I had a hard time finding a smart, general history of hypnotism along the same lines as the books on Spiritualism I’d read earlier in the Sue Allen project. But I’ve started Hypnotism: A History by Derek Forrest and it’s okay so far. It’s just that the lines between hypnotism and Spiritualism seem so obvious–go into an altered state, let the funkiness begin–that I’m already frustrated by the book.
What I need, I guess, is a scholar of mesmerism (I’m not really interested in what happens once it enters the modern era) who I can just question directly. Because I’m very curious about whether mesmerism and Spiritualism are two-gendered sides of the same coin. Is one more acceptable for men to practice and the other more acceptable for women? Is the seance table at the end of the 19th century a place where mesmerism and Spiritualism overlap, with the set-up so often being men who induce receptive states in women who then channel spirits?
I mean, I thought this was interesting in some of the Spiritualism books I read, that late in the 19th century, you’d often find the men referred to as mediums, when it was the women who were channeling spirits and the men were just aiding the women in entering altered states and then directing that consciousness shift. From our perspective, we’d call the women who were embodying these spirits the mediums and the men would be some kind of guides. (And, interestingly, earlier in the 19th century, the person who contacted the spirits–male or female–didn’t need anyone to help him or her.)
But the men were the mediums. Not in every case, but it’s very important when you’re looking at those old accounts to not assume that the person identified as the medium is the one who is embodying the spirit (or in whom the spirit is manifesting). The medium is always the one communicating with the spirit, but where that spirit is–either in that person’s body or in the body of the woman at the table with him–needs to be assessed. This is really obvious in Ben and Sue’s case, historically. Ben was considered a great medium. But there’s are a couple of give-aways in the Lindsley Warden piece that tell you how the seance actually proceeded–the most important being that Sue would have seances even when he wasn’t home.
In other words, she was the conduit. He lead her into an altered state, the spirits came through her, and he talked to them.
And, deliciously, Allen was infamous for his hypnotism skills.
Which leads me to believe that, even if scholars have not yet made the connection between the two, practitioners at the time had.
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I’d guess that there’s even an older gender dynamic going on over the issue of possession — whose body could be inhabited by the intruder/invited spirit. For example, in 17th century New England, men who confessed that they’d been possessed by a spirit often were considered liars and beaten for their false testimony; Puritans believed that it was extremely unlikely that men could be possessed, whereas women (intellectually weaker, prone to lying and lusts, more readily seduced) were sitting ducks for Satan and his imps. Men organized; women received. Men planned; women acted. The male medium, therefore, was the active summoner and the woman the incidental “sensitive receptor” of spirit messages — something that wasn’t challenging to the gender order of the mid-19th century.
In reading the history of hypnotism, it’s pretty clear that in the 19th c it was a quasi-science practiced by men (many with medical degrees) on women. It seems like many of the early practitioners were experimenting on women who had been diagnosed with “female hysteria.” Women were seen as especially good subjects for treatment because they were considered superior in suggestibility, whereas men (masters of their own reason and body) could not be so easily induced. Though hypnotists weren’t much seen at A-list vaudeville venues, a quick review of hypnotists who did do public performances in curio halls, etc suggest that very few were women. (My quick and dirty search revealed ONE, who did sort of a louche “lose control to me, you Big Handsome Man” act.)
Oops, meant “women were acted upon.”
So do you think that the men were considered to control which spirit(s) entered a woman’s body/consciousness, or did the women have any part in that bit?
Bridgett, good point and one I’ve tried to get at in the Allen project, too. One of the reasons that the bad guy is interested in Sue is that, though he can and does serve as a conduit himself, he really hates it and finds it unnatural. He wants a way to be in control of the spirits, not to have them control him and he sees Sue as that way.
And it’s obvious in the little historical record we have on the Allens that men were kind of weirded out by Ben because he regularly hypnotized them even without them realizing it. Supposedly.
So, yes, to everything you’re saying.
NM, I haven’t encountered ANY contemporary accounts–reports by mediums (in our sense and theirs)–in which the living thought they had much control over which spirits they spoke with.
You might get the same spirit visiting over and over, but that was considered to be the spirit willingly hanging around in order to speak with them multiple times.
Once you’re invoking a specific spirit, you’re practicing witchcraft. And I think that’s kind of the unspoken line Spiritualists had firm in their minds and that they did not want to cross.
I haven’t seen scholars specifically mention that, but just based on my own knowledge and the glaring absence of it in written reports, that’s my guess.
Not that they weren’t doing it. I’m sure they were, especially since Spiritualism had no set rules.
But that no one mentions doing it–that they’re all so clear that the spirits volunteer to be there–makes me think they were differentiating themselves from people who had spirits visiting who didn’t volunteer.
Good distinction. For whatever it’s worth, the mid-19th century Roman Curia made such a distinction more or less explicit. Hypnosis was, if it didn’t invoke the devil or make any attempt to foretell the future “merely an act of making use of physical media that are otherwise licit and hence it is not morally forbidden, provided it does not tend toward an illicit end or toward anything depraved.” On the other hand, Spiritualism was lumped in with witchcraft as a diabolical practice and pretend religion whose intent was forbidden divination; any invitation to possession or opening oneself or others to malicious action by the devil was strictly rejected.
So, hypnotism = male = science = ok.
Spiritualism = female = illicit religion = forbidden.
Bridgett, this whole conversation is making me think that the whole “let’s make the church more manly, like it was in the good old days” movement needs to look much further back for its “good old days” than they might be aware of.
I completely agree with your assessment, but look at how easy it is to swap out “religion” for “illicit religion”. Just by trying to gender “illicit religion” as something womanly, they were branding “religion” as something womanly.
Ha, these are really old conversations people pick up and carry on with, without realizing it, aren’t they?
And happily for your work, the whole “muscular Christianity” movement that sprang up to combat the critique of the mostly male Freethinkers demonstrate that there were serious anxieties in the US middle-class about the unmanliness of Christianity….right at the time these guys are doing their thing.
That’s part of what I find so interesting about Ben Allen as an actual historical person. You’d think he’d have just creeped the fuck right out of everyone.
But he’s got a road named after him. I mean, I know he was a Mason and that’s why. But I just don’t think he could have even been slightly successful as a Mason if people didn’t like him.
I wonder if he and Sue were a kind of safety valve–like they were really weird and outside the norm. but they were also people you could (if you were in their social circle) be friends with and get to know a different worldview without really venturing outside of your comfort zone.
The 19th century’s strike zone for weirdos (provided that weirdo was white, nominally Christian, and middle-class) was a whole lot wider — people had an endless variety of peculiar beliefs and pseudo-scientific systems that they endorsed. It’s like the last gasp of the early modern.