Donald J. West

Donald James West (born 1924) is a British psychiatrist, parapsychologist and author.

He was born on 9 June 1924 in Liverpool, England, and studied medicine at Liverpool University. He did postgraduate work at London University and Cambridge University. He studied criminology at Cambridge University. After his retirement in 1984 he was named the Emeritus Professor of Clinical Criminology, University of Cambridge. He is also an Emeritus Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge.

He was particularly known for his 1955 book, Homosexuality (revised 1968), arguing for tolerance. His book Murder Followed by Suicide (1966) which discusses specific cases of homicide followed by suicide.

West was a member of the Parole Board in its first years, as described in his book The Future of Parole, and worked as a Mental Health Act commissioner 1992-7.

Since 2005 he has been associated with Paradise Press, an outlet for LGBT authors, who published his 2012 autobiography Gay Life Straight Work.

West has studied and written on parapsychology. He was a research officer for the Society for Psychical Research, 1947–50 and a president in 1963. He carried out laboratory experiments in extrasensory perception. He wrote the book Psychical Research Today (1953, 1962). In a review of the book the psychologist Frederic Marcuse wrote that it "will be criticised both by firm believers in psychical phenomena and by skeptics" as West was critical of physical mediumship and took a psychological approach to some paranormal phenomena but accepted extrasensory perception as proven. Marcuse wrote that West had based his statements on ESP on faith rather than proven fact.

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