Boundaries · 1779
Mesmerism / animal magnetism
Health was supposedly restored by rebalancing a universal fluid through the action of the magnetiser.
Mesmerism, or animal magnetism, was a system of healing formulated by Franz Anton Mesmer that attributed health and illness to the circulation, blockage or imbalance of a supposed universal fluid present in living beings. Mesmer held that a practitioner could direct that fluid through touch, hand passes, magnetised objects and collective devices such as the baquet, with the aim of provoking a crisis and re-establishing bodily harmony. The formulation achieved enormous currency in late eighteenth-century Europe and left an indirect historical mark on later developments concerning suggestion, trance and hypnosis; its specific mechanism, the animal magnetic fluid, was not confirmed by the controlled investigations of the French royal commissions of 1784. It is therefore included as a historical fringe practice and not as a validated psychotherapeutic model.
Theory of change
According to Mesmer, recovery would take place once the magnetiser had re-established the balanced circulation of the supposed animal fluid through passes, touch, objects or collective devices.
Influences
- Eighteenth-century vitalist medicine
- Medical astronomy
- Eighteenth-century natural philosophy
- Eighteenth-century electricity and natural magnetism
- Theories of bodily equilibrium
Key references
- Mesmer, F. A. (1766). Dissertatio physico-medica de planetarum influxu in corpus humanum. Vienna: Ghelen.
- Mesmer, F. A. (1779). Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal. Geneva and Paris: Didot le jeune.
- Bailly, J.-S., Franklin, B., Lavoisier, A.-L., Le Roy, J.-B., de Bory, G., d'Arcet, J., Guillotin, J.-I., Majault, M.-J. & Sallin, C.-L. (1784). Rapport des commissaires chargés par le Roi, de l'examen du magnétisme animal.
- Lanska, D. J. & Lanska, J. T. (2007). Franz Anton Mesmer and the rise and fall of animal magnetism: Dramatic cures, controversy, and ultimately a triumph for the scientific method. Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 16(4), 326–375.
- Kihlstrom, J. F. (2002). Mesmer, the Franklin Commission, and hypnosis: A counterfactual essay. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 50(4), 407–419.
- Donaldson, I. M. L. (2017). Antoine Lavoisier's role in designing a single-blind trial to assess whether 'animal magnetism' exists. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 110(8), 342–348.
- Pattie, F. A. (1994). Mesmer and Animal Magnetism: A Chapter in the History of Medicine. Hamilton Books.
- Crabtree, A. (1993). From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychological Healing. Yale University Press.
- Wampold, B. E. & Imel, Z. E. (2015). The Great Psychotherapy Debate: The Evidence for What Makes Psychotherapy Work (2nd ed.). Routledge.