Calculo del cableado

Phrenology was a fringe science which attempted to determine a subject’s various mental faculties and personality traits by measuring the different sizes of specific parts of the brain. Rising to prominence in the early decades of the nineteenth century, it represented an initial interplay between the material field of physiology and the early immaterial ideas of personality, but is also important for its influence on

3 _{Faivre, Access, pp. 13-14.} 4 _{Asprem, Disenchantment, p. 418.}

5 _{Stuckrad, Western Esotericism, pp. 5-6, 8.} 6 _{Broad, Religion, p. 7.}

155

mesmerism and hypnotism. As such, it is not only a scientific field important to a paranormal discourse, which would eventually form part of what grew into

mainstream psychology,7 but it also underpins the key element of the mode of

thinking of the paranormal domain which considers the inclusivity of the material and the immaterial.

Phrenology’s founder was the German anatomist Franz Joseph Gall (1758- 1828), whose primary motivation was to try to develop a philosophy of nature. According to John Van Whye, Gall aspired to utilize scientific authority to validate his phrenological system, despite many of his contemporaries dismissing his work, which has parallels to the negative perception of psychical research by some

mainstream scientists at the end of the nineteenth century. He was influenced by the

induction methodology of his teacher, Maximilian Stoll (1742-1787),8 and also by the

philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803), who proposed an organic theory of mind and body which described a requirement for material bodily organs interacting with all-pervasive immaterial vital ‘powers’. Gall combined this

philosophical notion with the physiological and psychological idea that distinct character traits could be determined by features found on a subject’s face and head. This early idea progressed into one which suggested innate universal faculties residing in regions of the cerebral cortex known as ‘organs’, having been developed from his examination of both human and animal skulls, which were then compared with known

personality traits. Gall initially called his theory ‘Schädellehre’ (doctrine of the skull),

then ‘Organologie’, and finally just ‘the physiology of the brain’, not favouring the term ‘phrenology’ coined by the English physician Thomas Forster (1789-1860) in

1815.9 _{A fruitful European tour enabled phrenology to spread across continental}

Europe, Britain, and the United States. This success provided Gall with social and intellectual authority, if not the mainstream scientific validation he sought, but did

mean that phrenology left an influential scientific legacy.10 _{Gall assumed an inherent}

universality which both allowed phrenology to be considered as a science and

7 _{Beloff, Parapsychology, p. 25; and Noakes, ‘Sciences’, p. 30.}

8 _{John Van Whye, ‘The authority of human nature: the Schädellehre of Franz Joseph Gall’, British}

Journal for the History of Science 35 (2002), pp. 17-19. 9 _{Ibid., pp. 20-22.}

156

explained some of the nature of its operation, which we will see was similar to the paranormal thinking of early psychical researchers.

Contemporary to phrenology, but with a greater scientific acceptance and a more prodigious legacy, was the field of mesmerism, and its associated notion of ‘animal magnetism’. John Beloff notes that it was the Romantic revolution, allowing

more unorthodox thought and self-expression, which perhaps enabled its rise.11 _The

theory was named after the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815). He combined his physiological and healing aspirations with his interest in astronomy and his notion of a universal subtle fluid, into a system showing clear influence from more

traditional alchemy and astrology.12 His early treatments in Vienna involved mineral

magnets, but soon developed into making sweeping motions with the hands alone

over the body of the patient, using the healer’s innate ‘animal magnetism.’13 Mesmer

claimed that animal magnetism would be of benefit not only to physiology, but also to physics, believing it to convey a physical influence via a universal magnetic fluid

which permeated all material bodies.14 Mesmer’s ideas were not well received in

Vienna, and he left for Paris where they were looked upon more favourably by the general public, if not by the medical authorities. A prestigious Royal Commission of Inquiry was set up, led by the then U.S. Ambassador to France, Benjamin Franklin

