However, Freud failed to get the results that so many of the French ‘Mesmerists’ were attaining and eventually gave it up in favour of ‘word association’ a practise which formed the basis of his therapy from that point onwards. It must here be noted that the vast interest that Mesmer caused in France later resulted in Sigmund Freud becoming interested in learning this art in his very early career. When the monument was commissioned by Dr Karl Wolfart and first built, all of the etchings were inlaid with real gold. His grave is a curious triangular monument complete with one face showing the planetary orbits, and another of the three faces showing the Eye in the triangle, all topped by a Sundial. It is very interesting that at Mesmer’s grave in Meersburg, Germany there is an allusion to the connection that Mesmer had with many ‘conceled’ ‘mystical’ Western systems of thought. ![]() Photo courtesy : Rick Collingwood (The Australian Academy of Hypnosis) And yet despite his attempts, various practitioners of the art continued their work in various locations. Word of the powerful healing abilities of Mesmerism persisted despite its going underground, until in England in 1884 the surgeon James Braid of Manchester, after having personally observed the demonstrations given by the travelling mesmerist ‘Charles La Fontaine’, made an attempt at laying the ‘mystical’ belief in animal magnetism to rest by making a concise study of it thereby forming the foundation of the so-called ‘science’ of certain procedures that are to this day utilised by hypnotherapists.īraid did a very good job, being an expert physician in studies of the eye and the muscular system, but sadly threw out the baby with the bathwater with regard to his rejection of some of the more potent and unusual methods of ‘Magnetism’. Mesmer did in fact have many patrons from the nobility of European Society. In fact it was the hiatus caused by the onset of the French Revolution that obscured the art. This has interesting implications when seen in the light of more recent ideas on Quantum Theory.Īlthough it is of popular belief that mesmerism (also known as ‘Animal Magnetism’ or simply ‘magnetism’) fell into obscurity purely due to its being disqualified by the medical profession. He believed in the reality of a ‘universal fluid’ that surrounds every living thing, that can be directed ‘at will’ by an individual operator’. ‘Mesmerism’ is the term coined due to ‘Franz Anton Mesmer’ (1734-1815), a most curious Austrian gentleman, well worthy of further research, who practised and popularised a therapeutic form known as ‘Animal Magnetism’. These days, many people are completely unaware of where the commonplace word ‘Mesmerism’ derives from. You may think that ‘Hypnotism’ is strange enough, but a curious fact is that even serious students of disciplines such as ‘Clinical Hypnosis’ are rarely taught or even encouraged to research the far stranger origins of their profession. ‘N.L.P’ has become a household name, having been popularised by the likes of Paul McKenna and Derren Brown. N.p., 1833.Many people are familiar with ‘Hypnotism’ in it’s various forms such as Stage Hypnosis and Hypno-therapies, and its modern hyper-packaged cousin ‘Neuro Linguistic Programming’. Over the years he wrote a number of books that kept the issue of animal magnetism alive in France.Ĭours de magnétisme animal. ![]() John Elliotson, the first exponent of animal magnetism in Great Britain, to the phenomena. He claimed to have discovered in animal magnetism "the magic of antiquity." Apports, fire resistance, levitation of the human body, and spirit communications were frequently observed and studied by him. ![]() A leading exponent of animal magnetism in nineteenth-century France, familiar with the whole range of paranormal phenomena that later figured prominently in Spiritualism.ĭu Potet began his experiments in 1821 and recorded his experiences in Le Propagateur du Magnétisme animal, a journal founded in 1827, and in the Journal de Magnétisme, which was founded in 1845 and continued until 1861 and was subsequently revived by Hector Durville.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |