O método de Allan Kardec para investigação dos fenômenos mediúnicos (1854-1869)

Abstract

Background: During the nineteenth century, investigations on the nature of psychic / spiritual phenomena such as trances and supposed acquisition of information not available through conventional sensory channels generated intense debates which mobilized physicians, scientists and intellectuals. French educator Allan Kardec (1804-1869) was one of the first researchers to propose a scientific investigation on psychic phenomena, thus becoming an influential scholar in Europe during the second half of that century and in Brazil in the twentieth century. However, his method of investigation is largely unknown or misunderstood. Objectives: To identify and analyze the method employed by Allan Kardec in his investigations on psychic experiences. Method: Our research focused on the reading and analysis of his complete works – books and twelve volumes of the Revue Spirite: Journal d'Études Psychologiques – all of them examined in the original language. We have also obtained and analyzed unpublished and original documents which belonged to Kardec. Secondary sources were used as tools for interpretation and contextualization of his works. Results: Kardec formulated and tested several hypotheses in order to explain mediumistic phenomena, among them, fraud, hallucinations, physical forces, somnambulism, unconscious clairvoyance, thought transfer (telepathy) and disembodied spirits. He concluded that all of them were necessary to explain the totality of experiences called mediumistic. However, by concentrating his attention on those experiences that he considered involving the communication of disembodied personalities (spirits), he sought to develop a method to obtain useful and reliable information about the spiritual dimension of the universe. Kardec’s goal was to naturalize the spirit realm, regarding it as an object of rational and empirical scrutiny in order to identify natural laws that would govern relations between alleged disembodied spirits and the embodied humanity. Through the examination of his research processes and the development of his theories such as on the sensations of the spirits soon after disembodiment as well as on possession, we have come to realize that his work was grounded on a broad and diverse empirical basis and that the formulation and reformulation of his explanatory theories were continuous and progressive. Conclusion: Investigations on psychic and mediumistic phenomena fill an important gap, still neglected, in the history of science and medicine. Kardec was one of the pioneers of these studies when he proposed the naturalization of a spiritual dimension and its subsequent empirical and rational inquiry. A better understanding of his methods may expand our knowledge about the relationship between science and spirituality in the nineteenth century as well as provide input to current studies on the subject.