In 1889, in an article in the German periodical SPHINX, Max
DESSOIR (1867 – 1947), then a youthful student,
later to become professor of philosophy, coined the term 'parapsychology'
(actually in its German equivalent, 'Parapsychologie'):
» If one ... characterizes by para- something going beyond or besides the ordinary, than one could perhaps call the phenomena that step outside the usual process of the
inner life parapsychical, and the science dealing with them parapsychology.
The word is not nice, yet in my opinion it has the advantage to denote a hitherto unknown fringe area between the average and the pathological states; however, more than the limited value of practical usefulness such neologisms do not demand.
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