The mesmerists inquire about “Oriental mind powers”: West meets East in the search for the universal trance

Abstract

Contemporary interest in Asian meditation raises questions about when Westerners began investigating these practices. A synopsis of Western-originating scientific meditation research is followed by a brief introduction to mesmerism. Next, the unappreciated ways the mesmerists explored Oriental mind powers is recounted. How the mesmerists' cultural positioning, philosophy, and interest in mind-body practices facilitated their inquiries of Oriental medicine and Hindu contemplative practices is explored, followed by a consideration of why these investigations were unique for the era. The way this work subverted Western cultural imperialism is examined. A consideration of the historical continuities and discontinuities between the mesmerists' inquiries and twentieth-century meditation research concludes the article.

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“…Therefore, the present article would just outline a few clues drawn from Buddhism and Taoism, in order to better understand their relevance in regard to resilience. The relevance of Eastern philosophy is also closely associated with the huge historical, procedural, and neuropsychological links between hypnosis and meditation [14,16,[63][64][65], which have recently led to the introduction of what is referred to as mindful hypnosis [66,67]. Indeed, mindfulness meditation, which should be regarded as the best technique of Western meditation, is basically an adaptation of Vipassanā meditation, while Śamatha meditation (meditation of the dwelling calm) is associated with hypnotic absorption and neutral hypnosis.…”

“…As stated above, hypnosis has strong links to Eastern meditation [14,16,[63][64][65]. In fact, the first mesmerists were deeply interested in the Eastern philosophies and healing practices, which they considered similar to their own discipline and claimed that Mesmer had only provided a scientific interpretation for these.…”

Cultivating a “Chairside Manner”: Dental Hypnosis, Patient Management Psychology, and the Origins of Behavioral Dentistry in America, 1890–1910

“…The earliest documentation in the United States of a dental extraction while under mesmeric anesthesia is that of B. F. Burgard, a pupil of Charles Poyen, who published a report in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in July 1836 (Carlson, ). Mesmerism enjoyed an enormous American vogue as a popular medical treatment and applied psychology during the 1840s and 1850s (Fuller, , , ; Schmit, , , pp. 5–8), and so‐called “painless dentists” traveled from town to town using mesmerism to extract teeth (Zboray & Zboray, , p. 216).…”

L’héritage de l’école de Boston

“…Ces mouvements thérapeutiques s'inscrivaient en continuité avec le mesmérisme [16]. La Mind-Cure, ou New Thought, était un mouvement religieux et philosophique, issu de la Christian Science, souhaitant allier les conceptions orientales et occidentales de la santé mentale.…”