Warren Felt Evans: 19th-century mystic, wounded healer, and seminal theorist-practitioner of mind cure.

Schmit, David T.

doi:10.1037/hop0000070

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…The American mesmerist P. P. Quimby, who had spent years using mesmeric clairvoyance to provide diagnoses and treatments, became convinced that the cures worked by changing the beliefs of the patient: once they understood that their illness originated in the mind, and that correct thoughts could heal the body, then they could be cured. His patients included Mary Patterson (later Mary Baker Eddy), the founder of Christian Science, and Warren Felt Evans, whose views about mind over matter became the basis of the "mind-cure" movement (Fuller, 1982;Schmit, 2018). These ideas would persist in the New Thought movement, and in the later "self-help" literature.…”

Section: The Emergence Of Hypnotismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hypnotism and Suggestion: A Historical Perspective

Lamont¹

2020

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology

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Franz Anton Mesmer’s theory of “animal magnetism” proposed that living organisms possess an invisible magnetic fluid, which can be influenced by a “magnetizer” and, by doing so, a variety of illnesses can be cured. Contemporaries, such as the Marquis de Puysegur, took a more psychological view, claiming that a state of “artificial somnambulism” could be induced, through which alternate states of consciousness, and clairvoyant powers, could be exhibited. Public demonstrations of mesmeric phenomena, from insensibility to pain to clairvoyance, convinced many that there was something to it, whether as a medical tool or, perhaps, as evidence of supernatural powers. The distinction between mesmerism and hypnotism, made explicit in the writings of James Braid, distinguished between such phenomena, attributing the latter to fraud, and the former to suggestion. With the decline of mesmerism, facilitated in part by Braid’s theory and the introduction of chemical anesthesia, the more extraordinary phenomena of mesmerism, and the concept of a mysterious force, became part of the spiritualist and mind-cure movements, and the basis of psychical research. In the last quarter of the 19th century, a revival of scientific interest in hypnotism in France led to a dispute between two schools of thought: in Paris, hypnosis was explained in terms of an inherited pathological disposition; in Nancy, it was regarded as a normal process, and the product of suggestion. Hypnosis was used to explore the “dissociation” of personality and “sub-conscious” processes, provoking various theories about alternate selves in the normal and abnormal mind. At the turn of the 20th century, while clinical interest continued, experimental interest turned to the concepts of suggestion and suggestibility, which had practical educational, political, legal, and commercial relevance. A new line of hypnosis research, based on experimental, quantitative methods with normal subjects, began in the United States in the 1920s, and concluded that hypnosis was nothing more than suggestion. In the second half of the century, renewed scientific interest led to competing theories that explained hypnosis either in terms of a hypnotic state or else in terms of social roles. The dispute between “state” and “no state” theories was accompanied by a debate over the existence of a stable individual trait that might explain individual differences in hypnotizability. Meanwhile, as the effects of social influence became a significant topic of study, the implications for psychology experiments were considered in terms of “demand characteristics” and “experimenter effects.” In the last quarter of the 20th century, there was significant interest in legal issues relating to hypnosis, particularly concerning “recovered memory,” and the accusation that false memories and multiple personalities were the product of suggestion. As debates about the nature of hypnosis continue, the descendants of mesmerism, from “anomalous cognition” to “social priming,” which provoked recent debates about the limits of psychological methods, demonstrate the ongoing relevance of studying the boundaries of the mind.

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Section: The Emergence Of Hypnotismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hypnotism and Suggestion: A Historical Perspective

Lamont¹

2020

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology

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“…One of the more significant contributions to the flowering of the New Psychology in America emerging from this mesmeric tradition came from an unassuming mid-19th century New England healer, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866), who has been credited with enriching “modern self-understanding” and laying the groundwork for innovations in psychotherapy by introducing “explanation and mental suggestion” into the therapeutic conversational framework (Anker, 1989, p. 1245). Largely through the efforts of a number of Quimby’s patients, such as Mary Baker Eddy, Julius Dresser, Annetta Seabury Dresser, and Warren Felt Evans, mesmerism became blended with harmonial religions such as Spiritualism and Swedenborgianism, which, along with New England Transcendentalism, underwrote the spiritual healing approaches to what became known as “mental science” and “mind-cure” in the 1870s and early 1880s (Fuller, 1982, 1985; Schmit, 2005, 2018). The 19th-century spread of this mesmeric-derived healing movement has received considerable historical attention (Cushman, 1995; Freedheim, 1992).…”

Section: Introduction: Suggestive Therapeutics and Chicago’s New Thou...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The “Chicago School of Psychology” and Hypnotic Magazine: Suggestive therapeutics, public psychologies, and new thought pluralism, 1895–1910.

