dc.description.abstract | This paper makes three intertwined arguments. Firstly, marketing is not simply an outgrowth of
economics. Secondly, it is indebted to metaphysical, psychical and psychological research which
provided the conditions of possibility for theorising marketplace interaction in our early history.
Thirdly, marketing thinking has been and remains inflected by a position labelled ‘practical idealism’.
It is a contrast to the ‘practical realism’ which also subtends our discipline. Adopting a genealogical
approach, we explicate the threads of practical idealism weaved across Prentice Mulford, Thomson
J. Hudson and A.F. Sheldon’s prominent works. Mulford provides the contours of the intellectual
landscape. Hudson extends Mulford’s assumption grounds. Sheldon combines the articulations of
Mulford, Hudson and studies in psychical research, outlining the viability of hypnosis and telepathy in
sales practice. To distance itself from hypnosis and associations of manipulation, ‘suggestion’ was the
epistemological-political replacement promoted by marketing theorists. Discursive transmutation
was achieved through epistemological deviation. Epistemological deviation is conceptualised as the
dismissal of and disengagement from a theoretical or hypothetical account without the consid eration of appropriate evidence. W.D. Scott’s treatment of telepathy is an exemplar of episte mological deviation. It is a complete departure from the tenets of intellectual inquiry. What this
means is that the promotion of psychology into marketing was accomplished – in part – by the
abdication of critical reflection and not by its extension. | vi |