Restoring literary wholeness to the fragmented account of Antoine Despine's magnetic cure of Estelle L'Hardy's dissociative disorder

American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis,  Jan 2008  by Wickramasekera, Ian II

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McKeown, J. M. (2007). Restoring literary wholeness to the fragmented account of Antoine Despine's magnetic cure of Estelle L'Hardy's dissociative disorder. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 55(4), 486-496. This paper is a review and critique of a very early scholarly work on dissociative disorders by Antoine Despine.

Despine utilized animal magnetism to treat patients with dissociative disorders in a fashion that strikes one as similar to current hypnotic methods. The author argues that a number of problems arise from reading Despine's writings due to the authors difficult writing style as well as deficits in translations that were made of the original writings. I found this article very useful in advancing my historical knowledge into the period of transition between animal magnetism into the tradition of hypnosis began by the Abbe'de Faria, James Braid, and others. The author does an excellent job of documenting her claims as to the literary confusion surrounding Antoine Despine's writings. The same situation is of course also true of other early French pioneers of hypnotism and animal magnetism. The Abbe' Faria is another such early historical figure who investigated dissociative phenomena. His writings are also said to be difficult to understand due to his difficult writing style since he was from Goa (an island of the coast of India) who came to live and practice his form of hypnosis (which he termed lucid sleep) in France. Address for reprints: Joanne McKeown, Moravian College, Foreign Language Department, 1200 Main Street, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 18018. E-mail address: mejmd01@moravian.edu.

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