Pelman School of Memory -The Pelman Institute and Pelmanism.
One of the relics in
my possession of my father’s experience as a member of the AIF in
the Great War of (1914-18) is the correspondence course he undertook
whilst awaiting repatriation. This was the Pelman Institute system of
mind and memory training, made available free of charge to
servicemen, recommended by leading figures of the day.
The system, invented
by William Joseph Ennever, was promoted as the “Secret of Certainty
in Recollection . . . for strengthening and developing the mind . . .
expand mental powers in every direction”. My father’s course
consisted of ten lessons, of which the first four “Lesson Sheets”
were submitted, scored and returned between May 1918 and February
1919. His imminent return to Australia and subsequent demobilization
put the project in abeyance and was never resumed.
Published in London
and popular in the first half of the twentieth century, Pelmanism
eventually came to be regarded by some as “a faddish prototype of
positive thinking” (Juliet Nicolson: “The Great Silence 1918-1920
– Living in the shadow of the Great War”)
Given the current
level of academic interest in memory and forgetting in relation to
history/historicity of commemorated events, Pelmanism represents
something of a “blast from the past”, but no doubt still has its
place in the pantheon of self-help authorship.
The Pelman School of
Memory . . . was the fore-runner of The Pelmanism Institute and the
origin of at least one of its innovations. While correspondence
courses were apparently known in the USA the Pelman School was
possibly the first to use the technique in the UK. Their course
for memory training is recorded in the form of "The Secret
of Certainty in Recollection. The Pelman-Foster System", a
book of five correspondence lessons dating from c1905. Each
lesson was accompanied by an "Examination Sheet" for
completion and return to the school but no examples of these sheets
have yet been found. These five lessons are a later version of
the "Memory Training" booklets.
