John Beloff was Britain’s pre-eminent
parapsychologist, an academic who did more than anyone to establish
the study of paranormal phenomena as a legitimate academic pursuit.
He was an atheist, a humanist, and a passionate supporter of
voluntary euthanasia, described by his friends as a kind and
exceptionally modest man.
Born in 1920, Beloff was the son of Russian
Jews who settled in London before the First World War. He was the
fourth of five children, and the last of them to survive. He
apparently found it hard growing up in the shadow of his clever and
successful brother Max (Lord Beloff), and often described himself as
having been the failure of the family, called by his parents a
dreamer, or a dolt, and without any clear sense of direction or
ambition.
At his parents’ insistence, and with no better
ideas of his own, he embarked on a career in architecture, but was
neither suited to it nor happy doing it. The Second World War was
his escape, but this too fuelled his sense of inferiority. After two
and a half years he was invalided out of the army and said later
that he always felt inferior to those who had fought and had a good
war record to their credit.
In spite of this unpromising start Beloff
finally stumbled across what was to become his life’s work by
reading J.B.Rhine’s Extrasensory Perception, in which Rhine
coined the terms ‘ESP’ and ‘parapsychology’ and effectively founded
the new field. This book inspired Beloff to start afresh, taking a
degree in psychology, and then moving on through lectureships in
Illinois and Belfast, finally settling at the University of
Edinburgh where he remained the rest of his life. There he built up
and presided over what was, until recently, the only university
laboratory of parapsychology in Britain, inspiring numerous PhD
students and researchers. He was accompanied and encouraged
throughout by his wife Halla, who met him as a student, and
subsequently became an eminent social psychologist herself.
When his friend, Arthur Koestler, died in 1983
Beloff learned that he was to be an executor. Since Koestler gave
his entire estate to found a Chair of Parapsychology, Beloff became
closely involved in the difficult process of finding a university
that would accept what many saw as a poisoned chalice. In the end
the chair went to Edinburgh. Parapsychological research continues
there to this day, largely due to Beloff’s steady and intelligent
handling of this ever-controversial subject.
Beloff often wrote about the “relentless
question” that pursued him throughout his work – in reality a whole
set of related questions having to do with the existence of
paranormal phenomena, the nature of the human mind, and the
possibility of its survival after physical death. These were the
same questions that had motivated the work of such early psychical
researchers as Frederick Myers and Henry Sidgwick, and led to the
founding of the Society for Psychical Research in London in 1882.
Having joined the SPR in 1962 and been elected to its Council two
years later, Beloff played a central role in the Society for many
decades. He gave lectures, wrote numerous articles, and was Editor
of the SPR Journal and Proceedings until 1999. He was elected
President of the SPR in 1974 and described giving the presidential
address as his finest hour.1982 saw the combined centenary of the
SPR and jubilee of the Parapsychological Association, an occasion
marked by a joint conference at Trinity College Cambridge, and by
Beloff being elected president of the PA for the second time. In
2000 a conference was held in Edinburgh to celebrate his 80th
birthday and his contribution to parapsychology.
What is perhaps most striking about Beloff’s
work was the steadfast determination with which he defended the
existence of psychic phenomena, including telepathy, clairvoyance,
and communication with the dead, without himself ever having
witnessed convincing phenomena at first hand. He was known by many
as a negative, or “psi-inhibitory” experimenter; meaning that
phenomena which appeared in the laboratory for other people would
not do so for him. Sceptics argued that the phenomena do not exist,
that the idea of a psi-inhibitory experimenter is just an excuse
invented by believers, and that Beloff’s failure to elicit them
showed only how well controlled his experiments were. He never
accepted that interpretation, perhaps preferring to believe that his
failure to find any evidence was due to his own inadequacy rather
than any lack in the phenomena themselves.
Although best known as a parapsychologist,
Beloff was also a respected philosopher. He was outraged by Gilbert
Ryle’s 1949 book The concept of mind in which Ryle rejected
the dualism between mind and brain, and pilloried the “dogma of the
ghost in the machine”. Beloff’s own 1962 book, The existence of
mind; was an attempt to prove Ryle wrong, for Beloff really did
believe in that ghost – a powerful mind that can cause behaviour,
exert its will, and be the conscious subject of experiences. In
other words, although he described himself as a “conservative
thinker”, he defended dualist views that were almost unanimously
rejected by other philosophers and scientists.
He also believed in the possibility of survival
after bodily death, even though he was an atheist, a rationalist,
and had no truck with religion. As with the paranormal phenomena, he
tried, but failed, to witness evidence of life after death; while
others described seeing levitating tables and spirit voices, they
never appeared for him.
He was a long term supporter of the Voluntary
Euthanasia Society of Scotland, which described him as “a rock upon
which the future rests and grows”. He hated a fuss, made it clear
that he wanted no funeral, and donated his body to medicine.
John Beloff was born on April 19, 1920
and died on June 1, 2006. He is survived by his wife, Halla, a
daughter and a son.
