mesmer
TRANSCRIPT
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MesmerDerek Forrest aa Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
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To cite this article: Derek Forrest (2002): Mesmer, International Journal of Clinicaland Experimental Hypnosis, 50:4, 295-308
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MESMER
DEREK FORREST' Trinity College, Dublin, Irelnnd
Abstract: This introductory article provides a brief outline of Mesmer's life and the main influences on his work. His theory, that a gravitational influence from sun and moon affected not only the tides but periodicity in physiological functioning, led him to investigate the use of magnets, which also operated at a distance and which might channel this univer- sal fluid and lead to modification in a patient's condition. It was but a short step to discover that magnets were unnecessary because the fluid appeared to be transmissible from one person to another and to lead to a variety of therapeutic effects. His conviction in the correctness of his theory, coupled with a charismatic personality, led him to encounter enthusiasm and opposition over the course of the 10 years that elapsed between his first treatment of a patient by magnetic therapy and his dPnouement at the hands of the Franklin Commission.
A remark by Ebbinghaus that psychology has a long past but a short history applies with particular force to hypnosis. Its origins must lie in the mists of prehistory; its later role in religious and healing practices has been surmised from Egyptian, Greco-Roman, and Eastern sources. Its history, however, is conventionally dated to begin with Franz Anton Mesmer's "discovery" of animal magnetism in 1774.
In order to appreciate the significance of that event, we need to con- sider it in the context of the thinking of his predecessors and the behavior of his contemporaries insofar as these influences are known, or can rea- sonably be presumed, to have acted on Mesmer himself.
An immediately obvious limitation to such an investigation lies in the paucity of our knowledge of Mesmer's early life and the attitudes and beliefs of his family that he may have imbibed or rejected. The bare facts indicate that he was born in 1734 at Iznang, a small Austrian town situ- ated at the western end of Lake Constance. The third of nine children in a strongly Catholic family, their circumstances were humble but not seri- ously deprived. His father worked for the Bishop of Constance as a gamekeeper or forester. There were educational advantages from such employment, and one son became a priest, a profession for which Anton was also intended. Froma monastic school, he went to the Bavarian uni- versities of Dillingen and Ingolstadt, both Jesuit institutions. Besides philosophy and theology, he was exposed to Copernican astronomy and
Manuscript commissioned May 1,2001; final revision received September 10,2001. 'Address correspondence to Prof. Derek Forrest, 24 Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland.
The Intrrnational [ournal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, Vol. 50, No. 4, October 2002 295-308 DOI. 10.1177/002071402237716 0 2002 The International [ o m m l of Clinical and Expcrinrmtnl Hypnosis
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Cartesian mathematics, his preference for the sciences becoming clearly apparent and involving the rejection of a religious vocation. He cast around for a profession outside the church, taking a year to investigate the possibility of a career in law at the University of Vienna, before trans- ferring to the medical school.
When Mesmer began his studies there in 1760, the Vienna Medical School had become firmly established with an outstanding faculty. The Empress Maria-Theresa had been instrumental in renovating the teach- ing by bringing Gerhard van Swieten from Leiden to act as her personal physician and then to head the school in 1748. Van Swieten had been the star pupil of Hermann Boerhaave (1668-1738)’ whose revolutionary approach to medicine involved the rejection of much Hippocratic and Galenic theory and the introduction of clinical teaching. Van Swieten’s own contribution was to expand Boerhaave’s epigrammatic aphorisms into 18 volumes, to ensure that his master’s teaching permeated the Vienna School and to expand facilities and staff. Among those appointed, mention should be made of Anton de Haen, another pupil of Boerhaave, whose use of the thermometer and electrotherapy were innovative and whose meticulous case histories became models for Mesmer. Another of van Swieten’s appointees was Anton von Stoerk, the professor of pharmacology, who was to assume the presidency of the faculty after van Swieten’s death in 1772 and who was to become involved in controversy over Mesmer ’s procedures.
