The story of mesmerism in nineteenth-century America is the story of how, for the first time, a psychological theory arose to meet the everyday religious and intellectual needs of Americans. Robert Fuller gives us the first complete history of American mesmerist philosophy. He traces its development from an obscure scientific hypothesis to a powerful spiritual philosophy that deeply influenced many of the period's emerging Protestant religious sects. He investigates in depth the role of mesmerism in the Mind-Cure movement and New Thought and paints for us the cultural land­scape existing at a time when thousands of antebellum Americans turned from their churches to the realm of psychology in search of self-understanding. In the early part of the century, mesmerism was for the most part the territory of carnival showmen. Itinerant mesmerists during the 1830s placed subjects in trancelike states from which they could divulge the contents of sealed envelopes and describe in detail locales to which they had never traveled. Literary figures such as Poe and Hawthorne seized upon mesmerism, depicting its workings at their most sinister and diabolical extreme. But by midcentury, mesmerism was beginning to enter the American consciousness in ways that involved anything but parlor trickery. Straddling a fine line between religious myth and scientific philosophy, mesmerism's spiritual tenets resonated almost perfectly with important currents in contemporary religious life. Universalists, Swedenborgians, and early spiritualists adopted the doctrine of mesmerism as evidence of man's unity with the Almighty. The self-made mind-cure practitioner Phineas Quimby used mesmeric theory to develop his "power of positive thinking," a concept that led eventually to the emergence of the Christian Science movement. But, Fuller shows, mind-cure cultists such as Quimby also helped transform mesmerism into a kind of self-help spirituality. Later writers condensed the principles of mesmeric healing into handy maxims that could be assimilated by a popular reading audience. Thus Mesmerism and the American Cure of Souls presents a paradigmatic instance of the role played by psychology in the American sensibility. In addition, Fuller's study constitutes a rich and hitherto unexplored chapter in American intellectual history.

Hypnosis: A Brief History crosses disciplinary boundaries toexplain current advances and controversies surrounding the use ofhypnosis through an exploration of the history of its development. examines the social and cultural contexts of the theories,development, and practice of hypnosis crosses disciplinary boundaries to explain current advances andcontroversies in hypnosis explores shifting beliefs about the nature of hypnosis investigates references to the apparent power of hypnosis overmemory and personal identity

For many people, knowing about God is not enough; they also want to feel God’s presence. Whether like St. Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus or like Wesley’s “strangely warmed heart,” people believe that nothing can substitute for religious experience. Even today, people go to church in order to encounter the Divine, by which they mean experience God in their midst. This desire to meet or be met by God is as old as humanity, but America especially has been the seed bed for what William James famously called “varieties of religious experience.” These experiences cover a wide spectrum from classic mysticism to revivalist conversion to a contemporary pursuit of spirituality. A Sense of the Heart traces the nature of religious experience from the colonial era to the present, attempting to define and describe the nature of religious experience and noting common and distinct approaches in the work of various scholars and practitioners. Following that, A Sense of the Heart offers a historical review of representative types of religious experience, the nature of such experiences and their impact on the American religious and cultural context as evident in awakenings, controversies, denominations, and new religious communities.

Introduces the controversy over recollections of childhood sexual abuse as the window onto a broader field of ideas concerning memory, storytelling, and the psychology of women.

Mindfulness and yoga are widely said to improve mental and physical health, and booming industries have emerged to teach them as secular techniques. This movement is typically traced to the 1970s, but it actually began a century earlier. Wakoh Shannon Hickey shows that most of those who first advocated meditation for healing were women: leaders of the "Mind Cure" movement, which emerged during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Instructed by Buddhist and Hindu missionaries, many of these women believed that by transforming consciousness, they could also transform oppressive conditions in which they lived. For women - and many African-American men - "Mind Cure" meant not just happiness, but liberation in concrete political, economic, and legal terms. In response to the perceived threat posed by this movement, white male doctors and clergy with elite academic credentials began to channel key Mind Cure methods into "scientific" psychology and medicine. As mental therapeutics became medicalized and commodified, the religious roots of meditation, like the social-justice agendas of early Mind Curers, fell by the wayside. Although characterized as "universal," mindfulness has very specific historical and cultural roots, and is now largely marketed by and accessible to affluent white people. Hickey examines religious dimensions of the Mindfulness movement and clinical research about its effectiveness. By treating stress-related illness individualistically, she argues, the contemporary movement obscures the roles religious communities can play in fostering civil society and personal wellbeing, and diverts attention from systemic factors fueling stress-related illness, including racism, sexism, and poverty.

Victorian Literary Mesmerism examines the engagement between literature and mesmerism in Victorian writing. Drawing on recent trends in interdisciplinary literary scholarship the essays collected here investigate the complex connections between scientific mesmerism, its manifestations in the Victorian social and cultural world, and the literary imagination. Here, for the first time, the varied themes and contexts shaped by mesmeric practices are brought together in one volume. Mesmerism’s influence on phrenology, medicine and mental health; its interaction with the occult and with communication technologies; the effects of mesmeric principles on gender and sexuality, as well as on criminal behaviour, are all set within the context of literary texts that interrogate and critique mesmerism’s influence on the Victorians. This volume will be of interest, therefore, to scholars of Victorian literature and the history of science, as well as to those interested in cultural history with a focus on gender, sexuality, and sciences of the mind.

Hypnosis is a controversial practice with many myths about its power and dangers. 'Hypnosis, Healing and the Christian' cuts through the confusion to present a balanced defense of the use of hypnosis by Christians, arguing that it is a powerful tool in bringing about psychological change. John Court avoids minimizing the dangers of this powerful phenomenon, as he discusses examples of clinical hypnosis by Christians who have found emotional and spiritual benefits from its use. Setting ethical concerns about the use of hypnosis firmly within a framework of the biblical material, he argues that hypnosis is a morally neutral technique which may be used for good or ill. Its use by pagan and other religions should not prevent its constructive and godly use by Christians. This stimulating book will be of interest not only to those involved in counseling and healing ministries but also to Christians interested in broader understanding of how our human minds work.