In North America
1784–1833 – Early mesmerists: Marquis de Lafayette, Dr. Benjamin Rush
In America mesmerism split into its component parts and evolved into the different streams of hypnotism, spiritism, New Thought and the so-called mental healing. As early at 1784, mesmerism was a topic which was introduced into the highest levels of American society by the Marquis de Lafayette in a letter he wrote to George Washington. Lafayette was a member of Mesmer's Societé de l'Harmonie and sought permission from its founder to communicate its teachings. Mesmer himself wrote to Washington on June 16, 1784, confirming that Lafayette could speak on his behalf, which he did before the American Philosophical society and elsewhere. American Founding Father Benjamin Rush, the most famous American physician of his time, and father of American Psychiatry, integrated animal magnetism in his practice and in 1789 referred briefly to animal magnetism in his "Duties of a Physician". There has been magnetic society in New Orleans as early as 1833.
1836 – Charles Poyen and the spread of mesmerism in America
When mesmerism really crossed the ocean and touched the masses it was instead with a frenchman, Charles Poyen, who made himself known as the "Professor of Animal Magnetism”. In 1836 M. Poyen, a pupil of Puysegur, went to New York from Paris and aroused great interest by the practice and exposition of the principles of mesmerism. He also translated the favourable French report on animal magnetism produced in 1831 by a Commission guided by Husson Bringing volunteers from the audience to the stage, Poyen produced interesting somnambulic trances. His meetings had the character of religious revivals and, coupled with his talent as a presenter, he could appeal to utopian yearnings and confidentially prophesy that this new teaching was destined to make America "the most perfect nation in the world”. Poyen demonstrated remarkable healings of both physical and mental ailment. And, he trained new magnetizers who formed a lasting core of practitioners in the United States. In Providence alone, it was said that over 100 people were "magnetizing" by the end of 1837. One of Poyen’s students was the reverend Laroy Sunderland. Sunderland went to him for instruction, but soon he found that his own ability was quite equal to the Frenchman's. "When," declared Sunderland, "a” magnetic “relation is once established between an operator and his patient..., corresponding changes may be induced in the nervous system of the latter (awake or entranced) by mere volition, and by suggestions addressed to either of the external senses.” Sunderland published the revue “The Magnet”.
Phineas Quimby's healings and the origins of New Thought
Another student of Poyen was the young Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866), whose own interpretation of mesmerism was to create the foundation of the New Thought movement. Impressed by Poyen, Quimby established himself as a mesmeric healer. Quimby simplified mesmerism. He still held that the source of health was the magnetic fluid or force, but he added that beliefs functioned as a sort of "control valves or floodgates" which were able to interrupt the flow. Among his patients, however, were several willing and eager to carry on the work he had begun—if, perhaps, to continue and extend it along lines undreamed of by him. One of these patients, Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, became the founder of Christian Science. The launching of The New Thought movement came about thanks to two others disciples of Quimby: Warren F. Evans and Julian A. Dresser. Quimby was a tireless healer. In 1865 he treated 12000 people through a combination of techniques. Mary Baker Eddy was an invalid when she came to Quimby suffering from chronic and painful ailments. He healed her of her symptoms and inspired her to begin her own career in mental healing. When the Dressers accused Eddy of distorting Quimby's teachings, Eddy claimed Quimby's having healed her was only temporary, as her true healing was accomplished through Jesus and the intervention of the Bible. Eddy took a very hard line against mesmerism, not denying its apparent reality or power, but emphasizing its malicious possibilities. A chapter of the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, is entitled "Animal Magnetism Unmasked". In it, the book's author, Mary Baker Eddy, says about "the workings of animal magnetism" that "its effects upon those who practise [sic] it, and upon their subjects who do not resist it, lead to moral and to physical death.". Christian Science later rejected the new theories of hypnosis in the same way.
