ABSTRACT
Examines the therapeutic use of hypnotic rapport during the nineteenth century focusing on Friedericke Hauffe, the Seeress of Prevost, and French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot.
In 1829 physician Justinus Kerner published his case study, The Seeress of Prevorst, about an uneducated young woman raised in a secluded mountain village. As a child Hauffe experienced prophetic dreams and visions. After the death of her daughter she suffered from anorexia, hemorrhages, and fever. Her health worsened when her father died. “Wasted to a skeleton,” her family delivered her into Kerner’s care. His magnetic treatment maintained her “in the condition of a dying person” for three years until her death.
Illiterate, when entranced Hauffe spoke in high German. She delivered complex philosophical teachings resembling Plato and Parmenides. A clairvoyant, she was a much sought-after healer. When encountering the sick, she spontaneously manifested the sick person’s symptoms, accurately predicting many deaths, including her own.
Charcot’s clinic at the Salpetriere Hospital in Paris used hypnotism to study hysteria. An imaginative free thinker, Charcot dominated the world of neurology. Charcot proposed hysterical paralyzes were caused by ideas associated with previous traumas. During hypnotic trance, Charcot demonstrated that physical states could be altered by the mind.
