WELCOME TO THE SANE ASYLUM
Mysteries of Hypnosis – Georges De Dubor (translated by G M Hort)
I’ve written previously about my delight at finding obscure old hypnosis books annotated by past readers. This 1922 translation of French hypnotist Georges De Dubor’s (1848-1931) Mysteries of Hypnosis is a new favourite, featuring, as it does, an array of curious doodles (pictured below).
I love how they evoke in me thoughts of the ‘universal fluid’ of animal magnetism and the mechanics of Mesmer’s ‘baquet’ tub as I read Dubor’s words. I’ve never been much of a doodler; perhaps these sketches reveal how this reader conceptualised their mind and imagination… Or, given there’s a sinister outlining of a certain “Dr Petersen’s” name, maybe this creative genius past reader was also into a bit of prophecising, too.
Diving into Dubor’s book itself, I can see why it inspired such scribblings. Our author’s name may not be a familiar one, but he comes across as a credible contemporary authority on hypnosis (and mesmerism; it’s quite blurry by our standards) in his native France. His writing is packed with names and nuances that really bring the backstory of French/European hypnosis to life, from an account of Charcot’s “rough and violent” methods of inducing hypnosis, to case histories of somnambulistic and/or sensitives/mediums who sound like blueprints for that most famed of hypnotic puppets, Trilby.
Dubor’s preface sets his ‘skeptical’ position, and warns of the perils of confusing science with religious and paranormal/supernormal credulity. But his work is otherwise a riot of then-credible parlour experiments in telepathy, sorcery, witchcraft, and psychic phenomena, as well as more recognisable hypnosis shenanigans. I particularly enjoyed the account of a group of Gentlemen Scientists who procured an amputated hand, as you do. These intrepid gents projected mesmeric life-force ‘magick’ onto the appendage for days – ‘proving’ that decomposition was delayed… and perhaps birthing ‘Thing’ from The Addams Family.
The mysterious Donato also gets a mention, having popped up in the past here and here as a hypnotist of yore so powerful that he inspired a brief rebrand to ‘Donatism’. Dubor writes of him in grandiose terms that leave me yet more intrigued by this forgotten figure… The “celebrated Donato!” was an “abnormally gifted person” whose very appearance “created a kind of terror, which increased with successive occasions as the accumulated effects of repeated suggestion brought the latent nervous excitability of the spectators more and more into play.”
I don’t know who Dubor is quoting, but he concludes of Donato’s brief fame: “I do not doubt that if the séances, of which he gave but four, had been long continued, there would have followed a psychical epidemic, caused by the collective effect of nervous diseases. Donato’s power of suggestion was extraordinary.”
I love that our doodling reader, in their final sketch at the back of the book, seems to be picturing some mental ‘anteroom’ separate from the somnambulist one associated with hypnosis, dubbed the “Sane Asylum”! There is indeed plenty of hypno-insanity in Dubor’s work from which to escape: how to hypnotise a lion, levitation feats, shaping the course of the future via astral projection, and the usual tedium of telepathy experiments stand out.
I appreciated the detailed accounts of the séances that men such as Dubor presided over. Seeing somnambulist women blindfolded, tied to chairs, and in prone or agitated states must have been positively electrifying for these groups of (predominately white) privileged and conservative people. Descriptions of mesmeric/hypnotic crises, paranormal/supernormal feats – or, as per the book’s penultimate chapter – haunted houses full of rappings and flying crockery are eery and shocking in Dubor’s earnest, credulous reportage.
Hypnosis is, of course, inextricably linked to sex and sexuality, with that French ‘je ne sais quoi’ amplifying the subtext only further. Women are cited as victims and, in so many words, witches across the book in the usual casual fashion of male hypnotists who believe themselves impervious to its powers. In weighing up contemporary news stories concerning two women hypnotised to commit crimes, Dubor writes:
“In these two cases, there is no question but that suggestion deprived the two women of all moral sense. Both would have been, no doubt, honest enough in the hands of honest men, they became assassins in the hands of scoundrels.
“We have reason, then, to think that suggestion is a formidable weapon, especially with women, children and persons of feeble brains.”
Hmm… “Feeble brains”…? Seems to apply to pretty much most people these days! Including men, as Dubor helpfully points out in teeing up his lion hypnosis tips. The art (and science) of “fascination” (plus suggestion) is equivalent to a snake’s hypnotic power over a stunned bird it’s about to devour, and:
“Strangely enough, fascination can only be successfully exercised on males. Females are not, as a rule, susceptible to it.”
This is most welcome news – especially to people sufficiently intelligent to grasp that gender is a construct, and that the more flexibility and range a hypnotic operator has in working with a person’s identity the better.
I like to imagine myself as a time-traveller-hypnotist able to tap into past concepts of consciousness… Men like Dubor were keen to prove something; to scale, replicate, reliably wow at parties. But I wonder what human minds could have done without The Hypnotist, and the subject/operator power dynamic..? It is a challenging but worthwhile obstacle to overcome, in my opinion.
Because, when it comes to hypnosis, the territory is not the map!