(1706-1790).15 Despite the commission deducing that the effects of mesmerism were

due to suggestion rather than an all-pervasive magnetism, public interest and further scientific investigation continued. The uncontrolled movement of limbs, convulsions, and trances seen previously were now increasingly accompanied by reports of

clairvoyance and other psychic phenomena, rather than mere healing,16 and so is

significant for the investigation of Spiritualist and other paranormal phenomena

11 _{Beloff, Parapsychology, pp. 14, 16.}

12 _{Alan Gauld, A History of Hypnotism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 1-3.} 13 _{Ibid., pp. 11-12.}

14 _{Ibid., p. 11. See Chapter 5 for possible parallels tin my discussion on ether theory.}

15 _{Richard Broughton, Parapsychology: The Controversial Science (London: Rider, 1992), p. 55; and} Gauld, Hypnotism, pp. 5, 11. See also Adam Crabtree, From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychological Healing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Robert Darnton,

Mesmerism and the End of Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1968); and Betsy van Schlun, Science and the Imagination: Mesmerism, Media and the Mind in Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature (Madison, WI.: Galda & Wilch Verlag, 2007), primarily Chapter 2.

16 _{Gurney links mesmerism to telepathy in Edmund Gurney, F. W. H. Myers, and Frank Podmore, eds.,}

Phantasms of the Living, 2 vols. (London: Society for Psychical Research/Trübner and Co., 1886), I, pp. 11-12, §2.

157

undertaken by the SPR later in the nineteenth century. The scientific investigations and controversies amongst proponents and dissenters of mesmerism spread quickly

across Europe and Britain, and lasted for many years.17 One of those who strongly

challenged the theory that mesmeric effects were due to an unquantifiable vital fluid was the physiologist William Benjamin Carpenter. Rather, he proposed that it was unconscious mental faculties, already known to science, that enabled the trance

induced phenomena.18 _{As J. Jeffrey Franklin notes, the opposing views regarding}

mesmerism at this time set the materialists against the spiritually inclined. The physicians saw mesmerism as an entirely scientific manifestation, utilizing either a physics-oriented magnetic or electric ‘vital principle’, or a biological ‘vital fluid’

somehow proliferating throughout all life.19 According to Beloff, this was due to the

scientific cultural novelty of physical magnetism, electricity, and galvanism at the

time.20 The Spiritualist perspective fused traditional and modern theological ideas,

including esoteric Christianity and occult spirituality, to posit mesmerism as

validation of notions of an all-pervasive Spirit.21 Thus, when considering mesmerism,

the seemingly polarized materialists and Spiritualists both appeared to embrace the similar complementary philosophical notions of universality and interconnectedness, important elements of the mode of thinking of the paranormal domain. Frederic Myers and Edmund Gurney were very interested in mesmerism and its potential ability to unlock dormant higher mental faculties, such as telepathy and clairvoyance,

but they also understood it as a precursor to hypnotism and psycho-therapeutics.22

Following Mesmer’s death in 1815, his successors, such as his student Marquis de Puységur (1751-1825), continued his work and further promoted

mesmeric techniques and theories.23 _{The more sophisticated verbal inductive method}

of inducing somnambulism became preeminent in the field and helped it proliferate across Europe and America. The importance of somnambulistic trance within

mesmerism helped it to develop into what became known as hypnotism, a term coined

by Étienne Félix d'Henin de Cuvillers (1755-1841) in 1820,24 and popularized in

17 _{Broughton, Parapsychology, pp. 55-57.} 18 _{Noakes, ‘Sciences’, p. 33.} 19 _{Franklin, ‘Evolution’, p. 127.} 20 _{Beloff, Parapsychology, p. 36.} 21 _{Franklin, ‘Evolution’, p. 127.} 22 _{Myers, HP, I, p. 5, §104.} 23 _{Gauld, Hypnotism, pp. 39-50.} 24 _{Ibid., p. 120.}

158

English by James Braid (1795-1860) in about 1843.25 However, the proliferation of

psychic phenomena declined markedly during this period of refinement.26

Nevertheless, the research into mesmeric somnambulism could be considered as the forerunner to modern psychiatry and theories of the unconscious, as well as being a

precursor to psychical research.27 _{The importance of mesmerism’s ‘action-at-a-}

distance’ phenomena of telepathy and magical healing had parallels with later technology born out of the science of electro-magnetism, especially wireless

telegraphy, discussed in the previous chapter. It also suggested that the universe was inherently interconnected, with communication possible between all its constituents and realms, whatever their true nature may be, an idea embraced by psychical researchers.

