Animal Magnetism - Cultural and Social Impact of The Concepts of Animal Magnetism

Cultural and Social Impact of The Concepts of Animal Magnetism

The various further developments of “mesmerism” and somnamnbulism have been recently documented extensively, and there is no longer any doubt about its key importance for the magnetic movement with regards to a whole series of extremely influential, and closely interrelated, developments in nineteenth-and twentieth-century culture.

Animal Magnetism and its so- called "higher" phenomena has been in fact extremely appealing both to the crowds and to many men of science. It posed in fact a threat to the rational logic attitude, and at a certain point it became a very popular practice that spread throughout almost all levels.

The key point is that in mesmerism knowledge is extracted from "intuition". Taking one of Mesmer’s examples: in a similar way as intuition guides birds toward the right path, reconnnecting to Nature and its inner perceived "flow" can bring both health, and hence the magnetic cures. This reconnection also allows the gaining of higher truths as human development lies inside man.

A not exclusive list of the mesmeric developments would mention its influence on German Romantic culture, on Naturphilosophie and the philosophies of Schelling and Schopenauer that developed the concepts of "indeterminism". In France philosophy magnetism and its later development influenced the works of Maine de Biran and Bergson The further development of some aspects of magnetism into the streams of spiritualism and occultism brought in the twentieth century not only the continuation of this stream but also the offspring of parapsychological researches both in America (William James) as in Russia. Another direct derivation is the American New Thought movement and its many offshoots up to the present day, the theosophical movement that still holds Mesmer as one of its spiritual master, and in the psychological field, the “discovery of the unconscious” and namely of the idea of accessing to untapped potentials typical of somnambulistic séances leading to modern concepts in psychology and psychiatry. Modern hypnotism also represents clearly a stream born from animal magnetism. In Sociology some researchers have argued that the theory of the "social bound" of Durckheim could be reconducted to the influence of the contemporary researches in magnetism and on the evolution of the concept of "magnetic rapport". In the artistic field, various artists such as Kandinsky cite many magnetic authors in their books’ references with regards to their aptitude in tapping unconscious resources. On the literary side Animal Magnetism influenced and/or inspired Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Shelley, John Keats, Edgar Allan Poe and many others.