Frederic William Henry Myers

Frederic William Henry Myers

Frederic William Henry Myers (1843–1901) was a classical scholar, poet, philosopher, and past president of the Society for Psychical Research.^[1]

Early life

Frederic William Henry Myers was the son of Rev. Frederic Myers and brother of poet Ernest Myers. He was educated at Cheltenham College, and Trinity College, Cambridge where he received a B.A. in 1865.^[2][3]

In 1867, Myers published a long poem, St Paul, which became very popular. It was followed in 1882 by The Renewal of Youth and Other Poems. He also wrote books of literary criticism, in particular Wordsworth (1881) and Essays, Classical and Modern (in two volumes, 1883), which included a highly-regarded essay on Virgil.^{[citation needed]}

Psychical research

In 1893 Myers wrote a small collection of essays, Science and a Future Life.^[4]

In 1900 Frederic William Henry Myers was president of the Society for Psychical Research.^[5]

In 1903, after Myers's death, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death was compiled and published. It was two large volumes at 1,360 pages in length, which presented an overview of Myers's research into the unconscious mind.^[6][7] Myers believed that a theory of consciousness must be part of a unified model of mind, which derive from the full range of human experience, including not only normal psychological phenomena but also the wide variety of abnormal and "supernormal" phenomena.^[6][7]

Frederic Myers may be regarded as an "important early depth psychologist", and his significant influence on colleagues like William James, Pierre Janet, and Théodore Flournoy and also Carl G. Jung has been well documented.^[8]

See also

Poetry portal

• Bruce Greyson
• Jeffrey J. Kripal in his Authors of the Impossible; the Paranormal and the Sacred, University of Chicago Press 2010

References

1. ^ William James. Frederic Myers's Service to Psychology The Popular Science Monthly, August 1901, pp. 380-389.
2. ^ Myers, Frederic William Henry in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
3. ^ Catherine W. Reilly (2000). Victorian poetry, 1860-1879: an annotated biobibliography Continuum International Publishing Group, p. 332.
4. ^ Frederic William Henry Myers. Science and a Future Life
5. ^ Society for Psychical Research:Past Presidents
6. ^ ^{a b} Emily W. Kelly and Carlos S. Alvarado. Images in Psychiatry: Frederic William Henry Myers, 1843–1901 American Journal of Psychiatry, 162:34, January 2005.
7. ^ ^{a b} W. McDougall. Review: Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death Mind, Vol. 12, No. 48 (Oct., 1903), pp. 513-526.
8. ^ Book review:Irreducible Mind, The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Vol.29, No 4, Autumn 2008.

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Name	Myers, Frederic William Henry
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Date of birth	1843
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Date of death	1901
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