![]() But Braden notes that, for Christian Science and New Thought healers, the diagnosis was unnecessary. They labored hard to discover the cause of the disturbance and employed what would become psychotherapy as a means of treatment. Braden concludes that this may well be said to the the beginning of scientific psychotherapy.Īccording to Braden, the discoveries of these early investigators led to the conclusion that many so-called physical disorders were mental, and could therefore be cured by nonphysical, non-chemical, non-medicinal means. Charles Braden (:40-44) says that Braid confirmed that the phenomenon was genuine but concluded that no fluidic theory was necessary to account for it that it was really only the result of suggestion. (“Franz Mesmer” Wikipedia)Īlthough mesmerism is now classified alongside other pseudo-sciences such as alchemy and phrenology, its use eventually led Scottish surgeon James Braid to develop hypnosis in 1842. To unclog the fluid Mesmer devised treatments that involved putting his patients in trance-like states. Stemming from this theory, Mesmer based his medical practice on the notion that disease resulted when the flow of the invisible fluid through the body became blocked. The body’s invisible fluid, Mesmer now claimed, obeyed the laws of magnetism, and could be manipulated by any magnetized object. Animal gravitation became animal magnetism. He called his theory “animal gravitation.”Ī few years later Mesmer shifted his attention from gravity to magnetism. Human health, said Mesmer, is affected by the interaction between this invisible fluid and the planets. Mesmer proposed the existence of an invisible fluid in the body that reacts to the gravitational force of the planets (“The History of 'Mesmerize' and 'Hypnotism'”). The origin of the term “mesmerize” dates back to Franz Anton Mesmer, an 18th century physician in Vienna who founded a therapeutic movement called mesmerism.
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