Spiritist delusions and spiritism in the nosography of French psychiatry (1850

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century there was a wave of delusions which had a direct link to spiritism in their form and content. These so-called spiritist or mediumistic delusions were the object of detailed study, and clinicians assigned them a place in nosography, especially in France. This work of classification was carried out as a function of the convictions and paradoxes that these delusions aroused; it also made it possible to question the relationship between pathology and belief. It is therefore important to emphasize certain ideological views of psychiatry on para-normality. We observed both a reductionist discourse concerning these domains, and at the same time their utilization in the construction of psychiatric knowledge.

Keywords

France mediumistic delusions metapsychics psychiatry spiritist delusions spiritism

Introduction

During the nineteenth century, spiritualism in the USA and spiritism in France developed as movements based on the claim that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world had the ability to communicate with the living, especially through gifted humans called ‘mediums’, generally during ritualized ‘séances’ with a circle of open-minded participants (Cox, 2003; Sharp, 2006). The relation between these ideas and practices and psychiatry has received little attention by historians of the behavioural sciences. Yet many classic clinical psychopathologists have discussed the topic during subtle debates with nosographic purposes. In this paper we will review some interactions between spiritism and psychiatry around a specific case: the recalcitrant nosographic entity ‘spiritist delusions’, born in French psychiatry at the turn of the twentieth century to account for a multiplicity of various clinical observations. While it is interesting to follow the different stages in the elaboration of this category, it is worth emphasizing that the relation between psychiatry and spiritism cannot be reduced merely to this classification. Psychiatric and psychopathological knowledge was genuinely gained from these confrontations with spiritism, as shown by Gilbert Ballet’s (1914) use of mediumistic trances in the elaboration of ‘chronic hallucinatory psychosis’ (CHP). In this study, we therefore propose first of all to trace the relations between spiritism and psychiatric thought, and then to examine the history of spiritist delusion in France.

Despite this lack of attention from historians, the few relevant studies reveal numerous and fruitful interactions between psychiatry and popular spiritism, for example Clervoy (2002), and Le Maléfan (1999) who made systematic review of the changing psychiatric discourse on the psychopathology of spiritism from 1850 to 1950. As often noted by these historians, since spiritist phenomena raised the question of automatism and subconscious activities, they would figure centrally in the work of Pierre Janet (1889), Max Dessoir (1889), Théodore Flournoy (1900) and especially Frederic W.H. Myers (1903), but not always in a psychopathological perspective. The study of mediums would play a foundational role in the development of dynamic psychiatry (Crabtree, 2003; Ellenberger, 1970). In the words of Ellenberger (1970: 85):

The advent of spiritism was an event of major importance in the history of dynamic psychiatry, because it indirectly provided psychologists and psychopathologists with new approaches to the mind. Automatic writing, one of the procedures introduced by spiritists, was taken over by scientists as a method of exploring the unconscious … A new subject, the medium, became available for experimental psychological investigations, out of which evolved a new model of the human mind.

Such a perspective has inspired later work (e.g. Alvarado, 2010; Crabtree, 1993; Shamdasani, 1994).

According to Plas (2000, 2012), before being rejected – partly because of a desire for respectability and professionalization – researches on ‘mental suggestion’ and ‘telepathy’ were the first sources of the psychological approach of a psychic unconscious in France. In England some members of the Society for Psychical Research, such as Myers, contributed to the study of dissociation and the workings of the subconscious mind (Alvarado, 2002). Indeed, conceptions originating in the early scientific study of spiritist phenomena would continue to influence scientific and medical approaches to the human psyche throughout the twentieth century (Alvarado, Machado, Zangari and Zingrone, 2007; Kelly et al., 2007). One example of the way in which the early literature on spiritism continues to find relevance is Flournoy’s (1900) famous account of the medium Hélène Smith; this continues to serve as an important case study in the field of psycholinguistics (for a review, see Engels, 2008), psychopathology (Maleval, 1996), and the history of the subliminal psychology (Shamdasani, 1994). Flournoy’s ‘medium’ Catherine-Elise Müller (alias Hélène Smith) had somnambulic trances during spiritist séances from which she developed four ‘cycles’ of different personalities, with false memories and glossolalia, in the pure vein of multiple personalities. In such works, the history of spiritism and the history of clinical psychology find intersection points.