Mesmer’s medical education lasted 6 years and culminated in a short thesis entitled, “Physico-Medical Dissertation on the Influence of the Planets” (Mesmer, 1766/1971, pp. 32-48). In it, Mesmer is at pains to repudiate the ”superstitions of the astrologers” and to make clear that this was no work of astrology. Such a topic would, in any case, never have been tolerated by van Swieten, and it is a reflection of Mesmer‘s own scientific preference that two thirds of the thesis is strictly astron- omy, with an account of the work of Newton on gravitation and Kepler on planetary movement. In its final third, the thesis becomes medically relevant. Mesmer argues for an extension of the fact of the gravitational effect by the sun and moon on the tides and atmosphere to the notion that a similar effect may be manifested in the human body. Although he acknowledges the importance of Richard Mead‘s (1704) theory of atmo- spheric tides causing periodicity in physiological functioning, he does not indicate that the 23 exemplars taken from a wide range of authors are all except one derived from Mead (Pattie, 1956). Neither does he indicate that some passages are copied almost word for word from that author. Plagiarism was not condemned so harshly then as it is today, but, as Pattie (1967) has pointed out, the significance is in Mesmer’s reliance on Mead, a Newtonian follower, rather than on one or another of the devo- tees of magnetic medicine-a point to which we shall return.
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MESMER 297
In addition to Mead’s atmospheric effects, Mesmer refers to another force:
which is the cause of universal gravitation and which is, very probably, the foundation of all corporeal properties; a force which, indeed, in the small- est fluid and solid particles of our organism strains, relaxes and agitates the cohesion, elasticity, irritability, magnetism and electricity, a force which can in this connection be called nnimal gravitation (Mesmer, 1766/ 1971, p. 40).
Commentators have noted the similarity with the closing sentences of Newton’s Principiu Muthematicu, although Newton refused to speculate about the causes of gravitation. Nor did Newton refer to magnetism, and Mesmer mentions it only in this obscure passage.
The influence of celestial configurations is not only relevant to dis- ease. Our bodies are harmonized by means of animal gravitation with the astral plane,
. . . not in a uniform and monotonous manner, but, as with a musical in- strument furnished with several strings, the exact tone resonates which is in unison with a given tone. Likewise, human bodies react to stellar config- urations with which they are joined by a given harmony. (Mesmer, 1766/ 1971, p. 44).
Mesmer’s final plea is for physicians to turn their attention to the ways in which we are influenced by the movements of celestial bodies, to conduct research into these as causes of sickness and to discover ways of alleviating their effects. That does not, however, appear to have been his own immediate goal. Instead, he began an orthodox medical practice from a large mansion in a smart district of Vienna. His financial position had improved by reason of his marriage in 1768 to Maria Anna von Bosch, a rich and aristocratic widow, who, at the age of 44, was 10 years older than Mesmer. Her wealth and social position enabled Mesmer to move in fashionable Viennese society and acquire tastes that were to be satisfied in the future only by maintaining a high income. It is also a trib- ute to his self-confidence that from humble origins in a socially stratified society, he became able to more than hold his own in an aristocratic mi- lieu. His musical skills were partially responsible for his early accep- tance: he played the cello and the clavichord and was particularly expert on the glass harmonica, an old instrument recently improved by Benjamin Franklin, which he was to lake to Paris for its contribution to the ambience of his group therapy. Musical soirees were a feature of his household, with visits from composers, such as Gluck and the Mozart family. Mesmer’s great interest in music was apparent in his frequent references to harmony in the discussion of his theories.
Arelatively fallow period of about 5years followed; Mesmer was con- sidered a sound practitioner who was using the accredited treatments of the time, namely, bleeding, purging, and blistering. He was on good
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terms with von Stoerk, whose advice he could follow about drugs, and he was following De Haen in using electrotherapy. None of these mea- sures was, however, effective in bringing about a lasting cure of a partic- ular patient whose symptoms showed a remarkable regularity in their periodic occurrence. Allowing for Mesmer ‘s tendency to exaggerate the severity of the illnesses of those he treated, it is apparent that Fraulein Oesterlin had a variety of gross hysterical symptoms:
A young woman of twenty-eight years, who lived in my house and who had suffered from nervous debility from her youth, was attacked by terri- ble convulsions over a period of two years. Her hysterical fever caused continual vomiting, inflammation of the bowels, stoppage of urine, excru- ciating toothache, earache, melancholy, depression, delirium, fits of frenzy, catalepsy, fainting fits, blindness, breathlessness, paralyses lasting some days, and other symptoms. I applied the most efficacious remedies known; not leaving her out of my sight, frequently rescuing her from death’s door, and I usually restored her within three or four weeks without obtaining a lasting cure; recovery did not last long before she fell ill again (Mesmer, 1775/1971, p. 50).
The cyclical nature of her illness was so apparent that Mesmer became able to forecast the onset of the next attack; his patient seemed to be a per- fect exemplar of the theory of periodicity put forward in his medical the- sis. The therapeutic solution, he thought, must lie in the discovery of an agent that would enable him to control the ebb and flow of the gravita- tional fluid.
