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

Among the many attempts to explain mediumship psychologically at the turn of the century were the efforts of Swiss psychologist Théodore Flournoy (1854-1920). In his well-known book Des Indes à la Planète Mars (1900), translated as From India to the Planet Mars (1900), Flournoy analysed the mediumistic productions of medium Hélène Smith (1861-1929), consisting of accounts of previous lives in France and in India, and material about planet Mars. Flournoy explained the phenomena as a function of cryptomnesia, suggestive influences, and subconscious creativity, analyses that influenced both psychology and psychical research. The purpose of this Classic Text is to reprint the conclusion of Flournoy's study, whose ideas were developed in the context of psychological attention to mediumship and secondary personalities.

'Il Sonnambulo' by Michele Carafa: A Forgotten Romantic Opera with Sleepwalking.

Romantic operas provide a useful tool for historians to understand the perception of some medical disorders that existed during the nineteenth century. Somnambulism was still a mysterious condition during this time, since its pathogenesis was unknown. Hence, it comes as no surprise that somnambulism features in a number of operas, the best known of which are Verdi's 'Macbeth' and Bellini's 'La Sonnambula', both the subject of recent scholarship. Here we examine a more obscure opera in which sleepwalking is depicted. Dating from 1824, 'Il Sonnambulo' by the Italian composer Michele Carafa is based on a libretto by Felice Romani. Although it shares some features with the Verdi and Bellini operas, it also presents original elements. Our analysis of this forgotten opera supports the contention that studying operas can shed light on medical theories and practices, and on how ideas about mind and body disorders were transmitted to the laity in times past.

Sleepwalking, violence and desire in the middle ages.

This study discusses the phenomenon of medieval sleepwalking as a disorder of body and soul. In the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, medical and natural philosophical writers began to identify the category of the sleepwalker with unusual precision: the most common example of the disorder involved an aristocrat who rose, armed himself, and mounted his horse, all the while imagining that he was fighting enemies or hunting deer. Explanations for this extraordinary behaviour involved the physiology of sleep and the functioning of the brain. In particular, theorists believed that the imagination, a storehouse of images located towards the front of the brain, took control because reason and sensation had been disabled during sleep. As a consequence, daytime fears and traumas could come to the fore for some sleepers, causing them to act and react in their sleep in ways they could not, or were not willing to do, in their waking, rational state. As such, medieval medical writers viewed sleepwalking as a dangerous, disordered state which called into question the Aristotelian divide between waking and sleeping as well as the categories of reason, sensation and voluntary motion.

Sleepwalking in Italian operas: a window on popular and scientific knowledge on sleep disorders in the 19th century.

There is little knowledge on sleepwalking in ancient times even though it is a very common condition. The aim of this report is to describe the backgrounds of medical knowledge on somnambulism in the 19th century, a key period in the development of neurosciences, by analysing its representation in two famous Italian operas: La Sonnambula by Vincenzo Bellini and Macbeth by Giuseppe Verdi. The 19th-century operas may be considered as a crossing point between the popular and intellectual world because they mirror popular answers to phenomena that were still awaiting scientific explanations. Shakespeare's play Macbeth was also considered. In Shakespeare's play and in Verdi's Macbeth, sleepwalking is looked upon as a neuropsychiatric disorder, a manifestation of internal anxiety. In La Sonnambula by Bellini, this condition is considered as common disorder that anticipates scientific theories. The analysed Italian operas provide two different views on sleepwalking, probably because they are based on texts belonging to different periods. Their examination allows one to understand the gradual evolution of theories on sleepwalking, from demoniac possession to mental disorder and sleep disease. At the same time, this analysis throws some light on the history of psychological illnesses.

[Film and sciences of the mind in 1900: neurosis, paramnesia, trance]. / Cinéma et sciences du psychisme en 1900: la névrose, la paramnésie, la transe.

