Letteratura scientifica selezionata sul tema "Hypnotists – Fiction"

In this paper I will explore the stereotype of the stage hypnotist in fiction literature through the analysis of the novellas Professor Fargo (1874) by Henry James (1843-1916) and Drink: A Love Story on a Great Question (1890) by Hall Caine (1853-1931). Both Professor Fargo and Drink form part of a literary subgenre referred to variously as “Hypnotic Fiction”, “Trance Gothic” or “mesmeric texts”. The objective of my research, which examines both the literary text itself and its historical and social context, is to offer new and interesting data that may contribute to the development of a poetics or theory of the literary subgenre of hypnotic fiction. In this sense, this article is an essential contribution to a broader analysis that I have been working on, focusing on highlighting the generic features of this type of literature by analysing the stereotypes of hypnotists in fiction.

In fin-de-siècle France, hypnotism enjoyed an unprecedented level of medico-scientific legitimacy. Researchers studying hypnotism had nonetheless to manage relations between their new ‘science’ and its widely denigrated precursor, magnétisme animal , because too great a resemblance between the two could damage the reputation of ‘scientific’ hypnotism. They did so by engaging in the rhetorical activity of boundary-work. This paper analyses such demarcation strategies in major texts from the Salpêtrière and Nancy Schools – the rival groupings that dominated enquiry into hypnotism in the 1880s. Researchers from both Schools depicted magnétisme as ‘unscientific’ by emphasizing the magnetizers’ tendency to interpret phenomena in wondrous or supernatural terms. At the same time, they acknowledged and recuperated the ‘portions of truth’ hidden within the phantasmagoria of magnétisme ; these ‘portions’ function as positive facts in the texts on hypnotism, immutable markers of an underlying natural order that accounts for similarities between phenomena of magnétisme and hypnotism. If this strategy allows for both continuities and discontinuities between the two fields, it also constrains the scope for theoretical speculation about hypnotism, as signalled, finally, by a reading of one fictional study of the question, Anatole France's ‘Monsieur Pigeonneau’.

Egyptianising fantastic fiction was a widely popular genre at the advent of the twentieth century, and, customarily, Egyptian characters act as a foil to the Western protagonists. This essay uses three Edwardian Egyptianising stories – Bram Stoker's The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903; 1912), Guy Boothby's ‘A Professor of Egyptology’ (1904), and H. Rider Haggard's ‘Smith and the Pharaohs’ (1912–13) – to demonstrate how these critical voices address the anxieties of the fin de siècle: issues including gender inequality, imperial arrogance, and archaeological entitlement. The Egyptian characters have the ability to hypnotise or psychologically influence the Western protagonists, highlighting their helplessness when confronted with the ancient Other. Simultaneously, a deep connection between archaeological and psychological discoveries (and thus antiquity and modernity) comes to light.

Lurid tales of the criminal use of hypnosis captured both popular and scholarly attention across Europe during the closing decades of the nineteenth century, culminating not only in the invention of fictional characters such as du Maurier's Svengali but also in heated debates between physicians over the possibilities of hypnotic crime and the application of hypnosis for forensic purposes. The scholarly literature and expert advice that emerged on this topic at the turn of the century highlighted the transnational nature of research into hypnosis and the struggle of physicians in a large number of countries to prise hypnotism from the hands of showmen and amateurs once and for all. Making use of the 1894 Czynski trial, in which a Baroness was putatively hypnotically seduced by a magnetic healer, this paper will examine the scientific, popular and forensic tensions that existed around hypnotism in the German context. Focusing, in particular, on the expert testimony about hypnosis and hypnotic crime during this case, the paper will show that, while such trials offered opportunities to criminalize and pathologize lay hypnosis, they did not always provide the ideal forum for settling scientific questions or disputes.

“Sleep. Your eyelids are getting heavy. Sleep. Watch the swinging object. Concentrate. When you awake you will be completely under my power.” These words are familiar language to almost all of us, from images of the popular media, of a hypnotist attempting to place a subject in a hypnotic state. This subject has proved to be a source of fascination for many, and a source of intense debate in both psychological theory and jurisprudence for over two centuries, largely because of one controversial issue: can a person be induced to commit acts which are against his or her normal prudence and moral standards by means of hypnosis (or its historical antecedent, mesmerism)? The mysterious power of hypnotic coercion has moreover been absorbed into the popular consciousness, as reflected by the issue frequently featuring in fiction. For a single telling example, note the words of the villainous Baron Gruner to Sherlock Holmes: “You have heard of post-hypnotic suggestion, Mr Holmes? Well you will see how it works, for a man of personality can use hypnotism without any vulgar passes or tomfoolery.” The notoriety of hypnotic techniques is no doubt in no small measure due to accounts of sexual coercion of hypnotized subjects, as evidenced in the 1976 New South Wales Supreme Court case of R v Palmer, where a lay hypnotist was convicted on charges of rape, attempted rape and indecent assault. Evidence that this threat has been regarded as real by the courts even though no such case has arisen in South African law emerges from the declaring undesirable under the Publications and Entertainment Act 26 of 1963 of the magazine “True Men” for the publication of an article entitled “Amateur Hypnotism … Ruins 50 Girls a Week”. Gibson notes that “the idea that one person can dominate the will of another by occult or arcane means” goes back to the dawn of history, and is founded in pre-scientific ideas about magic and witchcraft. It has furtherbeen suggested by Gibson that in the present day, “hypnosis” has become a construct which has replaced “witchcraft” in the context of an accused performing criminal acts through an agent by means of coercion (perhaps this statement applies to both Anglo-American and European systems, less so to SA where witchcraft is as yet still a significant issue). This process has been aided by the proliferation of myths which have come to be established surrounding the notion of hypnosis in the public mind. The myths include: that hypnosis is done to the subject (as opposed to being self-induced); that it involves a battle of wills, with the stronger party (the Svengali-like hypnotist) winning over the weaker one; that the hypnotist must be a charismatic person; that hypnotic subjects are foolish or weak; that the hypnotist has unlimited power over the subject; that hypnosis is equivalent to sleep or loss of consciousness; that hypnosis is dangerous and destructive of the will; that hypnosis is a cure-all; that hypnosis confers special powers on subjects; that the hypnotic trance is irreversible; that hypnosis is fakery or sham behaviour; that hypnosis is a “truth serum” and that there are people who cannot be hypnotized. The law is not immune to these myths, and hypnotism has yet to be formally categorized in the general principles of criminal law. The search for a clear and rational explanation of the nature of hypnosis has further not beenassisted by the differing theories which have been offered in this regard. As will be indicated later, the courts (rather unsurprisingly) have also found difficulty with the concept.