Among the many products of the historical intersection of science and popular religion was psychical research, more widely known in France during the twentieth century by the term ‘métapsychique’ (Lachapelle, 2011; Richet, 1905). Metapsychics was an attempt to collect and critically assess ‘psychic marvels’ as claimed by spiritists, using objective measures and rigorous methods, for example trying to repeat them in the controlled conditions of the laboratory. The development of metapsychics at the turn of the twentieth century owed much to the interest that the phenomena of mediumship held for the scientific elite. An important pioneering effort was the creation of the Society for Psychical Research in 1882. In France, Charles Richet, Professor of Medicine, 1913 Nobel laureate, and leading metapsychical researcher, for example with the Institut Métapsychique International (Brower, 2010; Lachapelle, 2005), served as a frequent point of reference among those in the medical community who debated the authenticity of mediumistic phenomena (Méheust, 1999). Baron Albert von Schrenk-Notzing, a pioneer in sexology, experimental hypnosis and parapsychology, played a similar role in German debates surrounding mediums (Wolffram, 2009). He was opposed by academic physicians and psychologists who proposed a psychology of occult belief as a means to discredit parapsychology and its practitioners. Such gestures led to increasing degrees of professionalization within the emerging discipline of psychology as it found ways of disassociating itself from ‘occult’ practices and popular religious movements (Wolffram, 2006).

Historically, some of the rejection of psychical research / parapsychology / metapsychics relied on the presumption that spiritism represented a particular form of psychopathology; in other words, the extraordinary claims of the proponents of spiritism were simply fraud and madness (on the latter, see Alvarado and Zingrone, 2012; Le Maléfan, 1999; Owen, 1989). Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, psychiatric discourse consistently labelled mediumship as pathological and claimed that spiritism presented a form of mental contagion (for a review, see Moreira-Almeida, Silva de Almeida and Neto, 2005). Psychiatric disorders such as ‘Episodic Spiritist Delusion’ (Roxo, 1938) – a diagnosis proposed in Brazil where spiritism has been important (Hess, 1991) – described spiritist experiences as ‘typical states of degeneration’.

In the second half of the century, however, the prevailing position in psychiatry was moderated by developments in transcultural and ethnographic approaches which emphasized the culturally-relative value of knowledge, including psychiatric theory (Lewis-Fernández and Kleinman, 1995). This revised approach is most likely attributable to the influence of French anthropologist Roger Bastide (1898–1974) who studied the Afro-Brazilian cults (many of which drew upon the basic forms of spiritism). Bastide (1958/2001, 1960, 1973/2002) catalogued the cultural biases that had influenced previous studies of these religions and argued that, although mental pathology was operative in some cases, in general, possession trance was sociological rather than pathological. Influenced by ethnopsychiatry, the field of psychiatry considers such religious experiences to be culturally-inflected and recognizes that that they can take non-pathological forms and even contribute to psychological well-being (Cardeña, Lynn and Krippner, 2000; Reinsel, 2003).

The standpoint assumed by most of the international psychiatric community at the turn of the twentieth century was, however, quite different. In this earlier period, mediumistic practices were viewed above all as a threat to public health. When it was necessary to justify the treatment of people involved with spiritism, psychiatrists offered a variety of new nosological categories. In the rest of this article, we will describe the various categories that were applied to adepts of spiritism over the period 1850–1950 by focusing on one country – France – where the psychiatric discourse on that topic was particularly active and rich in its implications.

Dangers of spiritism for mental health: the view of Kardec and the spiritist movement

Before focusing on the question of spiritist delusions, it is important to note that both in France and abroad certain individuals – philosophers and psychopathologists and also the clergy – tried to alert public opinion to the dangers that the practice of spiritism, and its ideology, represented for the human mind. Clerical and lay commentators proved increasingly willing to ascribe the new phenomena to demonic intervention (Cuchet, 2012; Monroe, 2008), but psychopathological notions were also used. The question of hallucinations, both individual and collective, and indeed of madness in general, could therefore not be fundamentally divorced from the question of the health status of spiritism, and the debates which animated Western bourgeois society when it began to spread towards the middle of the nineteenth century.¹

Drawing on religious and social unrest, among other factors, the movement known as Modern Spiritualism started to develop in the USA during the mid-nineteenth century with the activities of mediums such as the Fox sisters (Weisberg, 2004). Capron (1855), an early historian of the movement, has discussed many of the early phenomena and controversies surrounding American mediums, and these soon spread to Europe. In France, Tables tournantes (turning tables) were an important manifestation in which tables moved spontaneously, with negligible physical effort, when touched by a group of people. These, according Louis Figuier, a popularizer of science, writing in the Dictionnaire universel des connaissances humaines, were: ‘Strange phenomena that occupy much of the public, as well as the savants’ (Figuier, 1859: 289). The range of these dramatic new phenomena was not limited to simple movement. Some sitters discovered that animated tables also had the ability to communicate, either by tapping the floor with their legs or by making mysterious cracking noises during recitations of the alphabet. These new manifestations, in which the phenomena appeared to convey messages, were named tables parlantes (speaking tables). During these séances, many attendees would hear, see and feel deceased people or apparently intelligent entities. ‘Some dismissed experimentation with the tables as a mere party game, while others saw it as a potential source of moral edification.’ (Monroe, 2008: 23, original italics).

The teacher and educator Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail (1804–69), under the pseudonym of Allan Kardec, became the promoter and codifier of spiritism in France (Edelman, 1995; Sharp, 2006). In his Livre des médiums (Kardec, 1861), he gave rules for practising mediums and defined this practice. He also devoted a chapter, ‘Drawbacks and dangers of practising as a medium’, to the mental risks incurred by spiritists. He said that, even though practising as a medium is not in itself pathological, it is nevertheless a state which is liable to cause great physical and moral fatigue, in particular for mediums susceptible to convulsions. For these persons, practising the activity too often could have adverse effects on their nervous system. In this case mediumship may overtax one’s strength and produce harmful disturbances. For this reason, Kardec warned, one must prevent the feeble-minded from becoming mediums, and direct them towards other activities in order to rest their sick organs.

It should be noted that Kardec was well acquainted with the doctrines of mental health of his time (Moreira-Almeida and Neto, 2005) and developed a definition of madness compatible with his doctrine. Moreover, some spiritist mediums also practised as faith-healers or moral supports, and provided therapeutic help both to the insane spiritist (see Charuty, 1985), and those who were negatively affected by the death of close relatives.

Despite his knowledge of psychopathology, in chapter 6 of the Livre des médiums, Kardec gave an explanation of hallucinations that contradicted the view of his contemporaries (Kardec, 1861). This phenomenon, he wrote, has not yet received a satisfactory answer from physiologists and those he called ‘hallucinologists’. He thought that the doctrine of Spirits – and in particular the doctrine of the eternal soul – could be of help here. Kardec argued that the issue was that of a physiological anomaly affecting imprints in the brain, and he thought fixed ideas had the same origin. Certain images are not erased; they remain fixed because certain parts of the brain, identified by phrenology, are paralysed by a weakness. What the soul usually ‘sees’ are fleeting ‘photographic’ images in the brain, ephemeral traces of what has been seen, read and experienced. In the case of hallucinations, the soul only ‘sees’ the same images over and over again. Thus, concludes Kardec, hallucinations are the vision by the soul of permanent images; they do not have the pathological character that medicine confers on them. Furthermore, Kardec discussed apparitions as the influence of spirits.

The intervention of the alienists

Since the arrival of spiritism in France in 1853, the opinion of the schools of medicine and philosophy on the phenomena of spiritism, especially on the widespread communication by ‘turning the tables’ and ‘speaking tables’ (Edelman, 1985), had been evident. However, it was only with the presentation by Jules Baillarger² to the Société Médico-Psychologique in 1861 that a full-blown confrontation emerged between alienism and spiritism, a confrontation that was to last for a century. Although he was alarmed, Baillarger was curious about the mediumistic experience because it supported his own nosographic entity of ‘psychical hallucinations’ (xenopathic representation without externalization by sensory perception), as distinct from ‘psycho-sensorial hallucinations’ (with externalization by sensory perception). According to Baillarger (1861), such mediumistic experiences may be ordinary psychological experiences, similar to the ‘doubling of personality’ in dreams, until they become involuntary, automatic and under an emotional burden like that of spirit practices (Le Maléfan, 1999: 28–33).

Thus, the dangers of the spiritist practices were quickly denounced, in more or less measured terms. Philibert Burlet (1863), intern in the hospitals of Lyon, where Kardec lived, held spiritism to be one of the principal causes of insanity; on the other hand, the alienist Caliste Cavalier (1868) thought that it was less dangerous than witchcraft. However, in spite of these polemics, at this point the alienists were not really interested in spiritist practices. This began to change from 1870 onwards, when those who were seeking a basis for an experimental psychology different from the academic spiritualist³ psychology found the material for a new theory of the mind in the study of that central person, the medium, and in particular in the phenomenon of automatic writing. The first initiative was taken by Hyppolite Taine (1870), who opened the way for Pierre Janet (1859–1947) to follow (see below). Janet did his doctoral dissertation in philosophy on psychological automatism (Janet, 1889), with careful studies of somnambulism, hypnotism, mancies, automatic writing with spirit mediums, etc., all practices that seem to allowed uprisings of a subconscious mind. Janet urged his colleagues to look at how these practices – beyond their insanity – might contribute to psychological knowledge. Some years later, Janet became a doctor of medicine with a thesis on hysterics (Janet, 1893), and then Professor of Psychology at the Collège de France, and he described all these subconscious activities in psychopathological terms.

