Thelma Moss (nee Schnee, January 6, 1918 – February 1, 1997) was an American actress, and later a

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and explanation, interpretatio ...

and parapsychologist, best known for her work on Kirlian photography and the human aura.

Biography

Born Thelma Schnee, a native of

Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...

, Thelma Moss graduated from Carnegie Tech, and originally pursued a career in acting and in writing scripts for film and television. She was one of the earliest members of The Actors Studio; as a scriptwriter, her biggest success was the screenplay for the 1954

Alec Guinness Sir Alec Guinness (born Alec Guinness de Cuffe; 2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000) was an English actor. In the BFI, British Film Institute listing of 1999 of BFI Top 100 British films, the 100 most important British films of the 20th century ...

film '' Father Brown''. She also wrote the script for the 1958 science fiction film '' The Colossus of New York'', about the implantation of a human brain belonging to a brilliant scientist (played by Ross Martin) into a large humanoid robot. However, she struggled for years with persistent psychological problems, rooted in depression and grief at the loss of her husband (he died of cancer two days after she gave birth to a baby daughter). She survived two suicide attempts. For treatment for her problems, she underwent a course of LSD psychotherapy; she later published an autobiographical account of her treatment, ''My Self and I'', under the pseudonym Constance A. Newland; the book was a bestseller in 1962. Actor

told a story in a media interview and wrote in his memoir that he was with Moss going to dinner in 1955 when they met James Dean and Guinness predicted Dean's death one week before he was killed in a car accident. Moss returned to academia in the mid-1960s, studying at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and interning at the Wadsworth Veterans Hospital; she earned her Ph.D. in psychology from UCLA and became a professor at the same institution. For a time in the 1970s she led UCLA's parapsychology laboratory (while it existed). She explored a wide range of specific subjects in parapsychology ( hypnosis,

ghosts In folklore, a ghost is the soul or Spirit (supernatural entity), spirit of a dead Human, person or non-human animal that is believed by some people to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from a ...

, levitation,

alternative medicine Alternative medicine refers to practices that aim to achieve the healing effects of conventional medicine, but that typically lack biological plausibility, testability, repeatability, or supporting evidence of effectiveness. Such practices are ...

), though her research on Kirlian photography was the most significant theme in her work for the remainder of her career. Moss came to believe that Kirlian photography depicts the astral body. She made several trips to the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

to explore Russian work in the field, and wrote two books on that and related subjects, plus lesser works.

Books

*''My Self and I'' (pseudo. Constance A. Newland), New York, Coward McCann, 1962. *''The Probability of the Impossible: Scientific Discoveries and Exploration in the Psychic World,'' Los Angeles, J.P. Tarcher, 1974. *''Body Electric: A Personal Journey into the Mysteries of Parapsychological Research, Bioenergy and Kirlian Photography,'' Los Angeles, J.P. Tarcher, 1979.

Short films

* ''Power Of Plants'' (1950) - John Kieran's Kaleidoscope https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZCKy61DNrE

Media appearances

* ''The Invisible World'' (1979) - National Geographic ocumentary Interview

References

External links