In this article, conceived of in an epistemological perspective, film history and history of psychology intersect in order to show how subject models are circulating around 1900 which are impregnated with scientific culture and social modernity. These models have the special quality of being defined first in pathological terms because they result from a diagnosis of the evils caused by the new industrial and capitalist society. However, the position required by the cinematic apparatus produces a spectator who is described as a subject-machine with the particular psychophysiological states that precisely concern the neurotic, the paramnesiac and the sleepwalker. If our point is to show how close the (para)medical and cinematic subjects are, we will also try to see how far cinema interacts with phenomena related to urbanity and other developments of Western civilisation, the latter being considered as a transforming agent of the psychic apparatus.

How southern New England became magnetic north: the acceptance of animal magnetism.

Charles Poyen's lecture tour introducing animal magnetism to America has been described as triumphant (Forrest, 2000), but according to Poyen's own account (1837/1982) the beginning of his tour, devoted to northern New England, was anything but successful. Poyen success did not begin until he partnered with Cynthia Gleason, a talented hypnotic subject, from Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The subsequent lectures and demonstrations by Poyen and Gleason generated the interest that Poyen had been seeking. Rhode Island appears to have developed a much more accepting attitude toward animal magnetism than the rest of New England as indicated by the wide use of magnetism in the Providence area even after Poyen had the left the United States. In this article, I examine the roles played by Cynthia Gleason as well as Thomas H. Webb, M.D., the editor of the Providence Daily Journal and Dr. Francis Wayland, the president of Brown University, and George Capron, M.D., in furthering the acceptance of magnetism in America.

Deformities of Nature: Sleepwalking and Non-Conscious States of Mind in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain.

This article examines the didactic appropriation of sleepwalking reports in late eighteenth-century Britain in pedagogical treatises, conduct books, and children's literature. It examines how and why reports of sleepwalkers were used to edify young minds and in so doing traces a critical shift in understandings of sleepwalkers, which were transformed from preternatural wonders to deformities of nature that exemplified the dangerous consequences of irrational, unregulated bodies and minds. This new role was predicated on new medical and philosophical understandings of sleepwalking and on the prioritisation of developmental psychology by pedagogues and philosophers.

Deformities of Nature: Sleepwalking and Non-Conscious States of Mind in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain.

A young man of a cholerick constitution lying asleep upon his bed, rose up thence on the sudden, took a sword, opened the doors, and muttering much to himself went into the street, where he quarrelled alone, and fancying that he was in fight with his enemies, he made divers passes, till at length he fell down, and through an unhappy slip of his sword, he gave himself a dangerous wound upon the breast. Hereupon being awaked and affrighted, and dreading lest such his night-walkings might at some time or other create him as great dangers, he sent for me to be his physician, and was accordingly cured.

A symbolic defence of animal magnetism: a copperplate engraving by Ludwig Richter as the frontispiece of the account of somnambulist Auguste K. (1843).

The year 1843 saw the publication in Dresden of a comprehensive account of the magnetic treatment of a somnambulist. This date came relatively late in the history of animal magnetism in Germany, and coincided with the decline of the theory in medical circles. Perhaps it was for this reason that the authors commissioned Ludwig Richter, one of the most accomplished engravers of the day, to produce a plate of illustrations which were intended to act as a symbolic defence of the theory. They are examined in this article.

Somnambulism in Verdi's Macbeth and Bellini's La Sonnambula: opera, sleepwalking, and medicine.

The arts can provide unique ways for determining how people not directly involved in medicine were viewing and informing others about physical and mental disorders. With operas, one need only think about how various perturbations of madness have been portrayed. Somnambulism has long been a particularly perplexing disorder, both to physicians and the laity, and it features in a number of operas. Two mid-nineteenth-century masterpieces are examined in detail in this contribution: Verdi's Macbeth and Bellini's La Sonnambula. In the former, the sleepwalking scene is faithful to what Shakespeare's had written early in the seventeenth century, a time of witchcraft, superstition, and the belief that nocturnal wanderings might be caused by guilt. In Bellini's opera, in contrast, the victim is an innocent girl who suffers from a quirk of nature, hence eliciting sympathy and compassion. By examining the early literature on somnambulism and comparing this disorder in these operas, we can see how thinking about this condition has changed and, more generally, how music was helping to generate new ways of thinking about specific diseases and medicine.

