Spiritist delusions and spiritism in the nosography of French psychiatry (1850–1950)

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century there was a wave of delusions which had a direct link to spiritism in their form and content. These so-called spiritist or mediumistic delusions were the object of detailed study, and clinicians assigned them a place in nosography, especially in France. This work of classification was carried out as a function of the convictions and paradoxes that these delusions aroused; it also made it possible to question the relationship between pathology and belief. It is therefore important to emphasize certain ideological views of psychiatry on para-normality. We observed both a reductionist discourse concerning these domains, and at the same time their utilization in the construction of psychiatric knowledge.

Sacerdotes, apropiación del discurso médico y experiencia mística en la Francia del siglo XIX

“…Otros casos fuera de la religión oficial, como por ejemplo los médiums espiritistas, en auge en la misma época, corrieron la misma suerte que los místicos y santos y fueron encasillados dentro de los diagnósticos de las alucinaciones y el desdoblamiento de la personalidad (Graus, 2019;Le Maléfan, Evrard, Alvarado, 2013). Las teorías sobre el desdoblamiento, en las que los espíritus eran considerados personalidades subconscientes del médium, fueron formuladas por médicos como Pierre Janet, también en el caso del misticismo.…”

The Cinema of Exposure: Spiritualist Exposés, Technology, and the Dispositif of Early Cinema

“…The issue of the illusion of motion had a long history also in the psychology of deception, the tradition within late-nineteenth and earlytwentieth-century psychology that exposed the illusions of spiritualism and magic in order to study the problem of perception (Lamont 2010;Le Maléfan, Evrard, & Alvarado 2013;Pettit 2013;Natale 2012c). The American psychologist Joseph Jastrow published research of this kind in 1896.…”

Final chapter, From India to the Planet Mars: A Study of a Case of Somnambulism with Glossolalia, by Théodore Flournoy (1900)

“… 4. This includes the work of: Alvarado, 2010, 2014, 2016a; Alvarado and Biondi, 2016; Brancaccio, 2014; Graus, 2014, 2015; Le Maléfan, 1999; Le Maléfan, Evrard and Alvarado, 2013; Maraldi et al, 2016. …”