Walter Whately Carington (1892 – March 2, 1947) was a British parapsychologist. His name, originally Walter Whately Smith, was changed in 1933."Walter Whately Carington"
Gale Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology.

Biography

Carington born in London was educated at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

where he studied science. He was admitted to

Middle Temple The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known simply as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court entitled to Call to the bar, call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple (with whi ...

on 8 November 1912, but withdrew in 1916 without being

Called to the Bar The call to the bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received "call to ...

. He joined the

Royal Flying Corps The Royal Flying Corps (RFC) was the air arm of the British Army before and during the First World War until it merged with the Royal Naval Air Service on 1 April 1918 to form the Royal Air Force. During the early part of the war, the RFC sup ...

during

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

and became an experienced pilot, but was badly injured after a forced landing. On behalf of the

Air Ministry The Air Ministry was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force and civil aviation that existed from 1918 to 1964. It was under the political authority of the ...

and

War Office The War Office has referred to several British government organisations throughout history, all relating to the army. It was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, at ...

he returned to Cambridge to undertake research into acoustics, with special reference to psychological problems. At this time he devised some innovative methods for the mathematical assessment of feelings, which proved useful in his later work. He investigated the mediums Kathleen Goligher and Gladys Osborne Leonard and he set about studying psychical research in more detail. Between 1934 and 1936 Carington tested the trance

mediumship Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or ghost, spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or ...

of Eileen Garrett, Gladys Osborne Leonard and Rudi Schneider with psychogalvanic reflex and word association tests. Carington concluded from the results their trance controls were secondary personalities, not spirits. Criticism of Carington's tests on mediums came from C. D. Broad and R. H. Thouless who wrote he had made statistical errors and misinterpreted numerical data. The psychologist Donald West had praised the tests that Carington performed with Leonard. Carington gave up all other work for his interest in psychical research. He lived on a small private income for a time in a remote village in the Netherlands. In 1938 he travelled to Germany, to rescue a woman from harassment by the

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

. They later married and set up home in Cornwall, where his wife collaborated in his experiments and nursed him as his health gradually failed. His early death at the age of fifty-four was due in part to his injury during World War I, and to overwork. The psychical researcher Renée Haynes described Carington as a "shy, dedicated retiring man, whose services to psychical research have never been fully recognized."

Hypotheses

Carington theorised that individual minds are less isolated from one another than is assumed. Carington's hypothesis of

telepathy Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic ...

was to draw upon the association of ideas: in a mind, one idea yields to another through associative links. Carington hypothesized that telepathy depends upon an analogous type of linkage at a subconscious level. He suggested that such links could perhaps be reinforced by what he called 'K’ ideas or objects. Carington speculated on the concept of a " group mind" and "psychons". He believed that minds which hold a great deal of their images in common may be favourable for telepathic communication.''Telepathy and the Group Mind''. (1945). The British Medical Journal. Vol. 2, No. 4433. p. 886 Carington wrote about his hypothesis in his book ''Telepathy'' (1945). The book received a positive review in the ''

British Medical Journal ''The BMJ'' is a fortnightly peer-reviewed medical journal, published by BMJ Publishing Group Ltd, which in turn is wholly-owned by the British Medical Association (BMA). ''The BMJ'' has editorial freedom from the BMA. It is one of the world ...

'' which described it as an "extremely interesting and, though often highly speculative, a thought-provoking book." However Frank Finger gave the book a negative review in ''

The Quarterly Review of Biology ''The Quarterly Review of Biology'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of biology. It was established in 1926 by Raymond Pearl. In the 1960s it was purchased by the Stony Brook Foundation when the editor H. Bentley Glass ...

'' claiming Carington failed to present any scientific data that could be intelligently evaluated and concluded "it seems doubtful that this book will alter the scientific status of telepathic communication appreciably, and certainly it will cause no great upheaval in the field of biological science." Carington's ideas about telepathy inspired the novelist

Iris Murdoch Dame Jean Iris Murdoch ( ; 15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her fi ...

who wrote "His theory, though wrong I've no doubt, is interesting." The philosopher

Antony Flew Antony Garrard Newton Flew (; 11 February 1923 – 8 April 2010) was an English philosopher. Belonging to the analytic and evidentialist schools of thought, Flew worked on the philosophy of religion. During the course of his career he taught ...

wrote the verdict seemed to go against Carington's hypothesis because it "commits him to saying that the various sub-laws of association (those of Recency, Repetition, etc.) will apply to telepathic association also." Carington in his book ''Matter, Mind, and Meaning'' (1949) advocated a form of

neutral monism Neutral monism is an umbrella term for a class of metaphysical theories in the philosophy of mind, concerning the relation of mind to matter. These theories take the fundamental nature of reality to be neither mental nor physical; in other words i ...

. He held that mind and matter both consist of the same kind of components known as "cognita" or sense data.Oakeshott, Michael; O'Sullivan, Luke. (2007). ''The Concept of a Philosophical Jurisprudence: Essays and Reviews 1926–51''. Imprint Academic. p. 286. "The doctrine that Mr Carington comes to favour is a form of Neutral Monism: the common constituents of mind and matter are sense-data or cognita. In themselves these cognita are neither mental nor material."

Publications

Books
''The Foundations of Spiritualism''
(1920)
''A Theory of the Mechanism of Survival''
(1920)
''The Measurement of Emotion''
(1922) *''The Death of Materialism'' (1932) *''Three Essays on Consciousness'' (1934)
''Telepathy: An Outline of its Fact, Theory and Implications''
(1945)
''Matter, Mind and Meaning''
(1949). Completed by

H. H. Price Henry Habberley Price (17 May 1899 – 26 November 1984), usually cited as H. H. Price, was a Welsh philosopher, known for his work on the philosophy of perception. He also wrote on parapsychology. Biography Born in Neath, Glamorganshire, Wa ...

. Papers * – (1934). ''The Quantitative Study of Trance Personalities''. Part 1. Preliminary Studies. Mrs. Garrett, Rudi Schneider, Mrs. Leonard. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 42: 173–240. * – (1935). ''The Quantitative Study of Trance Personalities''. Part 2. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 43: 319–361. * – (1936). ''The Quantitative Study of Trance Personalities''. Part 3. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 44: 189–222.

Biography

Hypotheses

Publications

See also

References

Further reading