He was led to employ magnets mainly by analogy between their properties and that of what he called “the general system.” That is to say, a magnet seems to exert attraction at a distance rather like the gravita- tional effect of the sun and moon. He was also aware of the use of mag- nets in Britain, France, and Germany, where dubious claims had been made for their efficacy in curing stomach- and toothache.
Artificial magnets had become widely available since first made by John Canton in 1750, and Mesmer obtained several variously shaped pieces from the workshop of Father Maximilian Hell, who taught astron- omy at the university and was a believer in magnetic medicine. Two horseshoe magnets were fixed to Fraulein Oesterlin’s feet, and a heart- shaped magnet was placed on her breast. Her response was immediate, with tearing pains running up her legs and down from her breast. In spite of her protests, Mesmer applied more magnets to her lower limbs, and the pains descended through her body. After an uncomfortable night of pain, with copious sweating on her side, which was paralyzed, the attack was over, and she became temporarily unaffected by the magnets.
The procedure had to be repeated on the following day and continued daily over at least 3 weeks; Mesmer concluded that the magnets were influencing the movement of the universal fluid in the patient’s body.
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MESMER 299
Apart from an occasional relapse, the patient was pronounced finally cured about a year later and had by then become insensitive to the pres- ence of magnets.
A therapist‘s first success with a novel treatment is almost bound to affect his or her later theorizing and procedures, and Mesmer was no exception to this generalization. The periodicity in Fraulein Oesterlin‘s symptoms convinced him that he was right to link illness to celestial changes. The magnet’s role in intensifying her attacks and in controlling the location of pain convinced him that it was in some way affecting the animal gravitational influence, and the cure itself seemed to follow peaks or crises in her sickness. This was consistent with contemporary thinking of the need for a fever to precede a cure, and Mesmer was to come to regard a crisis as a sine qua non for therapeutic success. Many ill- nesses are, of course, self-limiting, and it is often when symptoms reach a peak that a therapeutic intervention is made, and recovery ascribed to it rather than believing that the symptoms are about to diminish.
Mesmer was later at pains to point out that the magnets used on this first occasion were merely shaped conveniently for the site of their appli- cation, and he rejected the sympathetic magic reflected in the claim made by Hell that the shapes were crucial to their success and that it was the lack of attention to this factor that was responsible for previous fail- ures elsewhere (Mesmer, 1779/1971, p. 64).
Mesmer’s report of his first magnetic treatment was accompanied by a brief account of experiments he had been making in the presence of Hell and others in an effort to understand the nature of animal gravita- tion, or “animal magnetism,” as he now called it (Mesmer, 1775/1971, p. 49). From the effect it had, the mineral magnet seemed to channel ani- mal magnetism, but it was not unique in that respect. Paper, bread, wool, silk, leather, stone, glass, water, various metals, wood, human beings, and dogs, in short, everything he touched, could convey the magnetic fluid. He claimed he had stored bottles with it in the same way as one can store electrical fluid.
Although the account is unclear, he also seems to have asked a group of 10 onlookers to approach Fraulein Oesterlin individually, and he seemed to find differences among them in their magnetic makeup. One member of the group was insusceptible and blocked the magnetic fluid, whereas one other could not approach within 10 paces of the patient without causing the patient severe pain. Mesmer claimed that he himself could cause pain in any part of the patient he chose, even when he was hidden behind a wall.
In his first written account of his method, Mesmer states that he has already been able to cure menstrual disorders, hemorrhoids, a case of paralysis, and a variety of hysterical complaints, and he was then trying it with other conditions (Mesmer, 1775/1971). Since it had been only 6 months since he began Fraulein Oesterlin’s treatment-too soon to claim
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a permanent cure in her case-it is not surprising that his request to Anton von Stoerk for him to examine Mesmer‘s evidence was refused. Mesmer was, however, probably correct in attributing the rebuttal to von Stoerk’s conservatism and to his fear that the Medical Faculty might be compromised by publicity. It was also the case that von Stoerk was a close friend of Father Hell, and a controversy had arisen between Hell and Mesmer over priority in the discovery and the nature of the mag- netic influence, with Hell rejecting the notion of any universal fluid. Mesmer was, however, to progress quite rapidly in the opposite direc- tion; he informs us that by 1776 he no longer relied on magnets at all and that he had completely ceased to use electrotherapy (Mesmer, 1779/ 1971, p. 69).