Neurologists and alienists confronted with the dangers of spiritism

In the period which followed, the relations between spiritism and psychopathology intensified even more sharply along the two axes that we have just described. Were the peculiar perceptions during spiritist séances pathological in themselves, or was this an unwarranted generalization from isolated cases? Psychopathological discourse had to be refined because other arguments were also being aired. ‘Prodigious mediums’ such as D.D. Home (1833–86) and Eusapia Palladino (1854–1918) became famous at that time, because they agreed to be tested by scientists, though rarely in excellent scientific conditions (Brower, 2010; Monroe, 2008). The scientists convinced by these mediums participated in the questioning of the psychopathological discourse which reduced these phenomena to purely subjective hallucinations. On the one hand, more than with popular sitter groups, the era of prodigious mediums who claimed to play the scientific game provided a remarkably fruitful field for experimental investigation, in particular because of their trance-like states. On the other hand, the arguments concerning the morbid causality of spiritism were accentuated, notably by a new type of argument concerning the relation between spiritism and insanity in terms of ‘colouration’, i.e. how the structure remains pathological when the superficial aspects vary.

One style of discourse concerning the morbidity of spiritism is best illustrated by the Salpêtrière School. Neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–93) took it as the object of his sixteenth clinical lesson, and was widely followed by his colleagues and students. The objective was quite clear: spiritism is an agent which provokes hysteria and neurosis in individuals with a predisposition to those ailments (Charcot, 1890).

The alienists shared fairly similar views that were well summarized during the 10th Congress at Marseille in 1899 (Marie and Vigouroux, 1899): spiritism provokes psychosis in predisposed individuals. However, the conceptions of these clinicians showed that they had taken into account the studies of Janet concerning the trances of mediums; because they used these studies to argue that there was an analogy between the medium and the insane, and because both suffer from disintegration (a loss of their high mental function of conscious synthesis), the notion of a subconscious level and mental processes functioning outside consciousness was nevertheless taken into consideration. Secondly, they remarked that ‘spiritist psychosis’ can occur even if the subject is not a spiritist, and even without ever having practised spiritism. In this case, spiritism merely adds a ‘colouration’ to a pre-existing delirium.

For Valentin Magnan (1835–1916), the question of the relation between spiritism and insanity can be summed up by this latter aspect of colouration (Magnan, 1890). According to this analysis, spiritism constitutes a form of excessive religiosity and corresponds to a symptom of degeneracy, that is, spiritist believers are maladjusted people who have a hereditary predisposition to mental disorders. The fact that they avoid reality with Kardec’s doctrine or other forms of mysticism does not matter, as this is only a secondary aspect that operates within their imbalance.

This sort of psychopathological judgement fed into the moralistic discourse concerning these beliefs and practices, akin to those concerning occult practices in general. Many contemporary scholars denounced in this vein the mysticism and the decadence of the end of the nineteenth century. The psychopathologization of spiritism was part of a strong cultural background, visible in the administrative separation of the Church and the Government, the rise of positivism to the detriment of other epistemologies and, in return, a ‘crisis of factuality’ that encouraged people to look beyond the Christian miracles for evidence of afterlife and the divine on earth (Monroe, 2008). So, spiritism was the great battlefield for a psychiatry that was urged to produce a new norm for religious beliefs.

Spiritist delusions, mediumistic delusions and spiritist madness (1901–21)

At the beginning of the twentieth century there was a wave of delusions (or an inflation of diagnostics which was interpreted as an epidemic of delusions?), which arose quite suddenly and which lasted for quite a short time, in which spiritism took a prominent position as a recurrent topic related to phantasies and paranoias. This wave led to the creation of the category ‘spiritist delusions’ in the nosography of French psychiatry. This new category was deeply affected by the transformation of psychiatric knowledge which was occurring at that time (Danion, Keppi and Singer, 1985; Dowbiggin, 1991). Thus, it was initially linked to the dogma of degeneration; then, after 1910, it was linked to the new tendencies which were sweeping across the psychiatry of that period, and refashioning it: the doctrine of constitutions, the three great clinical entities (delusion of interpretation, delusion of imagination, and chronic hallucinatory psychosis), and also clinical and pathological psychology, including in particular the new study of neuroses.

In this work of construction, one author stands out: Jules Lévy-Valensi.⁴ He gathered together practically everything that could be said in psychiatric circles and elsewhere concerning the relations between spiritism and insanity (Lévy-Valensi, 1910). Analysis of the psychiatric literature of the beginning of the twentieth century – and the article by Lévy-Valensi in particular – allows us to identify two dimensions which were present in the interpretation of this phenomenon: (1) a dimension of certainty: there were indeed a number of points on which a majority of clinicians were agreed; (2) a dimension of doubt, or at the very least of questioning: each certainty was coupled with a possible alternative interpretation.