Robert Collyer, Theodore Léger and the ideology of American mesmerism
The same year Poyen left for Europe an Englishman, Robert Collyer, arrived in America and began a lecture tour spreading mesmerism along the Atlantic coast. Collyer’s idea of mesmerism was based on the brain’s power to visualize thought and transform ideas into pictures. His visual theory of mesmerism and his “embodiment of thought” reemerged in the works of Poe, Bulwyer-Litten and Dickens. (Collyer knew Poe and Dickens. He had corresponded with Poe and Dickens and had even visited them on his trip to America). Lectures on the subject of mesmerism were equally delivered in New York in 1829, by Du Commun, a pupil of Mesmer, and by Dr. Underhill in various places from 1834 to 1838. Another innovator was Dr. Theodore Léger, the "Psychodunamist". He, however, was a magnetiser from De Puysegur's school, for he was Deleuze's pupil and intimate friend. (Deleuze died, a very old man, in 1833). Dr. Leger lectured and practiced in the United States in 1844, accompanied by a medical clairvoyant who was remarkably successful. Although he was practically a simple magnetiser, he had some influence upon the march of events, especially in the United States, by the doubts he cast upon some of the theories of the magnetisers through his own metaphysical doctrines, and through his substitution of the name “Psychodunamy” (from Psyche soul, and Dunamis power) for "Animal Magnetism.” The influence of Poyen and Collyer generated a widespread interest in mesmerism, but, in contrast to Europe, where it was first born in the aristocracy and attracted the upper class, mesmerism was to have its impact in America on the lives of a large middle class. In America mesmerism was first and foremost an ideology of personal inner liberation. It emphasized the inherent goodness of the inner self and led to the development of practices that were designed to expand, revitalize, and finally liberate the spirituality. Patients exhibited spiritual gifts while in trance, and after contact with the source of spiritual energy patients felt invigorated, renewed, transformed. The phenomena of the trance condition appealed very strongly to the popular imagination, but scarcely to most men of science of the ninetieth century. It was generally believed that, even granting their genuineness, no useful purpose would be served by investigating them. As opposed to Europe, despite its use by a few medical practitioners during the decade 1840–1850, no school of mesmerism was established in America. In America mesmerism was an open field: each researcher developed a different aspect of its potentialities and tried to explain it in a different way. Thus J. S. Grimes, a Professor of Medical Jurisprudence and a dabbler in phrenology, suggested that it was due to the action of a general force which he called etherium. Dr. J. R. Buchanan, another phrenologist, preferred the hypothesis of a subtle emanation. Buchanan in fact was the proposer of a technique he called “psychometry” that he explained in a similar way.
Fahnstock and mesmeric pain relief for obstetrics
Along with Buchanan, one of the most remarkable of this group of American mesmeric innovators was Dr. William B. Fahnstock, a physician residing and practicing in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, whose "Statuvolism" created considerable interest in the U.S., although little known in Europe. Fahnestock executed the First Cases of Mesmeric Pain Relief for Obstetrics in America. The name of his own form of mesmerism (statusvolism) is derived from status (state) and volo (I will), and signifies a state, or peculiar condition, produced by the will. In his book, "Statuvolism, or Artificial Somnambulism" (1866, though long before that time he had published pamphlets on the subject), Dr. Fahnstock says that he therein presents the result of thirty years of research and experience; and this gives him a few years' priority over Braid. His system, however, is the very antithesis of that of Braid, for he makes use of a purely psychological method, without fixation of the eyes, or nervous or arterial changes; and also without the passes or contact with the magnetisers. Nevertheless, Fahnstock recognised a great difference between the statuvolic and the mesmeric conditions, although both are states of artificial somnambulism-the difference being that the subject in the former state feels free, while the one in the latter a “creature” of his magnetiser. Of the statuvolic state he says: "The operator has no power to produce this condition, and, … has nothing to do with it. His health, temperament, age, etc., as a matter of course, are also immaterial, so that his intelligence, mental character, and knowledge, are of such a nature as to be worthy of the trust placed in him; his skill in managing persons and curing diseases, etc., will depend entirely upon his knowledge of the state, his acquaintance with the nature of diseases, and his intelligence and tact in fixing and properly directing the minds of his patients.."
Mesmerism and "electrical psychology"
Another peculiar element of many American mesmerists is religion. “The preoccupation of American mesmerists with religion rather than medicine provides a striking contrast to the theories and practices of mesmerism originating in Europe. The context in which one was magnetized was less clinical and more like a religious revival.” In fact, a significant number of mesmerists were themselves former revivalists, and even when they weren't, they still were likely to follow the New England revival circuit. Dods was typical of this group of men. He had been a Universalist minister in Provincetown, Massachusetts before becoming a mesmerist. Rev. J. B. Dods, sought to explain animal magnetism on an electrical basis and founded the so called electro-biology. “Dr. Dods's 'Electrical Psychology' is nothing less than a system of nature, resembling in some ways Mesmer's Animal Magnetism. Dr. Dods himself, however, had studied Mesmer's theories, and had published a commentary on them”. Dods makes this distinction-"Electrical Psychology is the doctrine of impressions (i.e. it is more mental), Mesmerism is the doctrine of sympathy." (i.e. magnetism is more physical). In regard to mind, Dods seems to have anticipated "Mental Science": "Mind or spirit is of itself embodied and living form. It is spiritual organism in absolute perfection, and from mind itself all form and beauty emanate. The body of man is but an outshoot or manifestation of his mind. .. " Dods, Grimes and other electrobiologists worked with large crowds of people and produced in their subjects the symptoms and behaviours that would later become the main spectacles of stage hypnosis: catalepsy, insensitivity to pain, amnesia and apparently involuntary actions out of character for the individuals who produced them. Dods felt that mesmerism would provide scientific proof for key aspects of religious faith. Dods considered animal magnetism to be "the grand agent employed by the creator to move and govern the universe”.