The magnetic fluid was chiefly communicated from Mesmer to the patient by means of touch. The application of a healer’s hand to the body of a patient was a common therapeutic procedure found in many coun- tries over many centuries. It was sometimes associated with the induc- tion of a trance state, as in the yogic practice of jnhr-phoonkn. More com- monly, it was mere contact with an individual to whom special powers were ascribed. Christ’s laying on of hands was in an Old Testament tra- dition; the touch of the English sovereign from the time of the reign of Edward the Confessor (1042-1066) to that of George I(l714-1727) was thought to cure scrofula-indeed, belief in the healing power of themon- arch survived in Norfolk into the 20th century, with sufferers before the Second World War pressing around George VI in the hope of a cure (Hibbert, 1988). Valentine Greatrakes, the 17th-century Irish ”stroking doctor,” is yet another famous example. Thus, Mesmer’s use of his hands was in no way original, unlike his theoretical basis for the practice of the transmission of the magnetic fluid through touch. The operator no longer cured solely because he was a socially powerful individual, who, as Edmonton (1986) has suggested, held the fate of the people in his hands. Now the operator was conceived as a source of magnetic force that interacted with the patient’s own magnetism to redistribute it opti- mally. For the first time, there was in Mesmer’s practice some degree of mutuality in the curative process, a mutuality that was to be made more explicit in the procedures of his pupils.
The optimal arrangement for the presumed transmission of the fluid entailed the operator and the patient sitting face to face with their feet and knees touching. This contact between the left side of one person and the right side of the other was thought to link their opposite magnetic poles, completing a circuit. The operator then made long stroking move- ments with his hands from the shoulders down the arms to the hands, where the patient’s thumbs were held momentarily. Sometimes the passes were continued to the feet, and occasionally one hand was placed on the abdomen and one on the back in order to saturate the trunk. Then, depending on the specific complaint, attention would be directed to the
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MESMER 301
body part concerned or to the site of the organ considered responsible, and passes concentrated there.
Mesmer explained matters as follows:
In a man on his own, when one part suffers, his whole life force is turned upon it to destroy the cause of the suffering. It is the same when two men act upon each other. Their whole united force acts upon the diseased part, with a strength proportional to the increase of mass (Mesmer, 1785).
Mesmer’s early demonstration that action at a distance was also effec- tive, especially pointing with the finger or with an iron rod at a localized source of discomfort, had obvious similarities with characteristics of the ”electric fluid.” This is especially obvious when Mesmer writes of con- densing and storing the magnetic fluid in a tub, or baquet, and thus work- ing at what was effectively one remove from the patient. The baquet was developed as an aid to group treatment and was modeled on the popular Leyden jar, an early form of capacitor, or “condenser,“ of which Mesmer must first have heard from his Dutch teachers. Various baquets were de- veloped but were of similar construction, typically consisting of a shal- low tub, up to 15 feet in diameter, holding bottles of water previously ”magnetized” by Mesmer’s hands, immersed in more magnetized water usually containing iron and stone. Bent iron bars protruded from the lid, and were applied to the source of pain. Persons sitting around the baquet were loosely tied together by a rope, which led from the tub and was sup- posed to convey the magnetic fluid through the group.
The baquet was not fully developed until Mesmer had settled in Paris. His move from Vienna was brought about by the difficulties he was experiencing with the Medical Faculty, jealousy over his notoriety and popularity, and opposition from von Stoerk. The famous case of Maria Theresa von Paradis was probably the last straw (Mesmer, 1779/1971). Aged 18, this gifted hysterical daughter of a dysfunctional family had been blind from the age of 3. Her father was private secretary to the Empress, who had provided the talented young pianist with a pension. Mesmer took her into his house, where he began treatment in January 1777. There seems little doubt that she partially recovered her vision; many of her reported experiences during the cure match reports from patients who are blind from birth and recover sight as adults after an operation for congenital cataract (Forrest, 1974). The recovered vision of these patients and von Paradis was of an unstable nature, with a loss of distance perception and size constancy. The parents’ delight at their daughter’s cure was short-lived; possibly alarmed by slanderous accu- sations about Mesmer’s relationship with his patient and also by fears that she would lose her pension if her blindness were cured, they tried to remove her after a violent scene, which caused a relapse. Von Stoerk then ordered Mesmer to return her to her parents. After a further month’s
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treatment, which restored the patient’s condition, he did so, but she became blind again in the family environment. She was later to become well known as a competent blind pianist on the European concert plat- form, being sufficiently talented for Mozart to compose his Concerto in B Flat Major no. 18 especially for her.