The certainties

The first certainty of the psychiatrists in 1910 concerned the morbidity of spiritist practices. This was associated with a second certainty, which held that persons subject to spiritist delusion were predisposed thereto. The third certainty was more specific: the delusion in question was essentially hallucinatory. Three sorts of hallucinations were particularly well represented, which gave the syndrome its hallmark, to the extent that they were linked to spiritism: auditory and verbal hallucinations (the raps or knocks and the voice of the spirits that are heard, and the spirit that speaks through the mouth of a person); graphic hallucinations (automatic writing); sensations of levitation of the body, and the impression of the levitation of objects. On this last point, one can add the stories of astral voyages or reincarnation, which were most often considered as signs of dreamlike delirium.

Two further certainties were also widespread in the writing of alienists and psychiatrists. Firstly, it was well established that the subject involved in a spiritist delirium functioned in an automatic fashion. For such a subject, the automatism functioned quite unknown to the subject and against his or her will, to such an extent that there was the appearance of a truly split personality – which is not perceived by the subject, because there is a genuine dissociation, i.e. a shorting by the lower mental functions. This finding was of course based on clinical reality, but it drew its vocabulary and its references from psychopathological studies of mediums. This current was represented principally by Janet and by Joseph Grasset (1849–1918). The latter explicitly proposed the consideration of the phenomena involving mediums from a neurophysiological point of view (Grasset, 1904). In this way, it was generally admitted that there was a continuity between the medium and the delirious patient, since both of them exhibited a disintegration of the nervous system, one temporarily and the other permanently. Thus, Ballet and Dheur (1903) were able to state that the medium in a state of delirium was only an exaggeration of the normal state of the medium, which amounted to being on the same plane but at different angles.

For this reason it was logical to warn the public against spiritism as an agent of disintegration and dissociation, and to proclaim that it was toxic for the mind, because it could well trigger a genuine mental contagion. This was the final established certainty, which summed up all the others, by making it quite clear that spiritism was a social and psychological danger.

Nevertheless, a half-certainty lingered on, allowing doubts and questions. This concerned the status of the facts that were alleged by the spiritists. In fact the majority of clinicians gave attention to the phenomena of automatic writing, turning tables and raps, and also to alleged memories of other lives – in short, to everything that in a certain sense was supernatural, but which could be well explained by the psychology of the period with its notions of the unconscious and the subconscious, and indeed the subliminal as reinterpreted by Flournoy (1900). However, there was a sort of hesitation with respect to another category of unusual phenomena (telepathy, telekinesis, ectoplasms) – hesitation but not outright rejection, because although their character placed them at the borderline of official science, they were the object of a study carried out by a number of scientists in various countries. These ‘psychical researchers’ – including some renowned scientists – developed an objective study of paranormal events, for example with the promising use of photography. Not all researchers endorsed spiritist and occultist beliefs; in fact, they generally assumed the existence of latent powers in human intelligence, i.e. a kind of naturalistic point of view. Because psychical research argued for an alternative view, spiritist phenomena posed a dilemma: were they all due to hallucinations or to errors of interpretation by the scientists who studied them? If so, what was one to think of these scientists? But if not, might it not be that reality was more complex than it appeared?

The doubts and the questionings

All the certainties listed above have been revisited and challenged at one point or another during the elaboration of the entity ‘spiritist delusion’ in the early twentieth century. First, it pointed out, following the analysis by Marie and Vigouroux (1899) mentioned above, that the appearance of a spiritist delusion was not purely due to the pathological action of the spiritist practices. It could also be encountered in subjects who were not spiritist adepts. For this reason it was agreed to call the condition a mediumistic delusion, because all it took from spiritism was its particular colouration. In the same vein, Janet (1909) pointed out that a spiritist or mediumistic delusion induced by the spiritist practices did not occur only in the mediums themselves. In fact, many cases showed that the signs of true mediumship were not present in certain spiritists (these signs being amnesia with respect to the dissociation, and anaesthesia). There was also insistence on the fact that it was not necessarily essential to be predisposed in order to become delirious. The trigger of delirium could also be depression, particularly in the case of grief and mourning. Here again it was Janet (1909) who contributed elements supporting this view, and who consequently gave a psychological explanation of spiritist delirium, even if this explanation was to remain fairly isolated.

In all this, one thing became obvious: there was no single, unified spiritist delusion but a multiplicity of diversified forms of spiritist delusion. Their classification depended on the course of their evolution, and on the mechanisms at work. Very often they were regrouped in the class of chronic systematic religious delusions, but making a distinction between those which could be considered as demonic manias and those closer to theo-manias. They were also classed as delusions of the imagination, emphasis being put on the florid richness of imagination which was very generally found in these cases; or as delusions of interpretation. They were also associated with psychasthenia and hysteria.

