Zdeněk Rejdák, Ph.D., (November 7 1934 - December 24 2004, Czechia) was a important Czech psychologist and scientist in the field of psychotronics. In 1967 he introduced the name psychotronics instead of the name parapsychology used in the world to avoid its negative connotations and to define it as interdisciplinary subject, studying both the interaction between living organisms and their internal and external environment and energy processes in both these interactions.[1] The main objectives of psychotronics were to verify and study the phenomena of telepathy, clairvoyance and psychokinesis, to discover new principles of nature. He founded International Association for Psychotronic Research - I.A.P.R.. He was especially focused on perspectives in extrasensory perception and telepathy. In substantial ways, Rejdák picked up the threads of the work of Břetislav Kafka, famous Czech hypnologist and one of founders of pareapsychology.[2]
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His scientific career began in 1967 when he became a member of the "Coordination Group for the Research in Psychotronics". Since 1973, under the leadership of another well-known researcher František Kahuda, he has worked in the "Laboratory of psychoenergetics" at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague. From the same year he also worked in the Laboratory of Psychotronics at the Faculty of General Medicine of Charles University in Prague. In 1980 he became the leader of the Center for the research in psychotronics and juvenology. In 1992, he found the Civic Association for Psychotronics and Juvenology". The initiative has not ceased to exist, but its activity ended after his death in 2004.
Zdeněk Rejdák kept enforcing the psychotronics as a physical science on the world-wide scale and for many years, he organized conferences on research in psychotronics. The first conference with an international participation on research in psychotronics took place in Prague (Czechia) in 1973.[3] The psychotronics of this era is being understood as a new science in the terms of human bionics. The main objectives of psychotronics were to verify and study the phenomena of telepathy, clairvoyance and psychokinesis, to discover new principles of nature. The philosophy of the approach to studies and research on the issue of psychotronics were different from the approach used in parapsychology.[4][5]
The name of psychotronics was adopted from French and was suggested to Rejdák by his cooperator, researcher and radio engineer Karel Drbal. After the Mesmer's magnetism, spiritism and parapsychology, psychotronics was meant to be the next phase of the psychological phenomena research, which should culminate in the birth of a new science. In 1973 he founded the international association for the research in psychotronics (IARP) and became a president of the association./[6] F. Kahuda creates his own hypothesis on the origin of psychotronic phenomena on the basis of hypothetical particles (the so called "mentioms“) and mental energy. This own school of his within the psychotronics he considers to be a scientific field, which he calls "psycho-energetics".[7] The same year there has been founded the Laboratory of Psychotronics at the Faculty of Universal Medicine within the Charles´ University in Prague[8] and the Psycho-energetic Laboratory at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague[9]
In 1976, Rejdák along with Milan Nakonečný published the very first concept of psychotronics as a field studying distant interactions among organisms,[1] in a multidisciplinary context, as well as the physicists Alain Aspect and David Bohm, psychologist Stanislav Grof or neurophysiologist Karl H. Pribram.[10] Around 1990, with the end of the communist era, Rejdák gives psychotronics its spiritual-based scientific concept, but together with closing down of the Psychoenergetic laboratory in 1991 as well as the Laboratory of Psychotronics in 1992 the development of psychotronics has begun stagnate.[9] The studies and research in psychotronics are transferred to the private sphere and social organizations (e.g. the Czech psycho-energetic society[11] and the Club of Psychotronics and UFO)[12]