Attempts to produce cures of this dramatic kind were not Mesmer’s priority. He sought recognition of the importance of his discovery. Three months of solitude in the country were occupied with trying to find a way to formulate his theory, to present it to scientific and medical audi- ences. Upon his arrival in Paris, Mesmer lost no time in arranging to speak to the Academy of Sciences and to the Royal Society of Medicine. He was rewarded by general incomprehension:
I felt indeed how difficult it was, by reason alone, to prove the existence of a principle of which people had not the slightest conception. With this in mind, I therefore yielded to the request made to me to show the reality and the usefulness of my theory by the treatment of a few serious maladies (Mesmer, 1779/1971, p. 75).
Patients included those suffering from paralyses, chronic vomiting, and unspecified complaints, supposedly due to stoppages in the spleen or other organs, all of whom Mesmer claimed to have cured. Objections were readily made to the reality of these cures, mainly on the grounds that nothing was known as to the condition of the patients before treat- ment began.
Mesmer’s later, more sophisticated suggestion for a comparison of two randomly chosen groups, each consisting of 12 patients, one group to be treated by conventional methods and the other by animal magne- tism, was also to be rejected (Mesmer, 1781/1971).
Mesmer always treated all diseases, including many still incurable today; thus, the odds were weighted against him. The fact that some patients got better was probably due to a combination of factors, includ- ing the strong suggestive component, reinforced around the baquet by the other patients, the supportive benevolent presence of Mesmer him- self with his message of hope and a promise of a healthy future, and, last but not least, the avoidance of the barbaric orthodox treatments of the day.
Mesmer was unfortunate in having arrived in Paris when the newly formed Royal Society of Medicine was at loggerheads with the conserva- tive Paris Medical Faculty, and his naive supposition that the two bodies would cooperate in evaluating his treatment was soon proved wrong. Rebuffed by all the official bodies, he had to fall back on the printed word; his theory appeared in the form of ”Twenty-Seven Propositions” as an addendum to his 1779 memoir. Some of the propositions were woe- fully obscure and even incoherent, and it is unnecessary to reproduce them all here. The following choice of the most important ones should give a flavor of the whole (Mesmer, 1779/1971, pp. 76-78).
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MESMER 303
1.
2.
7.
8.
10.
18.
21.
23.
27.
Amutual influence exists between heavenly bodies, the earth, and living
A universally distributed fluid, so continuous as to admit of no vacuum anywhere, of incomparable subtlety, and by its nature capable of receiv- ing, propagating, and communicating all motion, is the means of this in- fluence. All the properties of matter and of living organisms depend on this agent. The animal body experiences the alternating effects of this agent, which enters the substance of the nerves and affects them directly. This property of the human body, which makes it responsive to the influ- ence of the heavenly bodies, and to the reciprocal action of the bodies around it, shown by its analogy with the magnet, led me to call it animal magnetism. I have said that not all animate bodies are equally susceptible. There are some, although they are very rare, that have a property so opposed as to destroy all the effects of animal magnetism in other bodies. This system will produce new explanations of the nature of fire and light, of the theory of gravitation, of ebb and flow, of the magnet and of electricity. One can see from the facts that this principle, following the practical rules I shall set forth, can cure nervous ailments directly and other ail- ments indirectly. Finally, this doctrine will make it possible for the physician to diagnose the health of each individual and to shield him from the illnesses to which he may be exposed. The art of healing will thus reach its ultimate perfection.
things.
The propositions show little advancement on Mesmer’s doctoral the- sis, although now systematized and applied more precisely to medicine. Proposition 18 was foreshadowed in his early finding that some individ- uals did not respond to his attempts to magnetize them; it appears to be in direct contradiction to Proposition 7. With regard to Proposition 23, it should be borne in mind that, in common with other physicians, Mesmer regarded all illnesses as bodily illnesses; it was not until the next century that Reynolds (1855) was to draw a distinction between organic and functional disorders.
One senses desperation in Mesmer’s failure to convey to others what he believed he had discovered:
In order to be understood I have to use images, comparisons, approxima- tions. . . . Animal magnetism should be considered as an nrtificid sixth sense. Senses cannot be defined or described: they are felt. One would try in vain to explain color theory to a man blind from birth. It would be nec- essary to make him see; that is to say, experience (Mesmer, 1781/1971,
The argument that experience must precede understanding is a famil- iar one, found in a variety of esoteric groups from Zen Buddhists to psy-
pp. 102-103).