From "electro-biology" to "hypnotism"
Electro-biology is the same as Dods's Electrical Psychology, but those who practiced it were entertainers rather than instructors of the public, as Dr. Dods endeavoured, at least, to be. The ideas and the methods they employed are worthy of much more attention than is generally accorded to them. They underlie the theory and practice of modern hypnotism. The most interesting accounts on these electrobiologists’ methods are given by William Gregory in his "Letters on Animal Magnetism" of the methods and the results obtained by Darling and Lewis, two electro-biologists that went on tour to England. In 1850 Darling came from America to England, where he exhibited the phenomena of electro-biology; their identity with those of Braid’s hypnotism was soon recognized. Even Durand de Gros, a French doctor who had lived in America, returned in 1853 to Europe, and exhibited the phenomena of electrobiology in several countries, but aroused little interest. Under the psudonyme of dr. Phillips wrote the book “Braidism”. Even if it is probable that electrobiologists antecede Braid in the conception of their system it is probably after this European period of some of these electro-biologists that the name “Hypnotism” began to be used by electro-biologists as more pregnant as the old name of electro-biology. The system of electro-biology (named progressively hypnotism) slowly began to characterize itself as a method whith different caracteristics from traditional animal magnetism. Many important mesmerists complained that electrobiology was different from mainstream mesmerism as the base of results was concentration by the subject combined with verbal suggestion by the operator, rather than procedures distinctively mesmeric and based on concentration and self development of the operator. John Elliotson, one of the most important practicing English mesmerists, said that the phenomena "resulted from imagination, excited by suggestion in a slight degree of mesmerism" and coined the word "submesmerism". An anonymous article in the 1849 Cincinnati “Journal of Man” of expressed regret at the demise of the practice of non verbal hand passes and so on. Modern mesmerists, it complained, simply ordered their subjects to sleep. With hindsight, we can see how the electro-biologists’ practice was closer to what we would now recognize as hypnotism, but at the time it seemed to some as though they were ignoring the welfare of their subjects, by failing to recharge their bodies with the vital magnetic fluid. William Gregory said that the electrobiological phenomena was "auto-magnetism". Traditional medical magnetic inductions were mainly non-verbal. Another difference was that in electrobiology words were often used, and the subjects were divided in “susceptibles” and “not susceptibles” (in Mesmer’s view the action of magnetism ceases when a person is healthy, but for most of his magnetic successors everybody will in some way respond and there are not unresponsive subjects). Technique apart, an unexpected consequence of electobiologists’ demonstrations, and perhaps of audience expectations, was that they established many of the criteria by which even today hypnotists test for susceptibility and recognize that their subjects are in a trance state. Of course, they were building on the work of their predecessors in Europe, but unwittingly they established much of the vocabulary for later academic discussion. In fact it is to note that both Clark Hull as many of the successive academic researchers on hypnotism used lay hypnotists (former electro-biologists) to conduct experiments and it is probable that this had an effect on these early researches. One of the main differences of electro-biologists from their European predecessors was that they held these phenomena to be mainly a result of the state in which their subjects fell, whereas in Europe some of them, at any rate, were held to be mainly the product or of the action of the mesmerist's will on his subject (Du Potet), or of an universal fluid or energy present also in man (Mesmer theory). These travelling stage mesmerists were the forerunners of the stage hypnotists. Early stage performers didn’t detach too much from the idea of a fluid, and they said that they were influencing their subjects by means of telepathy and magnetism even though in the electrobiological form they knew and affirmed that much was due to imagination. They performed their shows and often times healed people afterwards. In the United States, for example, in the 1890s, there was a small group of highly skilled stage hypnotists, all of whom were managed by Thomas F. Adkin, who toured country-wide, playing to packed houses. Adkin's group included Sylvain A. Lee, Mr. and Mrs. Herbert L. Flint, and Professor Xenophon LaMotte Sage (E. Virgil Neal). This latter, even when the group spread apart, continued to publish books even when the original group was no longer present. Classical Magnetic cures were in any case still well alive in 1910 and one of the books Adkin wrote was a book called “vitaopathy” based on the principles of traditional magnetism. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, despite adopting the term "hypnotism", stage hypnotists also continued to make constant reference to animal magnetism. Ormond McGill, e.g., in his Encyclopedia of the subject wrote in 1996 that: Some have called this powerful transmission of thought from one person to another “thought projection”. The mental energy used appears to be of two types: magnetic energy […] generated within the body and telepathic energy generated within the mind. […] The two work together as a unit in applying Power Hypnosis. The operation of the two energies in combination is what Mesmer referred to as “animal magnetism”. Ormond McGill himself, as did every ancient performer, pointed out there was a difference between hypnotism and mesmerism and said in his books that the former was better for shows and the latter for psychic experiments. But slowly, after 1920, new procedures were adopted which were based more on the increase of the use of suggestive verbal techniques and less on nonverbal communication. Many stage hypnotists also became “hypnotherapists” as they progressively defined themselves. For example the famous hypnotherapist Dave Elman was himself originally a stage hypnotist as he mentions at the beginning of his book. The same goes for Gil Boyne (one of whose mentors was Ormond Mc Gill) as well as many other successful hypnotists in America. Dave Elman, who was contemporary of Milton Erickson, stretches the attention to “semantics” in giving suggestions. It is to note that old mesmerists refrained from giving verbal suggestions, recommending in all books a silent environment.