However, a number of questions remained in abeyance. In a large majority of cases the spiritist delusion was curable and only lasted for a short time. This was obviously reminiscent of delirious fits and acute hallucinatory psychoses, but there were certain elements which prevented them being classed in these frameworks. The problem was that they were too rich, too coherent in their structure, and above all that they maintained a certain continuity with the common belief in spiritism which marked that period. The philosopher, psychologist and alienist Charles Blondel (1876–1939) was thus led to remark, concerning the delirium of a patient, that it offered ‘the particular feature that it drew on the resources of the collective convictions adopted by the spiritist groups to which she belongs; many members of these groups could not be classified as insane. This feature thus raises a highly delicate question’ (quoted in Lévy-Valensi and Génil-Perrin, 1912: 90). In other words, this amounts to questioning the value of a belief, and where the limits of psychiatric investigation should be placed.

From spiritist delusions to spiritist psychoses (1920–59)

After World War I, the world of psychiatry underwent a major evolution, especially with respect to the notions of ‘mental illness’ and hence to the relations between the normal and the pathological. In the context of these changes in psychiatric knowledge, the designation of ‘spiritist delusion’ was maintained. Rodiet and Heuyer (1931), in their review of the question of insanity in the twentieth century, note that cases of spiritist delusion were the contemporary form of cases of delusions of possession, themselves considered as a medieval form of being deluded under outside influence, and understood as belonging to the class of chronic hallucinatory psychoses. Nevertheless, this clinical entity was given different definitions according to the school which mentioned it, and especially whether it was the prestigious clinical school of Gaétan de Clérambault (1872–1934) or that of Henri Claude (1869–1945).

The psychiatrist Clérambault, working at the special infirmary for the insane at the Préfecture de Police in Paris, discussed a case of spiritist delusion on three occasions. Although he claimed that he was the last person to question hallucinations with a psychological origin, his approach remained the same and consisted of considering that delirious symptoms could be taken as stemming from automatic mental processes. This amounts to saying that neither special practices nor particular emotions could be the cause of this type of delirium, but that its genesis was to be sought in a primordial organic dysfunction. Nevertheless, he did concede that only a thorough experimental study of the condition of mediums would be able to illuminate the true nature of the trance, and distinguish it from delirium (Clérambault and Brousseau, 1920).⁵

Other authors followed Clérambault, and the resulting current of thought became quite strong, to the point of seeing automatic mental processes at work in all the manifestations exhibited by the mediums. Nevertheless, certain authors hinted that, in spite of the similarities between the disorders presented by spiritists and automatic mental processes, the aetiology of the spiritist disorders could possibly be related to neurosis, especially in the cases which were curable and where the hallucinatory polymorphism was dominant.

Among the clinicians, Claude (1869–1945), Lévy-Valensi and André Ceillier (1887–1954) used the cases of spiritist delusion to illustrate the relevance of the conceptual framework of ‘delusion of influence’. A case of spiritist delusion was, according to them, an individual under the influence of a foreign force which directed and oriented his thoughts and commanded his acts and his behaviour in a way which could be permanent or passing. Consequently, it was not surprising to find cases of this sort in syndromes of external action (Claude and Dublineau, 1933), of dispossession (Lévy-Valensi, 1927) or of influence (Ceillier, 1925). For Lévy-Valensi and Ceillier, it was above all the automatic constitution which predisposed an individual to delirium, as a result of practices (such as spiritism) or organic ailments. It is then the importance of the disintegration in these patients which makes them tip over into the automatisms. Among these patients there are many priests, religious persons, dreamers and so on, including the mediums themselves, and all those who ‘practice’ disintegration deliberately and who are easily influenced, such as women (Ceillier, 1925).

However, the psychological origin of spiritist delusion could also have other and less tendentious explanations. Dr Claude Vurpas (1875–1951), in an unpublished talk at the hospital St-Anne in Paris, considered that the cause was the result of the shock produced by the emotion involved in the practice of communication with the dead, especially for those who had recently suffered a bereavement. He classified them together with delirious dreams (Encausse, 1935/1943: 171–5).

These conceptions opened the way to a deeper understanding of the relation between spiritism and insanity. Thus, it became possible to envisage the relation between spiritist delusion and personality. This was the theme of the thesis of Kern (1936), under the direction of Claude and the impetus of Daniel Lagache (1903–72); this thesis was also inspired by the thesis of Jacques Lacan (1901–81) on paranoia taking psychoanalysis as a reference (Lacan, 1932). But if Kern does relate the single case that he analyses as paranoia as defined by Claude, he cannot refrain from evoking the possibility of another hypothesis, that of hysteria. Several points in the case he analyses allow him to consider this, notably the fact that the affection could be cured. However, this hypothesis was not fashionable at the time, as hysteria was disappearing from psychiatric nosography.