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choanalysts, and one that is difficult to reconcile with a scientific ap- proach. In other respects, though, Mesmer’s theory had the trappings of science: the analogy with invisible electricity, the discovery of invisible gases in the atmosphere, the multiplicity of other fluidic theories lent re- spectability to the theory or at least did not render it absurd in the context of contemporary science. But science itself was in turmoil. As Zilboorg reminds us: “The eighteenth century, despite the fact that we think of it as primarily the great century of rationalism and enlightenment, was ac- tually a multicolored century of contrasts, of turbulence, of passionate struggles and confused rearrangements of thought” (Zilboorg & Henry, 1941, p.280).
Mesmer’s critics claimed that Mesmer had plagiarized his theory from the early magnetists. Michel Thouret, his principal adversary in the Royal Society of Medicine, traced direct influences from Paracelsus, Fludd, and especially Maxwell (Thouret, 1784), but Mesmer denied this ancestry, although he acknowledged coincidental similarities with Maxwell‘s theories (Mesmer, 1784/1971). There is no reason to doubt Mesmer’s good faith: He regarded himself as a scientific mechanist, whose intellectual forebears were Newton and Mead. As was clear in his propositions, he was, and remained, in no doubt that he had made a major contribution to science, and not only to physiology and medicine but even to physics: ”I dare to flatter myself that the discoveries I have made. . . will push back the boundaries of our knowledge of physics, as did the invention of microscopes and telescopes for the age which pre- cedes our own” (Mesmer, 1799/1971, p. 294).
Mesmer was certainly no politician; the political and social implica- tions of animal magnetism had largely escaped him until the contacts with Nicholas Bergasse and the formation of the Society of Universal Harmony. He impetuously tumed down a most liberal and final offer from Louis XVI-a substantial annuity and the gift of money to buy or rent a chateau, in which he could establish a training clinic, in exchange for taking on three nominated pupils and a promise not to leave France. All that was deemed insufficient recognition of the importance of his dis- covery. He expressed a similar sentiment in an inappropriately familiar letter to the queen, which in combination with a democratic attitude toward his patients must have caused consternation in court circles.
The formation of the Society of Universal Harmony, that amalgam of training course and secret society, must have seemed to Mesmer a good alternative to the spumed royal offer. But the affairs of the Society were never harmonious and offered him little more than monetary compensa- tion for his failed attempts to obtain official recognition. There is little doubt that he was under great strain at this time, the final blow coming with the reports of the Franklin Commission in 1784. It is hard to believe that a mere 10 years had elapsed since, as an obscure physician, Mesmer
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MESMER 305
had first treated Fraulein Oesterlin with magnetic therapy. Now he had reached the end of his attempts to obtain official recognition in France.
His last memoir is chiefly remarkable for his acceptance of the sup- posed paranormal aspects of somnambulism and his claim to have antic- ipated his pupil Puyskgur in the discovery of that state (Mesmer, 1799/ 1971). Mesmer must certainly have observed many instances of sleep- like states around the baquet, but he made nothing of them. Indeed, they were the antitheses of the violent crises he sought. Such complete crises were uncommon, occurring in only about 25 percent of patients in his own practice (Laurence & Perry, 1988). Accepting that there was evi- dence for some cures, this statistic impIies either that they occurred in a minority of cases or that cures occurred without crises. By avoiding any interaction with patients in a sleeping state, Mesmer lost the opportunity to engage in verbal dialogue with them, for which Puysegur deserves full credit. Mesmer’s was always a somatic dialogue, although he was not averse to making preliminary suggestions as to the symptoms the patient would feel when the crisis occurred (Servan, 1784). These shared expectations of operator and patient were doubtless important in deter- mining the form the crisis would take, although Mesmer is unlikely to have been aware of this possibility. After Puys6gur, the mesmeric crisis more or less disappeared, and verbal interaction became more usual.
However, the concept of the mesmeric fluid was a robust survivor, directed now by the willpower of the operator and thus imbued with a psychological aspect and no longer a purely physical phenomenon. The theory was able to withstand all experimental demonstrations of the nonexistence of the magnetic fluid because no other theoretical explana- tion of hypnotic phenomena existed. Even when Faria and later Braid located hypnotizability within the subject and denied the power of the operator, the theory was not buried. It surfaced again as late as 1885 in the confines of the [email protected], where Binet and Ferk began using horse- shoe magnets to transfer movements and perceptions from one side of the body to another (Wolf, 1973). But then Charcot, like Mesmer, was somatically oriented, albeit with a much more sophisticated neurology, and it required a Bernheim to provide a purely psychological theory of hypnosis.
