Published in 1909, Mesmerism and Christian Science explores the relationship between science and spiritualism through history.

Christian Science is one of only two indigenous American religions, the other being Mormonism. Yet it has not always been examined seriously within the context of the history of religious ideas and the development of American religious life. Stephen Gottschalk fills this void with an examination of Christian Science’s root concepts—the informing vision and the distinctive mission as formulated by its founder, Mary Baker Eddy. Concentrating on the quarter-century preceding Eddy's death, a period of phenomenal growth for Christian Science, Gottschalk challenges the conventional academic view of the movement as a fringe sect. He finds instead a serious and distinctive, though radical, religious teaching that began to flower just as orthodox Protestantism began to fade. He gives a clear and detailed account of the rancorous controversies between Christian Science and the various mind-cure and occult movements with which it is often associated, and contends that Christian Science appealed to disenchanted Protestants because of its pragmatic quality—a quality that relates it to the mainstream of American culture. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.

Magnetism is the intangible Spirit and ultimate essence of every atom, whether pertaining to animate or inanimate, organic or inorganic substance. It is invisible to all but the eyes of another immortal Spirit. Mesmerism is a lesser branch of Magic, and as old as man. Magic is indissolubly blended with the religion of every country and is inseparable from its origin. Magnetism is the key to the mystery of man’s nature and to Occultism or Eastern Magic. It prolongs life and heals the sick much better than modern medicine can ever do. The Magnetiser’s Vital Force, intensely concentrated by the his will, pours out of his system into the patient’s. Afterward, he can then use the sun to make good of the loss of vitality and rebalance his prana. Magnetism has been studied in the temples of ancient Egypt and Greece, and mastered as it may never hope to be mastered in our age of profound idiocy. Full health is only possible when there is a perfect magnetic equilibrium in one’s system. The therapist heals simply by restoring magnetic balance in his patient by the force of his benevolent desire and will. The chief agent in any therapeutic operation is the Human Will plus dominion over the Elemental Spirits. But the will of a selfish operator is more likely to injure rather than heal. Though Christians practice Mesmerism by another name, Christian law and societies with their boasted civilization become with every day more like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones and befoulment. Mesmerism is key to the world’s psychological sciences, from the remotest antiquity down to our time. In Mesmerism, the curative agency is the animal aura, force, or fluid in one person, by means of which a peculiar action is set up in the physical system of another. The power of the mantram is occult sound through which the adept commands the elemental forces of nature. But mantram ignorantly employed can be a treacherous weapon, whose mystical power has caused it to turn and stab the user. Astrology, Mesmerism, and Homeopathy are far more scientific and true than the scientists of gross matter could ever imagine. The magnetic fluid projected by a living human body is Life itself. Indeed, it is the same life-atoms that a man in a blind passion throws off unconsciously, though he does it quite as effectively as a Mesmeriser who transfers them from himself to any object consciously and under the guidance of his will. The process of Hypnotism is a purely mechanical one, i.e., the fixing of the eyes on some bright spot, a metal or a crystal. The eye serves as a medium between that bit of metal or crystal and the brain, and attunes the molecular vibrations of the nervous centres of the latter into unison with the vibrations of the bright object held. It is this unison that produces the hypnotic state. In Mesmerism, i.e., the hypnotization by preliminary passes, it is the will of the operator himself that acts upon the nervous system of the patient. And it is again through the vibrations — only atomic, not molecular — produced by that act of energy called will in the ether of space (therefore, on quite a different plane) that the super-hypnotic state (i.e., “suggestion,” etc.) is induced. The source of the vital essence of Mesmerism or Animal Magnetism was located by the ancients between the earth and the starry sky. It is the Akasha-tattva of the Indians personified by the breath of Cybele, the Anatolian mother goddess, adopted and adapted by Greek colonists of Asia Minor. Between Mesmerism and Hypnotism there is an abyss: the one is beneficent, the other maleficent. Hypnotism is produced by the withdrawal of the nervous fluid from the capillary nerves which, being like the sentries that keep the doors of our senses opened, are anaesthetized and get closed.

Eric Caplan's fascinating exploration of Victorian culture in the United States shatters the myth of Freud's seminal role in the creation of American psychotherapy. Resurrecting the long-buried "prehistory" of American mental therapeutics, Mind Games tells the remarkable story of how a widely assorted group of actors—none of them hailing from Vienna or from any other European city—compelled a reluctant medical profession to accept a new role for the mind in medicine. By the time Freud first set foot on American soil in 1909, as Caplan demonstrates, psychotherapy was already integrally woven into the fabric of American culture and medicine. What came to be known as psychotherapy emerged in the face of considerable opposition, much—indeed most—of which was generated by the medical profession itself. Caplan examines the contentious interplay within the American medical community, as well as between American physicians and their lay rivals, who included faith-healers, mind-curists, Christian Scientists, and Protestant ministers. These early practitioners of alternative medicine ultimately laid the groundwork for a distinctive and much heralded American type of psychotherapy. Its grudging acceptance by both medical elites and rank and file physicians signified their understanding that reliance on physical therapies to treat nervous and mental symptoms compromised their capacity to treat—and compete—effectively in a rapidly expanding mental-medical marketplace. Mind Games shows how psychotherapy came to occupy its central position in mainstream American culture.

