Events

• 1990 – The General Assembly of the World Health Organisation (WHO) eliminates homosexuality from the list of psychiatric diseases.

People (Deaths)

• 1964 – Nandor Fodor, Hungarian-American psychologist and parapsychologist (b. 1895).

Nandor Fodor

Nandor Fodor (13 May 1895 to 17 May 1964) was a British and American parapsychologist, psychoanalyst, author and journalist of Hungarian origin.

Fodor was born in Beregszász, Hungary. He received a doctorate in law from the Royal Hungarian University of Science in Budapest. He moved to New York to work as a journalist and to Britain in 1929 where he worked for a newspaper company.

Fodor was one of the leading authorities on poltergeists, haunting and paranormal phenomena usually associated with mediumship. Fodor, who was at one time Sigmund Freud’s associate, wrote on subjects like prenatal development and dream interpretation, but is credited mostly for his magnum opus, Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science, first published in 1934. Fodor was the London correspondent for the American Society for Psychical Research (1935-1939). He worked as an editor for the Psychoanalytic Review and was a member of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Fodor in the 1930s embraced paranormal phenomena but by the 1940s took a break from his previous work and advocated a psychoanalytic approach to psychic phenomena. He published sceptical newspaper articles on mediumship, which caused opposition from spiritualists.

Among the subjects he closely studied was the case of Gef the talking mongoose.