Mesmer ’s remarkable personality was crucially responsible for the extent of kus influence. In general, his behavior resembled that of a manic- depressive and was typified by great activity and self-aggrandizement, followed by periods of inaction and flight. There can be little doubt that at the height of his mood swings he had the charisma of a great religious or political leader, and he had a psychological makeup in common with many such.
An imposing presence, the need for absolute loyalty on the part of his followers, the suspicion of those who did not accept his views, and the
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readiness to perceive conspirators among them, these were all character- istic of the man. There are many instances of his benevolence toward the poor and the sick, often giving them money to sustain them between vis- its to the baquet (Hervier, 1784). In contrast, he felt no compunction in obtaining whatever he could from those who could afford it.
The strength of belief in his own doctrines and, in particular, in the curative powers of animal magnetism never deserted him. It was this conviction that carried many with him and gave hope to those who had found other treatments ineffectual. Ultimately, his importance for the history of hypnosis lies in his attempt to secularize the phenomena he produced, to provide an explanation that appeared perfectly feasible in the light of 18th-century knowledge and to open the way for subsequent, more fruitful, scientific enquiry.
REFERENCES Edmonton, William E. (1986). The inrtrrction ofhypnosis. New York Wiley. Forrest, D. W. (1974). Von Senden, Mesmer, and the recovery of sight in the blind. Americiiri
Hervier, C. (1784). Lettre srir In dtcolivcrtedrr rrinpittisnir nti i~rinl , li M. Court lie Grbrliii [Letter
Hibbert, C. (1988). The Evglish: A socinl history. London: Paladin. Laurence, J. -R., & Perry, C. (1988). Hypnosis, zuill, nnd meniory. New York: Guilford. Mesmer, F. A. [Caullet de Veaumorel] (1785). Apliorisnres de M. Mrsrtiiv dict2s li I ’ n s s ~ ~ r i i b l ~ k ~ dc
SL’S 2li.ves [Aphorisms of M. Mesmer dictated to the assembly of his pupils]. Aphorism 238. Paris: n. pub.
Mesmer, F. A. (1971). Dissertation physico-mPdicale sur 1’ influence des planStes. In R. Amadou (Ed.), LP mngnftismenniinnl (pp. 32-45). Paris: Payot Press. (Original work pub- lished 1766)
Mesmer, F.A. (1971). Lettre de M. Mesmer, docteur en medecine a Vienne, a M. Unzer, docteur en medecine, sur I’usage medicinal del‘aimant [Letter from M. Mesmer, doctor of medicine at Vienna, to M. Unzer, doctor of medicine, on the medicinal use of the mag- net]. In R. Amadou (Ed.), Le riingnitisrtie aniriinl (pp. 49-52). Paris: Payot Press. (Original work published 1775)
Mesmer, F. A. (1971). Memoire sur la dkouverte du magnetisme animal [Dissertation on the discovery of animal magnetism]. In R. Amadou (Ed.), Le mngriitisme nnimnl (pp. 59- 79). (Original work published 1779)
Mesmer, F. A. (1971). Prkcis historique des faits relatifs au magnetisme animal jusques en avril 1781 [Historical account of the facts relating to animal magnetism until April 17811. In R. Amadou (Ed.), Le mngnifismeanimal (pp. 93-194). (Original work published 1781)
Mesmer, F. A. (1971). Lettre A M. Vicq d’Azyr, 16 aotit 1784 [Letter to M. Vicq d,Azyr, 16 August 17841. In R. Amadou (Ed.), Le magnitisme animal (pp. 244-247). (Original work published 1784)
Mesmer, F. A. (1971). Memoire de F. A. Mesmer, docteur en medecine, sur ses decouvertes [Dissertation of F. A. Mesmer, doctor of medicine, on his discoveries]. In R. Amadou (Ed.), Le magiiefisme anininl (pp. 291-319). (Original work published in 1799)
Pattie, F. A. (1956). Mesmer’s medical dissertation and its debt to Mead’s De imperio solis ac lune. Jorirnnl of the History $Medicine nnd Allied Sciences, 72,275-287.
fotirnnl of Psyclioloyy, 87, 719-722.
to M. Court de Gebelin on the Discovery of Animal Magnetism]. Pekin: Coutourier.