The end of an entity

Conceived in a very specific context, the nosographic entity of ‘spiritist delusions’ had disappeared coincidentally with spiritism’s loss of popularity. But a few examples remain. In 1942 psychiatrist Jean Delay presented what was to be one of the last analyses of a case of spiritist delusion. His account is doubly interesting because he not only gives some indications for a dynamic understanding of the process of delirium, but also lays the ground for an ethno-psychiatric approach to this sort of delirium, based on a kind of cultural relativism and a non-judgemental approach of belief systems. The case he studied was that of a young West Indian woman who had grown up in a background of spiritist beliefs and who continued to cultivate an interest in the occult, which rendered this sort of approach more appropriate (Delay, 1942).

Finally, we find one of the last surving traces of this entity in the Traité de psychiatrie of Henri Baruk (1959). Here, an ethno-psychiatric approach is overlaid in terms of social psychiatry where spiritism is quoted as an example of an epidemic agent.

Spiritism and psychiatric knowledge

Beyond descriptions of the harmful nature of spiritist practices, and judgements concerning the belief in communications with defunct spirits, at one time significant heuristic use was made of one of the most central aspects of spiritism: the capacity to function as a medium, that is, to access trance-like states and subconscious abilities. These influences are not very well known today, but they were frequent for almost a century.

As early as 1861, Baillarger sensed that the particular nature of the disturbances in spiritist practitioners could be of interest. Thus, in a communication delivered to the Société Médico-Psychologique, he took the example of a spiritist delusion that he presented in order to demonstrate the role of automatisms in the genesis of the disorder, and to illustrate his conception of psychic hallucination (Baillarger, 1861). According to him, it was indeed the ‘terrible nature of the emotions’ induced by the practice of spiritism which caused a disturbance in the functioning of the brain and which allowed the inferior faculties to free themselves and to escape from voluntary control by realizing an actual ‘splitting of the personality’.

This expression came to have considerable importance in the debates between spiritism and psychiatry, as well as the term ‘automatism’, as we have seen. However, these phenomena were described and above all interpreted in diverse ways. We can see an opposition between a theory in terms of mental illness and a theory in terms of psychology. Thus, the ‘splitting’ was open to two different interpretations: either it was the expression of inferior activities of the mind (sensations, imagination, memory), and in this case it was the sign of a pathological state; or else it was the manifestation of another part of the personality, the spirit in the case of the spiritists, or the unconscious for the psychologists, in which case it was envisaged as harbouring a possibility for the individual to progress, an overflow or an uncovering of faculties.

Two clinicians made use of spiritism in order to illustrate these viewpoints, and to make them evolve: Janet and Jules Séglas.⁶ Janet often referred to spiritism in the course of his theoretical production – this is why his opinion has been relevant throughout this discussion – and he held that the case of mediums provided a perfect example of a split personality. It was mainly at the beginning of his career that Janet addressed this phenomenon; his writings in the 1930s contain few references to it. His entry into the field of mental illness and his attachment to the medical profession gave him the opportunity to air his previous studies published in his doctoral thesis on psychological automatism (Janet, 1889). Among other things, these studies provided some clinical reference-points for specialists in mental illness confronted with forms of hallucination where involuntary activity came to the forefront. Thus in Névroses et idées fixes (Janet, 1898/2007), he took the example of a patient, LER, ‘a distinguished professor’, who indulged in spiritism in the course of which he was invaded by the spirit with whom he was in communication. This spirit commanded his acts and led the professor to make painful and embarrassing utterances. Janet (1898/2007) cited this case to show that the phenomenon of split personality is not always attached to hysteria, but can actually be a symptom of a persecution mania. Conversely, in the course of many clinical discussions and particularly in the case of spiritist delusion, Janet had occasion to note that in spite of the presence of a theme of persecution, one could discern hysteria or psychasthenia.

These distinctions are obviously based on Janet’s deep reflections on and interest in all these ‘lower’ forms of mental activity as a whole. Among these forms, the case of mediums was prominent, largely because of its importance in the social landscape of the period. It taught Janet that the mind can disintegrate and split into two. This may be only a short-lived phenomenon, and often reflects ‘psychological wretchedness’, but at times it reveals capacities which are astonishingly intelligent, to say the least.

Séglas did not ignore the teaching of Janet. This was particularly the case in the elaboration of psycho-motor hallucinations. More surprising, perhaps, is the use that Séglas (1888) made of mediumship in his efforts to clarify several aspects of such hallucinations; by comparing them and by elucidating their analogies, he advanced towards an understanding of their common underlying moving forces. But Séglas certainly knew that comparing was not the same thing as assimilating or identifying. Thus, at other points in his work, he insisted clearly on what differentiated a mental patient from a medium. Although there was a split personality in the two cases, in the case of mental illness the split was forced and reflected an influence and/or a persecution, and moreover went beyond a mere belief. In contrast, in the case of a medium the split was only temporary, unconscious, and triggered by the group that the medium belonged to. Nevertheless, Séglas (1888) also noted that spiritism favoured ‘neo-mystical tendencies’ and prepared the ground for the advent of psycho-motor hallucinations.

