Tertium quid : Gertrude Stein and psychical research

L. Fitzsimmons

Gertrude Stein repeatedly returned to questions she initially investigated at the Harvard Psychological Laboratory. Leon Solomons' and Stein's mutual respect for William James led them to pursue controversial hypotheses within the fin-de-siecle cacophony of discourses on the subconscious. Their experiments yielded results that Frederick Myers saw as a major corroboration of his own theory of subliminal consciousness. With the associated themes of double personality, suggestion, and conversion, the problematic of subliminal consciousness fictionalized in Q.E.D. and "Melanctha" is directly related to Stein's psychological research.