Difference between revisions of "Animal Magnetism"

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Animal magnestism was a system of healing theorized by the Austrian physician and astrologist Franz Mesmer in the late 18th century. While discredited as a medical technique even within Mesmer's lifetime, Mesmer's students used the practice to explore the psychosymptomatic relationship between mind and body, eventually giving rise to practices of somnambulitic sleep, hypnosis, and psychotherapy.

Animal Magnetism: A System of Healing

Mesmer began generalizing a salutatory relationship between celestial bodies and human wellness in his 1766 Dissertation upon the Influence of the Stars on the Human Body. In this text, Mesmer used Newtonian physics to argue that the gravity of the planets influenced the human body and illness (Tinterow 31). Mesmer took up work as a physician, only to be dismayed by standard--and often painful--medical practices such as bleeding and blistering (Pintar and Lynn 13). Seeking gentler forms of treatment, Mesmer began experimenting with magnets, hoping to bring about an “artificial tide” in his patients.

Dissertation on the Discovery of Animal Magnetism

Mesmer's elaborated upon these ideas in his 1779 dissertation, Mémoire sur la Découverte du Magnétisme Animal or Dissertation on the Discovery of Animal Magnetism, in which he asserts a fully formed concept of animal magnetism:

I maintained that just as the alternate effects, in respect of gravity, produce in the sea the appreciable phenomenon which we term ebb and flow, so the INTENSIFICATION AND REMISSION of the said properties, being subject to the action of the same principle, cause in animate bodies alternate effects similar to those sustained by the sea. By these considerations I established that the animal body, being subjected to the same action, likewise underwent a kind of ebb and flow. I supported this theory with different examples of periodic revolutions. I named the property of the animal body that renders it liable to the action of heavenly bodies and of the earth ANIMAL MAGNETISM. I explained by this magnetism the periodical changes which we observe in sex, and in a general way those which physicians of all ages and in all countries have observed during illnesses (qtd. in Tinterow 35)

According the Mesmer, the healing system of animal magnetism is founded on one essential truth: "that nature affords a universal means of healing and preserving men" (Mesmer/Tinterow 33). Mesmer details the mutual influence between the Heavenly Bodies, the Earth and Animate Bodies, suggesting a circuit of "universally distributed and continuous fluid" motivating organic life itself. This universal fluid was a fundamental apparatus of animal magnetism, and Mesmer theorized it as "quite without vacuum and of an incomparably rarefied nature, and which by its nature is capable of receiving, propagating and communicating all the impressions of movement" (Mesmer 54). Ebb and flow direct this movement, with different and opposite poles. Bodies possess both negative and positive poles, which may be "communicated, propagated, stored, concentrated and transported, reflected by mirrors and propagated by sound" (Mesmer 55). Given these properties, it seems the “fluid” of animal magnetism not only operates like a liquid fluid but also maintains some elements of light, air and electricity, all of which were being more formally theorized in the late 18th century.

Cartesian "Animal Spirits"

This curious intermingling of elements recalls some aspects of Descartes’ concept of “animal spirits” which he elaborates in his 1662 text “Treatise on Man.” Here, the “animal spirit” is a “certain very fine wind, or rather a very lively and very pure flame” which emanates from the pineal gland, circulates in the body through arteries and drives movement through this circulation. (Descartes, 105) It should be noted that Descartes distinguishes the “animal spirit” from blood, and “animal spirits” specifically have an animating capacity. Similarly, Mesmer’s “animal magnetism” moves the body through circulation and flow, and is an activating force. It seems Mesmer’s “animal magnetism” has a denser quality, however, especially in its ability to be stored and transported. In making reference to the tides, he is clearly operating under the idea that there is a liquid element at play in “animal magnetism.” Both seem to attempt to situate classical elements, such as air, water, and fire, as operative within the human body.

Animal Magnetism as Mediation

As a force theorized as both naturally abundant and uninhibitedly available, Mesmer's "all-penetrating fluid" was as mechanism of transfer in the macro-mediation of universal harmony dubbed "animal magnetism". Mesmer himself played no small role in this process of mediation; he functioned as its human operator, bestowed with the unique (but not sole) capacity to direct universal fluid into others through his own immensely potent animal magnetism. Illness, for Mesmer, was a disruption of an individual's inner harmony and fluid flow, and he believed that he could, mentally and physiologically, channel enough magnetic force to artificially imitate celestial forces and reset the magnetic direction of a patient.

The Blockage

illness as a disruption in the body's internal harmony

While treating Oesterlin, Mesmer shifted the focus on the perceptual aspects of animal magnetism as a mode of mediation. The perceptual shift in animal magnetism arose from the extremes to which Mesmer brought his patients while undergoing treatment, introducing a threshold of the senses that seems to foreshadow Jan Purkinje’s interests in the same perceptual threshold of stimulation and fatigue in the eye. Instead of centering the dialogue on work and optimal performativity (Crary, 85); however, Mesmer concentrated his focus on a repetitive barrage of magnetic fluid against the received blockage in the patient’s body, thus attacking the patient’s senses until the blockage yielded to the magnetic pass. The resultant effect led to perceived restoration in bodily health (magnetic balance) to various health problems: “despite the apparent brutality of the treatment, Mesmer was able to produce seemingly miraculous cures for a wide range of conditions” (Lanska & Lanska, 303). It was almost as if the greatest impediment to the recovery and restoration of the patient was not each individual malady or health problem, but rather the fact that there was a perceived magnetic blockage within the body.It is intriguing to note the ease in which animal magnetism is used to cover a wide arena of health problems not isolated to particular, conceived compartments of medical focus such as the distinction between physiological and psychological effects—vomiting and convulsions on one hand, ‘melancholia’ and madness on the other. The flexibility of animal magnetism as applied means to multiple health issues reflects Mesmer’s thoughts of magnetic fluid as a medium at both literal and symbolic levels.

The Magnetic Poles and the Magnetic Pass

how mesmer theorized the body as a compass

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

The Crisis

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

In the accounts of his treatment of the patient Miss Oesterlin, despite “pleas from the patient and Mesmer’s assistants that the treatment be terminated, Mesmer not only persists, but adds further magnets, continuing the treatment through the night” (Lanska & Lanska, 302), and “despite the apparent brutality of the treatment, Mesmer is able to produce seemingly miraculous cures for a wide range of conditions” (Lanska & Lanska, 303). Mesmer described the effect of the applied treatment as ‘jolts in any part of the patient that I wanted to, and with a pain as ardent as if one had hit her with a bar of iron’ (Mesmer, 1775)” (303). This is the threshold of the senses through a period of crisis can carry an individual into extreme pain or ecstasy, a foundation for a lot of the hysterical cases (Kittler).

Miscellany Crap

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.

"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)