Through literary analysis, comparative and memory studies, the article focuses on the works of Lithuanian fiction on the theme of the Great War (1914–1918), which became a prerequisite for the establishment of the Lithuanian nation­state. The aim of the article was to show different attitudes towards the war, convey the develop­ ment of collective consciousness, and present a summary assessment of the war as a spiritual shock and a global event of memory. The works selected for analysis be­ long to the contemporaries of the Great War: the classics of Lithuanian literature who stand out for their artistic maturity in the context of their war­themed works. In the first months of the war, Vaižgantas, one of the leaders of the national revival, published the allegorical story ‘Karo slibinas’ (The Dragon of War) in a periodical. The story conveys the horror and the scale of the war that had engulfed humani­ ty. The war dragon is a mythical animal that resurrects time after time and begins hunting people down without any measure or mercy. People are hypnotised by its power; they voluntarily send their children, brothers, and husbands to the jaws of the dragon. Soon after, Antanas Vienuolis’s short stories ‘Didysis karas’ (The Great War), ‘Mirtinai sužeistas’ (Mortally Wounded), and ‘Karžygis’ (A Hero) also appeared in a periodical. In ‘The Great War’, the war appears vile and not ‘great’ at all, destroying peasants’ usual environment and cynically killing those who failed to realise where they were running or why they were at war. In the second short story, the central character suffers a psychological shock because he cannot reconcile his romantic im­ agination of high German culture with the brutal behaviour of the Germans he has to experience when he is suspected of espionage. Disturbed consciousness disrupts the life of the gifted young man. The way the writer conveys the tragedy of the ‘little’ man resonates with the image created in the literature of the Great War. A different panoramic and epic picture of the world opens in Maironis’s poem Mūsų vargai (Our Troubles) completed in 1919. The national poet of Lithuania cre­ ates a verse novel about the war in which he highlights its most important events and identifies those that are directly related to Lithuania. In Maironis’s poem, all the suffering, calamities, deaths, expulsion of the peasants to the depths of Russia, and the misery of the prisoners in war camps acquire the meaning of noble suffer­ ing that leads to the final salvation: in the final scene, the main characters celebrate their wedding, and Lithuania becomes an independent state. Thus, the war that was ‘not ours’ turns into ‘our war’ in Maironis’s work. The independence of Lithuania was Maironis’s lifelong dream which he believed in and which he conveyed in his entire work. This poem and especially its final scene in the Vatican, where the Pope blesses the marriage of the main protagonists as well as the young state of Lithuania is a symbolical expression of the spiritual triumph of the poet. Still another type of a relationship with war opens up in Vydūnas’s drama Pasaulio gaisras (The World on Fire). This is an analysis of the phenomenon of war on micro and macro levels and a reflection on it in a dramatic form: here, the life­affirming procreative female civilization conflicts with the life­denying, male, killing civiliza­ tion. In this work, Vydūnas’s main idea and his concept of the human in history are most clearly articulated. The cruel and alien war in the works of Vaižgantas and Vienuolis undergoes a change in Maironis’s drama, where it is somewhat ‘domesticated’, transformed into ‘our’ war, endured yet meaningful. In Vydūnas’s drama, war is a litmus test revealing human­ ity’s greatest moral flaws but also expressing the noblest feelings at the same time. Until now, Lithuanian literature of the Great War has not been approached as a single phenomenon of memory: this study fills this gap at least partially. Observing Russia’s war against Ukraine, it must be noted that war and literature have been insepara­ ble since the time of Homer, and the nations bordering on Russia in the west have to constantly defend their independence with arms. It seems that humanity is still dealing with the problems of war and peace that were the same a hundred years ago. Much has been achieved in terms of security and stability but not everything: the ideal coexistence of nations on the planet remains a collective desire and ideal.