Mesmeric and Opium-Induced States of Mind

Abstract

In the 1830s, when De Quincey wrote his article on animal magnetism, the debate about its respectability as a scientific approach to explore the mind was just about to gain momentum. With ‘Animal Magnetism’ (Tait’s 1834), ‘a fine reflective essay’ (315n) in Richard Holmes’s words, De Quincey took part in the debate on the mesmeric phenomena, which was rekindled partly due to Colquhoun’s translation of the second French report and the subsequent responses in the magazines. It was one of the few supportive articles in a fierce and controversial public debate before the movement became more popular in Britain. On the one hand, his article can be seen as an act of sensationalist and performative writing that lacks critical distance. Explicit allusions to various scientific ‘miracles’ and the implicit imitation of a passage from Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology sets mesmerism alongside more established scientific discourses. On the other hand, a discursive close reading of De Quincey’s article alongside his Confessions and Colquhoun’s Report of the Experiments on Animal Magnetism shows that De Quincey truly endorsed mesmerism because of its affinity to opium. Various passages in the Confessions contain many of the same arguments and descriptions of mental phenomena as Colquhoun’s Report and De Quincey’s ‘Animal Magnetism’, both written more than ten years later. For De Quincey, mesmerism, like opium, was so intriguing because of its power to induce altered states of consciousness and to access the unconscious.

It will save many of our readers a world of trouble, if, at the outset of this paper, we recall to their recollection an article on Animal Magnetism, which appeared in a former number of this Magazine, from the able, and on this subject — at once psychological and physiological — the congenial pen of Mr De Quincey.

Christian Isobel Johnstone ‘Animal Magnetism’