History Of Hypnotism
Armand Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, Marquis de Puysegur, (whew!), 1751 – 1825, was an unwavering disciple of Mesmer.
A French aristocrat, he's certainly one of the most underrated practitioners of hypnosis in history. He could have taken a lot more genuine credit for himself than he did, but for his unwavering support of Mesmer.
He learned about hypnotism from his brother, Antoine-Hyacinthe, count of Chastenet.
The family employed a 23 year old peasant named Victor Race, and Puysegur used him as a subject. He found he could easily hypontize the young man, who fell into a sort of sleeping trance. He even walked around in this state, which Puysegur named 'artificial somnambulism,' or sleepwalking.
This is the state that today we know as hypnotism, but of course this name was coined by James Braid many years later.
The methods Puysegur used to induce this state are really the same as hypnotherapists use today, namely relaxation and calming techniques. However, it wasn't very long before the Marquis became well known for his abilities and highly successful.
He helped people a great deal, and they came from all over France to meet him and be treated by him. In those days, hypnotism was still called 'animal magnetism,' or Mesmerism.
In 1785, he lectured the local Masonic Society on the subject and even taught a course. This led to his developing The Societe Harmonique des Amis Reunis, which was a school for hypnotic training. It flourished and expanded quickly until the Revolution descended over France like a black cloud.
Poor old Puysegur was thrown in jail for two years, but following the Napoleons' overthrow, he found himself looked on as the patriarch for the new generation of hypnotists. They eschewed Mesmer's methods in favour of those of Puysegur. Always Mesmer's faithful disciple, he never took credit for developing the procedure we now know as hypnotic induction.
He could have become a great deal more famous, but regrettably his reticence in claiming credit where it was rightfully due him, caused him to become almost completely lost to history. His resurrection, as it were, is due entirely to a gentleman named Charles Richet, who re-discovered his writings in 1884.
This finding of Puysegur's works overturned a large number of apple carts, showing beyond any doubt that a great deal of what other people had been claiming as their own discoveries, were in fact not their's at all, but Puysegur's.
A problem that Puysegur ran into during his lifetime was that if he had to be away from his practice for any reason, his patients would be thrown into total confusion. What were they to do without the help of the Marquis? To overcome their fears, he developed a system where he would magnetize certain trees in the neighbourhood, and his patients were told to go and touch them when they felt the need. Amazingly, they claimed it worked.
It's a mystery, in that the obvious reason for it working would have been auto-suggestion. However, there are modern day energy-aware hypnotists who use very similar 'touching' techniques.
Puysegur, then, was a very important figure in the whole development of hypnosis. The fact that he was pushed into the background for so many years is an awful shame. Still, it has to be admitted that in many ways, he was responsible for his own obscurity
Armand Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, Marquis de Puysegur, (whew!), 1751 – 1825, was an unwavering disciple of Mesmer.
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