Andrick

2020

History of Psychology

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In the years from 1895 to 1910, suggestive therapeutics, in its various guises and applications, was the prevailing popular psychotherapeutic treatment featured in print culture and to which large numbers of Americans turned, seeking relief for both physical and psychological disorders. The "Chicago School of Psychology"-a health institution founded by Herbert A. Parkyn offering free treatment and clinical instruction in suggestive therapeutics-along with Hypnotic Magazine, the unofficial organ of the school edited by Sydney B. Flower, reigned supreme in Midwestern psychotherapeutics and "magazine medicine." With his patients reclined on an Allison surgical table, Parkyn's suggestive treatments sought to increase blood flow to afflicted painful areas, while urging upon patients a proper diet, fresh air, and exercise-what he termed "life essentials." Both Parkyn and Flower purposely allied suggestive therapeutics to a host of related reform movements, such as physical culture, psychical research, practical psychology, and the acquisition of heightened occult mental powers often associated with the New Thought. Often mistaken as a form of Christian Science, the Chicago School of Psychology found it difficult to maintain its image as a distinct type of psychotherapy. Its identification with irregular psychological healing sects and its multitude of social and scientific interests placed it at the crossroads of medical and religious pluralism. The closure of the Chicago School of Psychology in 1906 coincided with the spread of the Emmanuel Movement to Chicago, where it became known as "Christian Psychology," marking the final popular years of suggestive therapeutics in Chicago.

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“…Gehring's success in working within the medical establishment contrasts with the careers of metaphysical healers like Warren Felt Evans (Schmit, ).…”

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confidence: 99%

Practicing mind‐body medicine before Freud: John G. Gehring, the “Wizard of the Androscoggin”

Harris

Stevens

2019

J History Behavioral Science

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This article describes the psychotherapy practice of physician John G. Gehring and places it in historical context. Forgotten today, Gehring was a highly soughtafter therapist from the 1890s to the 1920s by prominent figures in the arts, sciences, business, and law. He practiced a combination of work therapy, suggestion, and autosuggestion that has similarities to Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Behavioral Activation. Using biographies, memoirs, and archival records, the details of Gehring's work are reconstructed and the reasons for its success are analyzed. His invisibility in the history of psychiatry is attributed to the later dominance of Freudianism within the field.In the history of psychotherapy, 1909 was a momentous year. Most famously it was the year that Sigmund Freud came to America, an event commemorated a century later by competing conferences at Clark University and the New York Academy of Medicine (Burnham, 2012). Contrary to Freud-centric histories, however, Freud's visit was a minor event to theorists and practitioners in the field of psychotherapy. As Sonu Shamdasani explained in 2009, more prominent than Freud were a group of Europeans and North Americans that included Pierre Janet, Hugo Munsterberg, Paul Dubois, and Morton Prince. 1 To them, the most significant event of 1909 was a symposium at Yale University during a meeting of the American Therapeutic Society. It featured papers on the current state of psychotherapy, with some notes on the new Freudian techniques.Those methods might have an effect, Boris Sidis noted, but they were caused by factors that the Freudians failed to fully understand (Shamdasani, 2012).His audience was a group of equally prominent MD's, who Prudden said were already familiar with Gehring's achievements and reputation as a therapist. They knew "of the remarkable success of [Gehring] in… converting derelict human hulks into manageable and useful craft; and in inspiring lasting courage and cheer in the… despondent and the cheerless" (Prudden, 1909, p. 7). What they did not know, he said, were the methods employed.As Prudden explained in detail, Gehring gave each patient a physical exam, medications as needed, and a daily routine. Much of the day was spent outdoors, gardening, chopping and splitting wood, tennis and quoits in the summer, snowshoeing and sledding in the winter. To this healthful "environment and regime" (Prudden, 1909, p. 15), Gehring added suggestion, the part of the therapy that Prudden deemed particularly noteworthy. Rather than hypnotize a patient, Gehring first deployed his sympathetic listening, cheerfulness, and alertness to each of his patient's condition. Winning their confidence, he instructed their subconscious to control insomnia and various psychosomatic problems. He also used autosuggestion, which he believed the patients already employed to make themselves ill and were taught to use properly-to control themselves and develop healthier habits and thinking.In closing his talk, Prudden said he was not trying to drum up business for his...

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Warren Felt Evans: 19th-century mystic, wounded healer, and seminal theorist-practitioner of mind cure.

Cited by 6 publications

References 33 publications

Hypnotism and Suggestion: A Historical Perspective

Hypnotism and Suggestion: A Historical Perspective

The “Chicago School of Psychology” and Hypnotic Magazine: Suggestive therapeutics, public psychologies, and new thought pluralism, 1895–1910.

Practicing mind‐body medicine before Freud: John G. Gehring, the “Wizard of the Androscoggin”

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