Jodey Castricano

(Dr. Castricano conducted research at the Bakken in October 2003)

My aim at the Bakken Library and Museum was to conduct archival research towards a book-length study exploring the influence of mesmerism, animal magnetism and spiritualism on the rise and practice of 19th century psychoanalysis. Entitled Occult Subjects: Literature, Film, and Psychoanalysis, this interdisciplinary study also aims to explore the affinity between the new science of the mind, 19th century Gothic fiction (Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, etc.) and early 20th century film (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu) in which mesmerism, clairvoyance, telepathy, hypnosis, dreaming, automatism, and somnambulism can be read as metaphors for social and cultural anxieties regarding the “occult” status of the mind in the face of speculations about discrepancies between unconscious mental activities and the exercise of the “will.” Similarly, this study will argue that Mesmer’s theories of the mind anticipate, illuminate, and, later, participate in the epistemological and ontological rift which appears between the Freudian school of psychoanalysis—with its emphasis on determinism and materialism— and the American model of experiential psychology advocated by William James in the French tradition of Mesmer, A.M.J. de Chastenet, Marquis de Puységur, Pierre Janet and J.M. Charcot whose findings later influenced the research on parapsychology by F.W.H. Meyers, William Crookes and other renowned scientists affiliated with the Society for Psychical Research in London and the American Society for Psychical Research in New York.

According to Eugene Taylor, James and Freud “come from two entirely different epistemological traditions and their conceptions of personality, consciousness, and psychotherapy cannot be compared until their respective historical frames of reference are reconstructed” (186). The holdings of the Bakken Library have contributed to the reconstruction of these “historical frames of reference” as they contain: the printed version of Mesmer’s doctoral dissertation on the influence of the planets on the human body (Vienna, 1766); Mesmer’s lectures which were compiled and edited by his associate Nicolas Bergasse and published as Théorie du monde (1784); the printed works and manuscripts documenting the activities of Mesmer’s supporters; the papers of the Society of Universal Harmony of Amiens, France; the report of the commission of members from the Academy of Science (authored by Benjamin Franklin (president of the commission), Antoine Lavoisier, Joseph Guillotin, Jean Sylvain Bailly and others) to investigate claims made for animal magnetism; pamphlets and monographs about mesmerism published outside of France and journals, including the complete set of The Zoist: A Journal Of Cerebral Physiology & Mesmerism And Their Application To Human Welfare, 1844-56, edited by Dr. John Elliotson (Professor of Medicine at London University, President of the Royal Medical and Surgical Society and one of the Founders of University College Hospital, London) who founded the journal after quitting his post when, in 1838, the Council of the University passed a resolution forbidding the use of mesmerism in the hospital; A Pluralistic Universe, the Hibbert lectures by William James at Manchester College. The holdings on Mesmer—and many others—are particularly relevant to my project in that that they will enable me to build upon the claim made by Maria Tatar in Spellbound: Studies on Mesmerism and Literature (1978), that Mesmer’s theories “find a place somewhere near the middle of the spectrum where primitive psychotherapy shades off into psychoanalysis, faith healing merges with Christian Science, and ancient superstition blends with parapsychology”( 4). Because of this positioning, Mesmer’s theories can illuminate the differences between Freud’s term and definition of the “unconscious” and the conception of the “subconscious” or “co-conscious” held by the French, Swiss, English and American experimental psychopathologists. Similarly, it can be argued that Mesmer’s theories of the mind can provide insight into the resistance by Williams James and F.W.H. Meyers towards the orthodox, positivist approach to psychology which occasioned the breach between Freud and C.G. Jung who, like Meyers and James, was concerned with the mythopoetic/subjective character of inner events in opposition to Freud’s (and even Mesmer’s) materialism.

At the turn of the century, social and cultural interest in telepathy, hypnosis, and survival after death recalls the history of electricity and magnetism and their applications in medicine and the life sciences. This interest is also paralleled in the reception of new communications technologies such as the telegraph and telephone, which appeared, like other paranormal phenomena, to defy the limitations of time and space and contributed to what Pamela Thurschwell refers to as “wider conceptualizations of the borders of individual consciousness” (2001, 2). In fact, the issue of “what separates one mind from another and what separates the living from the dead” (2) is of primary interest not only to Gothic literature and film but also to the rise and practice of psychoanalysis and follows in the long, historical wake of controversy over the relationship between the “occult” and earlier versions of the science of the mind (such as Mesmer’s animal magnetism, Puységur’s magnetic somnambulism and medical clairvoyance, hypnotism, unconscious writing, and Meyer’s “telepathy” and “double consciousness”) as well as electricity-based technology. It is significant, therefore, that although psychical research was often dismissed as a pseudo-science and the paranormal was disavowed for belonging to fantasy literature or film, these same “occult ways of imagining cultural transmission and communication” (2), had links to the history of “electricity in life” (Bakken website). This interdisciplinary study seeks to show how these relationships inexorably shaped the heart of modern psychoanalysis, affirming its kinship with the Gothic genre and, in the process, giving us insight into different models of subjectivity and alterity.

Dr. Jodey Castricano
Associate Professor/Coordinator Cultural Studies
Department of English & Film Studies
Wilfrid Laurier University
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada N2L 3C5
Email: jcastric@wlu.ca
Website: http://www.wlu.ca/%7Ewwweng/faculty/jcastric/index.shtml

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© The Bakken Updated: April 6, 2007