While some still harboured misgivings about hypnotism, the medical psychiatric profession, being its main practitioners, found it less intellectually problematic than mesmerism. This had the effect of demystifying hypnotism,

especially as the proliferation of paranormal phenomena had declined.28 Broad

regards the ostensibly paranormal phenomena in hypnosis as due to a mental process which is unconscious to the mind which usually controls a subject’s body, while

Beloff proposes that these were two were distinct processes.29 However, I suggest that

the overriding therapeutic application undertaken masked such phenomena, with

many doctors less interested in these strange events, and others disturbed by them.30

Indeed, those outside of the medical profession, such as Gurney, utilized hypnotism to

induce paranormal phenomena to much success.31

Following a rekindling of interest by Charles Richet at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, mesmerism and hypnotism remained important enough to warrant the

establishment of a dedicated investigative committee in the early SPR. While called

25 _{Ibid., p. 281. See James Braid, Neurypnology or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep (London: J.} Churchill, 1843).

26 _{Broughton, Parapsychology, p. 55-57; and Beloff, Parapsychology, pp. 23-24.} 27 _{Beloff, Parapsychology, pp. 16-18.}

28 _{Broughton, Parapsychology, p. 55-57.}

29 _{Broad, The Mind, p. 428; and Beloff, Parapsychology, pp. 23.} 30 _{Gauld, Hypnotism, pp. 9, 62-64.}

31 _{Beloff, Parapsychology, pp. 23, 34-35, 68, 87; and Gauld, Founders, pp. 285, 359. See also}

Abnormal Hypnotic Phenomena: A Survey of Nineteenth-Century Cases, 4 vols., ed. by E. J. Dingwall (London: J. A. Churchill, 1968), especially volume 1, France, and volume 4, U. S. A. and Great Britain. For Gurney’s experiments in hypnotism, see ‘An account of some experiments in mesmerism’, PSPR 2 (1884), pp. 201-206; and ‘The stages of hypnotic memory’, PSPR 4 (1887), pp. 515-531.

159

the Committee on Mesmerism, there was little distinction between this field and that

of hypnotism.32 Attempts to distinguish the quasi-physical effects of mesmerism and

animal magnetism from the greater psychological influence of hypnotism primarily

concerned discussion around the idea of action-at-a-distance.33 These investigations

coincided with the most successful period in the history of early hypnotism, the mid- 1880s to the turn of the century, and it had become a significant part of intellectual

and mainstream society and culture.34 _{There was a profound influence on psychiatry,}

psychology, and psychotherapy, at this time, via the investigation of abnormal phenomena such as multiple personalities. The notion of hypnotism became so ingrained within society that there appeared numerous examples of its use within literature.35

The intricately linked fields of phrenology, mesmerism, and hypnotism provided early links between the physical body and the immaterial mind. As well as heavily influencing mainstream psychology, the trance phenomena associated with mesmerism and hypnotism appeared to expose hidden mental faculties, ostensibly

paranormal, such as telepathy and spirit communication.36 Thus, not only was

experimental psychical research often influenced by hypnotism, it helped to shape aspects of the paranormal domain, such as a universal and interconnected perspective on nature, the existence of hidden mental faculties and layers of consciousness, the reality of a spiritual realm, with human survival and spirit communication all possible. It is therefore no surprise that these characteristics form critical aspects of the

paranormal domain presented in this thesis.