Hans Bender

Hans Bender (1907 - 1991) was Psychologue and Médecin. He is known to be the founder of the Institute für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiène (IGP) which is currently the greatest driving private research center in Parapsychologie.

The officialization of Freibourgese parapsychology

The “official” beginning of Freibourgese parapsychology dates from the June 19th 1950. It is this day that H. Bender opened the “Institute for the frontier zones of psychology and psychohygiene” (IGP) with 12 rue Eichhalde with Freiburg. In 1954, Bender is lived to entrust an extraordinary professorship to the University of Freiburg concerning the frontier zones of psychology, which placed at the disposal of the buildings and the installations (library, equipment) for the Eichhalde Institute. Extraordinary professorship was converted into 1967 in ordinariat for psychology and the frontier zones of psychology and, at the same time, a “department for the frontier zones of psychology” was attached to the Institute of psychology of the University, for which spaces were rented by the University. This narrow tangle is also explained by the decades of academy of H. Bender as an university lecturer: during much years, it carried the accent on a range of questions of “normal psychology”, such as for example the psychology of the expression and the character of the customer, the psychology of the dream, but also the social psychology (which was defended only by him lasting of long years). Proportions of its lectures in “normal psychology” and of those of the field “parapsychology - frontier zones of psychology” was respectively of 70 and 30%.

Bender had the double function of holder of the pulpit and president of the institute deprived until in 1975, the year of its retirement, during which also the decentralization of the two institutions occurred. Johannes Mischo was its successor with the pulpit.

The Review of Parapsychology and frontier zones of psychology

H. Bender founded in 1957 Zeitschrift für Parapsychologie und Grenzgebiete der Parapsychologie, which remained to today the only scientific body specialized in parapsychology in Germany. The coéditeurs of the time of the “first hour” were: G.F. Hartlaub (History of art, Heidelberg), P. Jordan (Physical, Hamburg), H. Meng (Psychology depths, Basel), A. Neuhäusler (Philosophy, München), E. Servadio (Psychoanalysis, Rome), H. Sexauer (Psychiatry, Stuttgart) and W.H.C. Tenhaeff (Parapsychology, Utrecht). H. Bender described as follows the deontology of this review:

“This review deals with problems of parapsychology by original work and talks on the results: these problems are the psychic and psychophysical phenomena not returning apparently in the field of the laws now known (telepathy, perspicacity, précognition, psychokinèse). In this field, one will put sociopsychologic or psychohygienic questions about the belief in unusual capacities and contexts, such as for example on extraordinary medicine (spiritual cure) and of the recognized practices of interpretation (Chirologie, Astrologie, etc). These frontier zones will include also the questionings of the aspects of the psychology depths and psychopathological aspects, which corresponds to the objectives of the Freibourgese Institute for the frontier zones of psychology and psychohygiene. ”

The investigation of the poltergeist

Among the fundamental profits that one owes in Hans Bender, one hopes that to have made “presentable” the examination of the phenomena of Poltergeist (Psychokinèse recurring spontaneous, RSPK) in parapsychology. The “case of Rosenheim” has a paradigmatic value for this form of search for ground. A series of physical phenomena “unexplained” occurred in a law firm of Rosenheim - crackings, electronic and telephone disordered states, displacements of objects -, reason for the research of the institute of Freiburg. It proved that the probable focal person was the employee of the cabinet in question. In collaboration with the engineering service of the town of Rosenheim and two physicists of Munich, one managed for the first time to document the “anomalous” phenomena objectively. Until now, no known physical cause could be identified for the deviations of the measuring devices (Karger & Zicha, 1968). There the phenomena of obsession affirmed from time immemorial had an effect of more shocking for knowledge of the man in place. Thus there is also in the case of Rosenheim, a vast controversy public on the fraud and mystification (cf Büchel 1976).

Bender (1970a) discussed mainly the methodology of the investigations of obsession, being pressed on its own material, in its presidential short speech with the 12th congress of the Parapsychological Association in 1969. One of the methods mentioned by him included/understood the interrogation of the witnesses, the caused observations of the processes in question, the use of the methods of criminology for the discovery of fraudulent handling, and also, in particular, an individual diagnostic study and groupale of the focal people in their respective social environments.

Psychohygiene and parapsychologic consultation

H. Bender will ouvra the Eichhalde institute in 1950 with the communication “the occultism like problem of psychohygiene”. He says of this program (Bender 1950/51, p.35):

“Of multiple social attitudes base themselves on the true ones and alleged occult experiments. Crisis periods reinforce the provision to be turned to the occult one. Many of those which must be in possession of occult capacities seek a support; at the indicators, soothsayers, astrologers, psychographologists, etc Certains hope for information on the stay of missing close relations, the others deal with occultism to eclipse their refusal and their disappointment. It is a disconcerting aspect, with its social consequences of erroneous attitude, escape from reality, (…) of serious threat of the mental health, of fraud and exploitation. Here, the psychohygiene is devoted to a great task: namely the explanation, replacement of knowledge about the aspects of the meeting with the unusual one, establishment of a model of a nature, comprehensible even for the simple man and who allows him to name what differently worries it; because, as it is known, the baptism drives out the demon. ”

Today, these sentences did not lose of their topicality - on the contrary: The psychohygienic branch of industry took more and more weight within the work of the Institute (Bender, 1979). The larger resonance of the frontier zones became in the public conscience, the more the number of requests at the institute also became large.

Random links: