Frederick Wiliam Henry Myers
Born in February 6, 1843 / Died in January 17, 1901 / United Kingdom / English
Biography
Frederic William Henry Myers was a poet, classicist, philologist, and a founder of the Society for Psychical Research.
Early life
Frederic William Henry Myers was the son of Rev. Frederic Myers and Susan Myers (born Susan Harriet). He was a brother of poet Enest Myers (1844-1921) and of Dr. Arthur Thomas Myers (1851-1894). His maternal grandfather was the industrialist John Marshall (1765-1845).
Myers was educated at Cheltenham College and at Trinity College, Cambridge where he received a B.A. in 1865, and university prizes, including the Bell, Craven, Camden and Chancellor's Medal: however he was forced to resign the Camden medal for 1863 after accusations of plagiarism. He was a Fellow of Trinity College from 1865 to 1874 In 1867, Myers published a long poem, St Paul, which became very popular. It was followed in 1882 by The Renewal of Youth and Other Poems. He also wrote books of literary criticism, in particular Wordsworth (1881) and Essays, Classical and Modern (in two volumes, 1883), which included a highly-regarded essay on Virgil.
Psychical research
Myers was interested in psychical research and was one of the founder members of the Society for Psychical Research in 1883. He became the President in 1900.
In 1893 Myers wrote a small collection of essays, Science and a Future Life.
In 1903, after Myers's death, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death was compiled and published. It was two large volumes at 1,360 pages in length, which presented an overview of Myers's research into the unconscious mind. Myers believed that a theory of consciousness must be part of a unified model of mind, which derive from the full range of human experience, including not only normal psychological phenomena but also the wide variety of abnormal and "supernormal" phenomena.
Frederic Myers may be regarded as an "important early depth psychologist", and his significant influence on colleagues like William James, Pierre Janet, and Théodore Flournoy and also Carl G. Jung has been well documented. ..
