Thelma Moss (born Thelma Schnee, January 6, 1918 – February 1, 1997) was an American actress, and later a psychologist and parapsychologist, best known for her work on

Kirlian photography Kirlian photography is a collection of photographic techniques used to capture the phenomenon of electrical coronal discharges. It is named after Semyon Kirlian, who, in 1939, accidentally discovered that if an object on a photographic plate is ...

and the human aura.

Biography

Born Thelma Schnee, a native of

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

, Thelma Moss graduated from Carnegie Tech, and originally pursued a career in acting and in writing scripts for film and television. She was one of the earliest members of The Actors Studio; as a scriptwriter, her biggest success was the screenplay for the 1954 Alec Guinness film ''

Father Brown Father Brown is a fictional Roman Catholic priest and amateur detective who is featured in 53 short stories published between 1910 and 1936 written by English author G. K. Chesterton. Father Brown solves mysteries and crimes using his intui ...

''. She also wrote the script for the 1958 science fiction film '' The Colossus of New York'', about the implantation of a human brain belonging to a brilliant scientist (played by Ross Martin) into a large humanoid robot. However, she struggled for years with persistent psychological problems, rooted in depression and grief at the loss of her husband (he died of cancer two days after she gave birth to a baby daughter). She survived two suicide attempts. For treatment for her problems, she underwent a course of

LSD Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known colloquially as acid, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, vi ...

psychotherapy; she later published an autobiographical account of her treatment, ''My Self and I'', under the pseudonym Constance A. Newland; the book was a bestseller in 1962. Moss returned to academia in the mid-1960s, studying at the

UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute The Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior is a research institute of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). It includes a number of centers, including the "Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics", which uses DNA sequencing, g ...

and interning at the Wadsworth Veterans Hospital; she earned her Ph.D. in psychology from UCLA and became a professor at the same institution. For a time in the 1970s she led UCLA's parapsychology laboratory (while it existed). She explored a wide range of specific subjects in parapsychology (

hypnosis Hypnosis is a human condition involving focused attention (the selective attention/selective inattention hypothesis, SASI), reduced peripheral awareness, and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion.In 2015, the American Psychologica ...

, ghosts, levitation, alternative medicine), though her research on

was the most significant theme in her work for the remainder of her career. Moss came to believe that Kirlian photography depicts the astral body. She made several trips to the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

to explore Russian work in the field, and wrote two books on that and related subjects, plus lesser works.

Olav Hammer Olav Hammer (born 1958) is a Swedish professor at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense working in the field of history of religion. Career Hammer has written four books in Swedish and one monograph ''Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Ep ...

''Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age'' 2001, pp. 240-241

Books

*''My Self and I'' (pseudo. Constance A. Newland), New York, Coward McCann, 1962. *''The Probability of the Impossible: Scientific Discoveries and Exploration in the Psychic World,'' Los Angeles, J.P. Tarcher, 1974. *''Body Electric: A Personal Journey into the Mysteries of Parapsychological Research, Bioenergy and Kirlian Photography,'' Los Angeles, J.P. Tarcher, 1979.

Short films

* ''Power Of Plants'' (1950) - John Kieran's Kaleidoscope https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZCKy61DNrE

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Moss, Thelma Jewish American actresses 20th-century American psychologists American women psychologists Parapsychologists 1918 births 1997 deaths 20th-century American women 20th-century American Jews

Biography

Books

Short films

See also

References

External links