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Pattie, F. A. (1967). A brief history of hypnotism. In J. E. Gordon (Ed.), Handbook ofclinical and Experimental Hypnosis. New York Macmillan.
Reynolds, J. R. (1855). The diagnosis of diseases ofthe brain, spinal cord, nerves and their append- ages. London: Churchill.
Servan, J. M. A. (1784). Doutes d'un provincial proposis ?I MM. les midecins coniniissionnires chargis par le Roi de I'examen du magn6tismeanimal [Doubts of a provincial put forward to the medical commissioners charged by the King with the examinatiotiof animal mag- netism]. Lyons, France: Prault.
Thouret, M. A. (1784). Recherches et doutes sur le magnitisme nnimal [Research and doubts about animal magnetism]. Pans: Prault.
Wolf, T. H. (1973). Alfred Binet. London: University of Chicago Press. Zilboorg, G., & Henry, G. W. (1941). A History ofMedicnl Psychology. New York: Norton.
Mesmer
Derek Forrest Zusammenfassung: Dieser einleitende Artikel enthalt eine kurze Ubersicht iiber das Leben Mesmers und die Haupteinflusse auf sein Werk. Ausgehend von der Theorie, dass die Anziehungskrafte von S o m e und Mond nicht nur Ebbe und Flut, sondem auch die Ablaufe von physiologischen Funktionen beeinflussen, untersuchte er die Wirkung von Magneten, die, da sie ebenfalls aus der Feme wirken und dieses universale Fluidum kanalisieren konnten, dadurch Veranderungen im Zustand eines Patienten hervorrufen. Nach kurzer Zeit verwarf er die Anwendung von Magneten, denn das Fluidum schien von einer Person auf die andere iibertragbar und erzielte anscheinend eine Reihe von therapeutischen Effekten. Seine Uberzeugung von der Richtigkeit seiner Theorie und seine charismatische Personlichkeit brachten ihm in dem Zeitraum von 10 Jahren zwischen seiner ersten Behandlung einer Patientin mithilfe der Magnettherapie und der Verwerfung seines Verfahrens durch die konigliche Untersuchungskommission ("Franklin Commission") sowohl begeisterte Anhanger wie auch Gegner.
ROSEMARIE GREENMAN University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA
Mesmer
Derek Forrest Risume: Cet article preliminaire donne un apercu de la vie de Mesmer et des grands courants qui ont influence ses travaux. Sa theorie sur l'influence de la gravitation du soleil et de la lune qui pouvait affecter non seulement les marees mais aussi periodicit6 du fonctionnement physiologique l'a conduit a Ctudier l'utilisation des aimants, qui fonctionnaient Pgalement a distance et qui pourraient canaliser ce fluide universe1 et le mener a la modification de 1'Ctat d'un patient. I1 s'agissait d'un premiere ktape qui amenait a dkcouvrir que les aimants Ctaient inutiles, parce que le fluide semblait Gtre transmissi- ble d 'une personne 2 l'autre et conduisait une varikte d'effets thkapeutiques. Sa conviction dans la justesse de sa thhorie, couplee h une personnalite charismatique, I'a men6 a rencontrer I'enthousiasme et
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l’opposition dans les 10 annkes qui se sont ecoulees entre son premier traite- ment d’un patient par la therapie magnktique et son denouement au sein de la Commission de Franklin.
VICTOR SIMON Psychosomatic Medicine b CIinicnl Hypnosis Institute, Lille, France
Mesmer
Derek Forrest Resumen: Este articulo introductorio provee un resumen breve de vida de Mesmer y las principales influencias en su obra. Su teoria de que una influencia gravitacional del Sol y la Luna afectan no s610 la marea sino tambikn la periodicidad en el funcionamiento fisiol6gico lo condujo a investigar el us0 de imanes, que tambien operan a distancia y pueden canalizar este fluido universal y modificar la condici6n del paciente. No le tom6 mucho descubrir que 10s imanes no eran necesarios porque aparentemente el fluido se podia transmitir de una persona a otra y producia una variedad de efectos terapeuticos. Su convicci6n de que su teona era correcta, acoplada a una personalidad carismitica, lo llevaron a encontrar entusiasmo y oposici6n en el curso de 10s 10 aiios que transcurrieron entre su primer tratamiento de un paciente por terapia magnetica y su denouement a manos de la Comisi6n Franklin.
ETZEL CARDENA University of Texas, Pan American, Edinburg, TX, USA
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