This edition provides an insight into the dark areas between Victorian science, medicine and religion. The rare reset source material in this collection is organized thematically and spans the period from initial mesmeric experiments at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the decline of the Society for Psychical Research in the 1920s.

This edition provides an insight into the dark areas between Victorian science, medicine and religion. The rare reset source material in this collection is organized thematically and spans the period from initial mesmeric experiments at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the decline of the Society for Psychical Research in the 1920s.

Hypnosis is a controversial practice with many myths about its power and dangers. 'Hypnosis, Healing and the Christian' cuts through the confusion to present a balanced defense of the use of hypnosis by Christians, arguing that it is a powerful tool in bringing about psychological change. John Court avoids minimizing the dangers of this powerful phenomenon, as he discusses examples of clinical hypnosis by Christians who have found emotional and spiritual benefits from its use. Setting ethical concerns about the use of hypnosis firmly within a framework of the biblical material, he argues that hypnosis is a morally neutral technique which may be used for good or ill. Its use by pagan and other religions should not prevent its constructive and godly use by Christians. This stimulating book will be of interest not only to those involved in counseling and healing ministries but also to Christians interested in broader understanding of how our human minds work.

In Christian Science on Trial, historian Rennie B. Schoepflin shows how Christian Science healing became a viable alternative to medicine at the end of the nineteenth century. Christian Scientists did not simply evangelize for their religious beliefs; they engaged in a healing business that offered a therapeutic alternative to many patients for whom medicine had proven unsatisfactory. Tracing the evolution of Christian Science during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Christian Science on Trial illuminates the movement's struggle for existence against the efforts of organized American medicine to curtail its activities. Physicians exhibited an anxiety and tenacity to trivialize and control Christian Scientists which indicates a lack of confidence among the turn-of-the-century medical profession about who controlled American health care. The limited authority of the medical community becomes even clearer through Schoepflin's examination of the pitched battles fought by physicians and Christian Scientists in America's courtrooms and legislative halls over the legality of Christian Science healing. While the issues of medical licensing, the meaning of medical practice, and the supposed right of Americans to therapeutic choice dominated early debates, later confrontations saw the legal issues shift to matters of contagious disease, public safety, and children's rights. Throughout, Christian Scientists revealed their ambiguous status as medical practitioners and religious healers. The 1920s witnessed an unsteady truce between American medicine and Christian Science. The ambivalence of many Americans about the practice of religious healing persisted, however. In Christian Science on Trial we gain a helpful historical context for understanding late–twentieth-century public debates over children's rights, parental responsibility, and the authority of modern medicine.

The story of mesmerism in nineteenth-century America is the story of how, for the first time, a psychological theory arose to meet the everyday religious and intellectual needs of Americans. Robert Fuller gives us the first complete history of American mesmerist philosophy. He traces its development from an obscure scientific hypothesis to a powerful spiritual philosophy that deeply influenced many of the period's emerging Protestant religious sects. He investigates in depth the role of mesmerism in the Mind-Cure movement and New Thought and paints for us the cultural land­scape existing at a time when thousands of antebellum Americans turned from their churches to the realm of psychology in search of self-understanding. In the early part of the century, mesmerism was for the most part the territory of carnival showmen. Itinerant mesmerists during the 1830s placed subjects in trancelike states from which they could divulge the contents of sealed envelopes and describe in detail locales to which they had never traveled. Literary figures such as Poe and Hawthorne seized upon mesmerism, depicting its workings at their most sinister and diabolical extreme. But by midcentury, mesmerism was beginning to enter the American consciousness in ways that involved anything but parlor trickery. Straddling a fine line between religious myth and scientific philosophy, mesmerism's spiritual tenets resonated almost perfectly with important currents in contemporary religious life. Universalists, Swedenborgians, and early spiritualists adopted the doctrine of mesmerism as evidence of man's unity with the Almighty. The self-made mind-cure practitioner Phineas Quimby used mesmeric theory to develop his "power of positive thinking," a concept that led eventually to the emergence of the Christian Science movement. But, Fuller shows, mind-cure cultists such as Quimby also helped transform mesmerism into a kind of self-help spirituality. Later writers condensed the principles of mesmeric healing into handy maxims that could be assimilated by a popular reading audience. Thus Mesmerism and the American Cure of Souls presents a paradigmatic instance of the role played by psychology in the American sensibility. In addition, Fuller's study constitutes a rich and hitherto unexplored chapter in American intellectual history.