Dr. Gustav Geley was a French psychical researcher and director of the Institute Metapsychique International from 1919 to 1924.
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Geley was born in 1868 at Montceau-les-Mines, France. He studied medicine at the Salpêtrière Hospital with the great French anatomist Jean-Martin Charcot, who also mentored Sigmund Freud. His first book: "l'Etre Subconscient," published in 1899 in Paris, predicated a theory of dynamo-psychism, a sort of internal "soul energy,".[1] He was a critic of naturalistic theories of evolution and his second book, "From the Unconscious to the Conscious," developed this into a more comprehensive theory in which he insisted that the phenomenon of "trance mediumship" was a "direct route" to this "soul energy."[2]
According to some authors, Geley was a very keen, objective investigator and insisted on conducting his investigations under fraud-proof conditions that included both himself and a medium being chained and handcuffed during seances. Spiritist sources consider his paraffin casts of Polish medium Franek Kluski to be compelling proof of the paranormal. After a series of experiments with Kluski in Warsaw, Poland, Geley died in an airplane accident on July 15, 1924.[3]