Fact and Fable in Psychology

At the turn of the twentieth century, psychology was fighting for its life as a science. The public was enthralled by spiritualism, telepathy, and the occult while legitimate psychologists struggled to establish their discipline on empirical ground. Joseph Jastrow's collection of essays stands as a vigorous defense of scientific rigor against a tide of superstition and sensationalism. With sharp wit and careful reasoning, he dismantles popular misconceptions about the mind, from phantom limb sensations to the claims of psychical researchers, while defending what genuine psychology could and could not yet explain. Jastrow argues that understanding normal mental processes illuminates the abnormalities that captivate public imagination, not the reverse. The book remains remarkably relevant: the specific frauds he exposed may be historical, but the underlying dynamic between scientific skepticism and popular credulity has not changed. Anyone curious about how psychology became a science, or how we might think more clearly about the mind today, will find this early skeptic surprisingly modern.