The unconscious in France before Freud: premises of a discovery.

The influence of German culture on Freud has long been acknowledged, while his indebtedness to French psychological and medical tradtion has often been overlooked. The author presents a study of the emergence and evolution of the concept of the unconscious in nineteenth century French scientific discourse and its influence on Freud.

Lord Byron's physician: John William Polidori on somnambulism.

John William Polidori (1795-1821) was the Edinburgh-trained physician hired by Lord Byron to accompany him to Switzerland, where he participated in the story-telling event proposed by Byron that led, with Polidori's help, to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Although those interested in English literature might also remember Polidori as the author of The Vampyre, one of the first extended works of fiction about vampires, his earlier interest in somnambulism and trance states is only beginning to be appreciated. Even more than students of Romantic literature, historians of science and medicine seem little aware of what Polidori had written about oneirodynia, a synonym for somnambulism, and how his thoughts from 1815 about such activities reflected the changing medical zeitgeist at this time. This chapter examines Polidori's medical thesis in a neuroscience context and compares what he wrote to the writings of several other physicians who were fascinated by nocturnal wanderings, their causes, their manifestations, and their possible treatments.

An approach to nineteenth-century medical lexicon: the term "dreamy state".

Hughlings-Jackson coined the concept of dreamy state: According to him, one of the sensations of a "dreamy state" was an odd feeling of recognition and familiarity, often called "deja vu". A clear sense of strangeness could also be experienced in the "dreamy state" ("jamais vu"). Jackson himself did not use these French terms, but he was quite clear about the vivid feelings of strangeness and familiarity, which can occur in both normal and pathological conditions. In order to explore some of the exchanges between medical and nonmedical vocabularies, we examine the historical origins of this technical concept. By basing the study on European (medical and nonmedical) literature of the nineteenth century, we review the first descriptions of this state and compare them with the famous Hughlings-Jackson definitions. It appears that this medical concept was partly borrowed from a wide cultural background before being rationally developed and reworked in the fields of neurology and psychiatry.

Sleepwalking through history: medicine, arts, and courts of law.

Somnambulism, or sleepwalking, has always been of interest to theologians, writers, philosophers, physicians, and others fascinated by unusual behaviors. This parasomnia, which was defined less precisely in the past than it is today, has long been featured in medical dissertations and books of medicine. Further, Shakespeare, Bellini, and Brown, among others, incorporated it into their plays, operas, and novels. Because some somnambulists turned violent and committed other acts detrimental to society, sleepwalking also demanded attention from legal systems, and guidelines were set for whether somnambulists could be held responsible for their actions. This historical review focuses on these developments pertaining to somnambulism through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

Harold Shaw and the Ross Sea Party: epilepsy in the Antarctic.

Harold Shaw was a 29-year-old man with epilepsy who was part of the Ross Sea Party. Sailing on the vessel Aurora, their mission was to lay the supply depots for Shackleton's men that would allow them to complete the second half of their trans-Antarctic crossing. Shaw suffered nocturnal seizures that were documented in the diaries of the senior officers. The nocturnal convulsions were followed by confused wanderings, described as somnambulism, around the ship, that were most likely postictal behaviors. This article summarizes Shaw's life and the ordeal of his epilepsy on this Antarctic voyage.

Pierre Janet and Félida Artificielle: multiple personality in a nineteenth-century guise.

In the wake of the recent epidemic of multiple personality phenomena, it is important to get a clear idea of what similar phenomena looked like in previous centuries. Pierre Janet's detailed description of his discovery, made during the 1880s, that he could cure hysteria by creating a healthy second personality offers a close look at a form of multiple personalities very different from what has recently been described. His description of the factors that influenced his discovery allow one to see his work in a historical context and to appreciate his confrontation with the paradoxes that this discovery revealed.