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Attempting science: the creation and early development of the Institut métapsychique international in Paris, 1919-1931.

In 1919, the Institut métapsychique international (IMI) held its first meeting in Paris. With their choice of a name, the founders made their intentions clear. By using the term métapsychique rather than the more common sciences psychiques, they indicated a departure from previous enterprises of such kind in France. By attaching the label international to it, they signified that this orientation was to affect not just French research on psychical phenomena, but that of the whole community. This article tells the story of the first 12 years of the IMI in its attempts to impose a program of research and to incorporate psychical phenomena into the scientific corpus in particular ways. The article ends in 1931 with a spectacular attempt by members of the IMI to dominate the international psychical research community. The failures of the IMI, both with psychical researchers and the scientific community in general, are explained here in terms of characteristics of the institute and the field itself.