Mesmerism and spiritualism
Besides hypnotism, another of the important distinct branches that derived from mesmerism was spiritualism. As the spread of mesmerism increased, the idea of magnetism reached a popular audience, and some Mesmerist disciples fell into believing that what had been discovered amounted to a new revelation. Individuals in magnetic trance had shown peculiar abilities and some had even claimed to be in touch with other personalities and worlds while in this state. Itinerant magnetizers wandered the countryside with professional somnambulists at their sides, stopping in the local towns to give medical clairvoyant readings. The somnambulist would diagnose an illness and prescribe remedies. This situation provided all the necessary ingredients for the making of another important movement known as spiritualism, and at a certain point the histories of both mesmerism and spiritualism overlapped and influenced one another. What was once Mesmer's bacquet with subjects sitting with joined hands has now become the closed circle of spiritualistic seances. Andrew Jackson Davis (1826–1910) began his career as such an itinerant somnambulist and eventually became an author of great popularity, using the magnetic trance to dictate his spiritual treatises. Davis grew to the most important man in the early Spiritualist Church. Davis had many followers, among them Edgar Allan Poe who wrote many short stories that addressed mesmerism, as "Mesmeric Revelation". In “Mesmeric Revelation” Edgar Allan Poe transmitted ideas found in the book “Facts in Mesmerism” Townshend. When, after Andrew Jackson Davis published his trance revelations from the "spirit world," and the Fox sisters began their spectacular career as "spirit rappers," clairvoyance became a leading feature of spiritistic stances, and mesmerism and spiritism were often confounded. But the discussion about the existence of a fluid still persisted; and for the first few years the question of Fluids versus Spirits as an explanation of the marvellous doings at dark stances was hotly debated in the American Spiritualist journals. Gradually, however, the Spiritualist view prevailed, the theory of a magnetic fluid or magnetic influence suffered euthanasia, and the clairvoyants were left in possession of the field. Many mesmeric clairvoyants became Spiritualist mediums, and many writers and lecturers on mesmerism turned their attention to the phenomena and philosophy of Spiritualism.
Mesmerism and the Theosophical Society
Helena Blavatsky, who was a successful medium of this same Spiritualist Church for several years, later founded the Theosophical Society. She linked her doctrine of a mental fluidum deliberately to Mesmer's and encouraged her followers to praise him. Even today, Mesmer is still celebrated as the Theosophist's spiritual ancestor
1900 William James, animal magnetism and psychical research
Psychical research was the direct result of all these developments arising from animal magnetism. In the research field, an important academic name that we find in America that uses purposely the name “animal magnetism” is William James (1842–1910) often referred to as “the father of American psychology”. Under his influence, the American academic researches on animal magnetism became part of the general parapsychological research of the beginning of the twentieth century.
1900–1932 Magnetic exercises: New Thought, William Walker Atkinson and Albert Webster Edgerly
However, many self development exercises typical of magnetism, centring on the development of nerve force, or life force, survived inside the New Thought movement. See for example some of the works ofWilliam Walker Atkinson (other pseudonym Theron Q. Dumont) (1862–1932), and in the works of Shaftesbury (Albert Webster Edgerly 1852–1926) a social reform activist. He believed in the power of personal magnetism, and began the Ralstonism movement as a way to live out this lifestyle. The word “magnetism” continued (and continues) nevertheless to be popularly used by the general public for some types of “magnetic” healings that later merged in current practice with analogous oriental healing practices.
