Armand-Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, Marquis of Puységur

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Comment by Paul Ridden on August 10, 2010 at 11:30pm

Thanks for this post...has got me thinking :)

Comment by AJ on July 31, 2010 at 3:00am

There is a compelling argument to be made that later developments changed the historical memory of Mesmerism. In order to get into that story, we need to look briefly at some of the German physician’s disciples, as well as the reception of his doctrines in new cultural contexts, both abroad and at the Imperial margins.

One particularly important link was Armand-Marie-Jaques de Chastenet, better known as the Marquis de Puységur (1751–1825), a French aristocrat and artillery officer. Puységur was responsible for re-inventing the techniques of Mesmerism, downplaying the physicalist theories of Mesmer while emphasising instead the intimate psychic connection between mesmerizer and mesmerized, and especially the special rapport that seemed to take place between the two. He also replaced the mechanism of the treatment, referring to it as the induction of an “artificial somnambulism”.

For Puységur, the power of the mesmeric doctor was really to have his will intrude on the psyche of the other person, bending his/her (most often her) every muscle to his (again, the mesmerist was almost always male) will. It was also in Puységur’s practices that an emphasis was laid on a series of “supernatural” phenomena which seemed to go with the treatment: people would be able to read thoughts, display unusual intelligence and eloquence, and even develop clairvoyant abilities making them able to accurately diagnose their own as well as other clients’ ailments. By emphasising that people in such a somnambulist state displayed a completely different character and personality, he may also be regarded as one of the early creators of the problematic discourse on “multiple personalities”.

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Comment by AJ on July 30, 2010 at 3:09am

It was one of Mesmer's disciples, the Marquis de Puysegur (1751-1825), who made a discovery that changed the direction of Magnetism, and foreshadowed the verbal/action split that has been a recurring theme in psychotherapy since. He discovered a particular type of crisis, the 'perfect crisis', characterized by somnambulism, the ability to talk lucidly about delicate matters, and subsequent amnesia. Convulsions did not occur. De Puysegur rejected the magnetic fluid theory, believing that magnetic sleep was the result of a psychological force between magnetizer and patient. From 1785, a rift developed between the followers of Mesmer, who believed that magnetic sleep was only one of many forms of crisis, and de Puysegur's school. The latter group prevailed after the French Revolution, though the distinction between them was obscured by the use of the term 'mesmerizing' by de Puysegur's followers. Much later, in 1843, it became known as hypnosis.

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