Difference between revisions of "Animal Magnetism"

Revision as of 23:05, 7 April 2010

Some notes, based on Franz Mesmer's Dissertation on the Discovery of Animal Magnetism

The work of animal magnetism is, foremost, a natural and universal one.

"The spheres exert direct action on all parts that go to make up animate bodies, in particular the nervous system, by an all-penetrating fluid" (34).

This "direct action" is denoted by an "ebb and flow" (sea analogy) or what Mesmer also refers to as "intensification and remission" of the properties of matter. Thus, as the planets effect the ebb and flow of the tide, so to do they cause the intensification and remission of properties of the organic body. This body is like a needle--unmagnetized, its direction is random and open to whatever influences it, but magnetized it may maintain its initial position. The body, once disturbed, is unharmonious, until a general agent restores the harmony (36).

His first extensive case study is with Franzl Oesterline, whose symptoms he describes as "who for several years had been subject to a convulsive malady, the most troublesome symptoms of which were that the blood rushed to her head and there set up the most cruel toothache and earache, followed by delirium, rage, vomiting, and swooning" (36). (symptoms we would now align with hysteria). Mesmer tries to replicate the magnetic force necessary to reset her, to "imitate artificially" the celestial forces he believes are interfering with her. Mesmer can magnetize other people. He's NOT drawing from the universal fluid, he's drawing it from how own inner harmony.

Arriving in France in 1778, Mesmer brought a fully articulated concept of animal magnetism to bear upon the Parisian medical and courtly society. His practice ballooned in the span of 6 months, and it is at this moment that the practice of manipulating animal magnetism took on a truly social dimension.

Alternative Outline:

1. general intro to animal magnetism

2. "the blockage" - illness as a disruption in the body's internal harmony

3. the magnetic poles of the body and the magnetic "pass" - how mesmer theorized the body as a compass

4. the circuit - the simple circuit we see with mesmer and Franzl, and the more complex social circuit that emerges when his work in france becomes group-based a. the baquet

5. the crisis - the attack the removes the blockage, re-aligning one's magnetic balance

"an 'antimedical' movement movement was already afoot in the 1770s that was attempting to promote reliance on the healing powers of nature rather than the radical interventions of physicians [...] The antimedical movement attempted to make the relationship between patient and physician more personal, insisting that the ill person be regarded not as a passive receptor of medical action but as an active participant in the healing process" (Crabtree 15). (Perhaps cite from Foucault and the Lectures on Psychiatric Power alchemical processes of nature)

The controversies that come from Ingenhousz’s denouncement and the denunciation that Mesmer faced from other scientific academies lead him to attempt a dramatic cure for a difficult case that he hopes to use to restore his reputation and demonstrate the legitimacy of animal magnetism... He takes on Maria Theresa Paradis, a blind pianist, in 1777, 18 years old at the time and “totally blind with bulging eyes ‘so much out of place that as a rule only the whites could be seen’” (Lansky & Lansky, 304). She was often depressed, with ‘deliriums which awakened fears that she had gone out of her mind’, trembling in her limbs, hyperextension of the neck, and ‘spasmodic agitation in her eyes’ (Mesmer, 1779). Light would bother her eyes, and to avoid pain, she would stay indoors in the dark with her eyes bandagedn. She gains exposure very gradually to light, and she was able to distinguish gradients of light and dark as well as purportedly to distinguish various colors, shapes and faces, “although with some reported distortion and limited understanding of what she saw” (Lansky & Lansky, 304).

Excerpt: She was frightened on beholding the human face: the nose seemed absurd to her and for several days she was unable to look upon it without bursting into laughter… Not knowing the name of the features, she drew the shape of each with her finger. One of the most difficult parts of the instruction was teaching her to touch what she saw and to combine the two faculties. Having no idea of distance, everything seemed to her to be within reach, however far away, and objects appeared to grow larger as she drew near to them...” (Mesmer, 1779, 1980, p. 75).

-This signals the tenuous connection between the training of the senses, especially since her difficulty is in combining more than one sensory faculty to process and comprehend sensory information as experienced knowledge. (Kittler and Crary). Through her disability, we are made aware of the ways in which we are trained to perceive and mediate our environment. One can argue that Mesmer's Animal Magnetism is therefore an obsolete attempt to therapeutically restore a 'disabled' person to the level of mediation that a fully healthy person would experience once the right 'balance' is struck with magnetic fluid.

She seals the deal for Mesmer's reputation in Vienna: Paradis’ partial restoration to sight upsets her, “light bothered her, yet when her eyes were covered she became unable to take a step without guidance, whereas before, she was able to walk about her house in complete confidence” (Lansky & Lansky, 304). Her musical performance suffers, and her parents fear that they will lose the royal pension. There is a scandalous falling out between Maria Theresa’s parents and Mesmer when the parents consult outside sources dismissing Mesmer’s contributions and undermining his claims of therapeutic success. After a culmination of spectacular fights that lead to another relapse for the patient, Mesmer keeps treating Paradis at his house against the will of the parents and in opposition to the opinion of the chief court physician. Within a month her vision returns, and her health improves. Her parents come with apologies, but when she is ultimately released, her family soon reports that she is still blind and prone to convulsive fits. This public failure sends Mesmer running to Paris in January, 1778.