Nandor Fodor was a British and American parapsychologist, psychoanalyst, author and journalist of Hungarian origin.
Fodor was one of the leading authorities on poltergeists, haunting and paranormal phenomena usually associated with mediumship. Fodor, who was at one time Sigmund Freud's associate, wrote on subjects like prenatal development and dream interpretation, but is credited mostly for his magnum opus, Encyclopedia of Psychic Science, first published in 1934. Fodor was the London correspondent for the American Society for Psychical Research (1935-1939). He worked as an editor for the Psychoanalytic Review and was a member of the New York Academy of Sciences.
Fodor in the 1930s embraced paranormal phenomena but by the 1940s took a break from his previous work and advocated a psychoanalytic approach to psychic phenomena. He published skeptical newspaper articles on mediumship, which caused an opposition from spiritualists.
"This book is a monograph of data gathered from ancient and modern records by patient research. It is fairly exhaustive and is not inspired by the spirit of debunking, rather, with a view that the human mind may have capabilities the limits of which we do not suspect. Let the reader determine for himself whether unknown electro-magnetic powers may exist may exist on the organismic level of the human psyche (or at the heart of all living things), and whether in exceptional conditions and in exceptional organisms such powers may manifest themselves in our own days, tendering the vision that in generations to come they may be available for development and control for the benefit of the whole human race."
