plausible alternative explanations; and this conclusion is supported by
he himself completed in collaboration with David Nias. However, a c
involvement with the French psychologist Michel Gauquelin and his
Françoise led him to become involved with a major series of investig:
and analyses, and to the eventual conclusion that "the results report
the Gauquelins ... suggest novel and hitherto unknown relations be
terrestrial life and effects upon it by the planets" (p. 252).
The reader may feel that it would have been safer to couch conclusi
Caracte
terms of correlations between planetary positions and certain
of some terrestrial life-forms, without implying anything about
alone its direction. But this is not the place for evaluation
ogconchi
reached about particular hypotheses and controversies. What is@elevan
review is that the account he gives of his studies in these fields wel illus
not only his open-mindedness, but also his rigorously critical approach.
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hav
invariably, or even frequently, beaten a path to that particular @or. Ey
asks this same question about himself, about motivation, but characteris
refuses to address it.
What would have been interesting would have been som attem
unravel the web of motivations which must have operated to @persuad
"psychologist they most love to hate" to expose even more of he neck
hatchets. We learn that the route to the paranormal was via studi&?of hy;
and a visit to Rhine's laboratory, but students of suggestibi
The other question not explicitly addressed is as to whether he feel
some of the parapsychological data are going to compel what Kuhn (
has called a shift of paradigm. He does not yet seem sure that such :
is unavoidable, and indeed, in Explaining the Unexplained, one fin.
attempt to relate some 'paranormal' evidence to theories in quagum pl
However, in the same publication, the question of post-morte sun
considered at some length, and the possibility not dismissed. Are w
to conclude that Eysenck would be less confident in urging psycholog
reject Cartesian dualism, today, than he was at the outset of hiscareer
he prepared to postulate a curious kind of mind/body continuun 2 not d
in terms of the mutual transformability of its two aspects? Iowould
been intriguing to be told.
To consider now the book as a whole; the author warns in hi Introd
that he will not be over-modest. He certainly has not been, although the
is not lacking in objective self-criticism, or in verbatim reports offthe crit
of others. If you are brilliant of mind, large, fit and athletic of body,
a self-confident and combative temperament, the number of Opport
you have for presenting yourself as a rather average bumbler mest be s
limited.
But the style is certainly self-congratulatory, and this is not the only
of irritation. For example, any attempt to evolve a straightforward chro!
from the discursive narrative involves much to-ing and fro-ing, and in
fails completely, as one finds, for example, in attempting to deduce th
of the all-important first meeting with Aubrey Lewis. One could also com
that, although the author says in his Introduction that he will "deal w
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number of interesting psychological and sociological questions ("How does
a scientist decide ... " etc.), he seldom provides any answers, although he
certainly offers relevant data.
However, all this is just nit-picking. It is difficult in Science to attribute a
great advance to what some particular person said and did, because all progress
depends on the collaborative conflict of numerous actors. Nevertheless,
Eysenck shows convincingly that he has been (and remains) a star in this
enterprise. His avowed intention was to write mainly about his ideas, and the
over-riding disappointment for some will be that the author has not performed
the sort of strip-tease that they expect in an autobiography. Nonetheless, with
a wealth of often amusing anecdote, he has happily provided a reasonably
rounded self-portrait, which should surely dispel the cold-and-calculating,
devil-with-horns image which his detractors so enjoy peddling. With his gift
for popularisation which eschews the jejune, he has again contributed to the
history of ideas in the social sciences in a way which opens windows for those
who might not otherwise have been able to see. And perhaps above all, he has
set out an inspiring record of remarkable achievement, accomplished in the
face of formidable obstacles, by vision, dedication, work, intelligence-and, of
course, rather more good luck than bad.
In his concluding sentences, Eysenck mistakenly attributes to W. B. Yeats
three lines of advice in a poem by Dylan Thomas; a mishap so greatly to the
delight of some reviewers as to render them virtually incapable of commenting
on anything else in the book. Let this review therefore conclude with some
advice that Yeats undoubtedly did offer :-
When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book
And slowly read .
But why wait that long?
Faculty of Education and Design
Brunel University, Runnymede Campus
Egham, Surrey. TW20 0JZ
W. D. FURNEAUX
REFERENCES
Eysenck, H. J. and Sargent, C. (1982) Explaining the Unexplained. Book Club Associates.
Kuhn, T. (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press.
102
October 1991]
Book Re
PARAPSYCHOLOGY: NEW SOURCES OF INFORMATION, 1973-1989 by Rhea A. W
Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, 1990. xiv + 699 pp. $67.50, £50.65.
It is tempting to quote Mr Squeers's "Here's richness! " at the sight of
White's splendid volume. The book is organised on the same linegas on
compiled with Laura Dale, entitled, Parapsychology : Sources of Informa
which was published in 1973, but the present work is more the twic
size of the original. The increase is partly a consequence of increSed ac
in the field, but also it is partly due to a change in policy from being
selective for the earlier volume to being more comprehensive in tos one
number of headings under which books are grouped in the first@hapte
been expanded from 24 to 27; and the numbering is continuoas with
of the previous book. There is a new chapter on Government Ablicat
but the chapter on encyclopaedias has been discontinued. A very instru
chapter on 'New Views of Parapsychology' covers such topics @d anon
research, the advent of electronic data-processing, exchanges between c
and parapsychologists, and recent changes within parapsychology_
As readers of the previous volume will anticipate, a major comp
(pp. 1-305) of this work is the list of books in the first chapter Each
carries a reference number and the author's (or editor's) name inheavy
followed by the title in italics, with the place, publisher and year ofPublic:
the number of pages, any bibliography, chapter notes, figures and alustra
etc. There are something approaching five hundred titles listed and e:
followed by a brief-c. 100-200 words-summary of the contents ind a
reviews from a variety of periodicals, usually including the JASPR, the
and the JP. The indexes/list authors, editors, illustrators, translator
introducers in one alphabetical sequence, titles in another and subject
third. There are also chapters on parapsychological periodicals, Organis
and theses, as well as a glossary of terms. There are appendes of
containing glossaries and illustrations, a list of abbreviations, and@e adc
of the less-accessible publishers.
In any compilation of this kind there must be a subjective element
selection of items included; but I am surprised that some titles Have no
included. Thus three academic studies of 19th-century Spiritualism,
Barrow's Independent Spirits (1986), Ann Braude's Radical Spirits (
and Alex Owen's The Darkened Room (1989) would merit cordaderati
general works, John Beloff's The Importance of Psychical Research (
Arthur Ellison's The Reality of the Paranormal (1988), Charles McC:
Psychical Phenomena and the Physical World (1973) and Frank Ti
Between Science and Religion (1974) would be of value. Orvin (
Parapsychology : a Bibliographic Guide (1975) and Nicholas Garke-I
Books on the Paranormal (1980) are useful; as are Andrew Mack
Apparitions (1980) and David Christie-Murray's Voices of the Gods (
Martin Gardner's How Not to Test a Psychic (1989) is an important (
item.
There appear to be very few mistakes in this book, although I was su:
to see the historical section of Gauld & Cornell's Poltergeists (1979) w
attributed to Tony Cornell instead of to Alan Gauld. But altogether t.
103
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