The alienist Gilbert Ballet (1853–1916), at that time Professor of History of Medicine in Paris, was another author who made use of spiritism in the construction of the diagnosis of ‘chronic hallucinatory psychosis’ (CHP) in a series of publications appearing between 1911 and 1914. It was well known that, according to Ballet, a characteristic state of CHP resulted from disaggregation. This referred to dissociation or splitting of the personality. In 1914, in an article recapitulating the main features of CHP, he said that it was the nature of this psychosis (and of dissociation) which defined the affection. There were two aspects to this psychosis. One was the fact of being chronic, and the other was that it ‘exalts subconscious automatisms’, the very same feature that is found in the trance of the medium. In other words, there is no difference in the nature of the two conditions (Ballet, 1914). This is why, in spite of the precautions taken to distinguish certain psychopathological and clinical fields, it appeared that the concept of ‘chronic hallucinatory psychosis’ linked together two areas that were quite different. In our opinion this is the source of the confusion that this concept has generated (Le Maléfan, 2003).

These two areas are chronic hallucinatory delusions of persecution on the one hand and, on the other, the non-ordinary psychological state of the medium. It seems obvious to us that making disaggregation the basis of CHP caused mediumship, and with it the spirits, to be linked together and to share the same fate as hallucinatory psychosis. Furthermore, this made it difficult for psychiatric knowledge to detect anything other than ‘psychosis’ in the most characteristic feature of disaggregation, automatism. This was all the more so when automatism occurred in patients who were involved with spiritism. Moreover, this connection favoured an amalgam between hallucinosis and psychosis which has lasted in clinical practice to the present day.

There were other borrowings or references to spiritism during the first quarter of the twentieth century, and these continued up to the 1970s with Henri Ey (1900–77) (see Ey, 1973/2004, Vol. I: 306–7). During the 1920s most of these references had to do with the nebula of delusions of influence, and because of this they largely overlap with the history of spiritist delusions in the strict sense of the term. We may nevertheless note that, in parallel, the domain of psychical or metapsychical sciences was also drawn upon. In particular, again in the framework of delusions of influence, we mention a telepathic delusion (Lévy-Darras and Maillard, 1910) and a metapsychical delusion (Aubin, 1927). As for Ey, he made it clear that the experience of being a medium corresponded with a remarkable, but non-pathological, type of influence.

Conclusion

We have seen that the elaboration of spiritist delusions occurred during the same period as the construction of classic psychiatric knowledge in France, and that their presence had a number of repercussions and was at the origin of thorny questions and substantial challenges for psychopathologists. The nosographic and aetiological problems related to spiritist delusions have never been entirely resolved, not indeed because of a lack of arguments or theoretical frameworks, but because they have always carried with them a sort of excessiveness which has made them impossible to reduce entirely. In this way they have been objects of resistance for psychiatric knowledge in its encounter with the field of beliefs.

An examination of the historical debates surrounding late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century spiritism may thus have important implications for psychiatric conceptions today. The differential diagnosis of mediumistic and psychotic experience, for example, still hinges on the question of belief and cultural relativism (Moreira-Almeida, Neto and Greyson, 2007). Although interest has waned in Kardecian spiritisme in France, the question of belief remains open in phenomena such as channelling (Trimble, 1995) or dissociative identity disorder (Moreira-Almeida, Neto and Cardeña, 2008), which, worldwide, continue to present the familiar forms of spiritist belief and practice. Spiritism is still practised by many around the world and particularly in Brazil (Bragdon, 2011). It seems that clinical practice must still contend, to a greater or lesser extent, with forms of knowledge and belief that occupy the margins of the psychiatric field. In this respect, contemporary nosographic categories and concepts can only benefit from the lessons of the past.

Footnotes

Notes

References

Alvarado

(2002) Dissociation in Britain during the late nineteenth century: The Society for Psychical Research, 1882–1900. Journal of Trauma and Dissociation 3: 9–33.

Alvarado

(2010) Classic Text No. 84: ‘Divisions of personality and spiritism’ by Alfred Binet (1896). History of Psychiatry 21(4): 487–500.

Alvarado

Zingrone

(2012) Classic Text No. 90: ‘The Pathology and Treatment of Mediomania’, by Frederic Rowland Marvin (1874). History of Psychiatry 23(2): 229–244.

Alvarado

Machado

Zangari

Zingrone

(2007) Perspectivas historicas da influencia da mediiunidade na construcao de ideias psicologicas e psiquiatricas. Revista de Psiquiatria Clinica 34(suppl.1): 42–53.

Aubin

(1927) Les délires de métapsychique. Unpublished medical thesis, University of Bordeaux.

Baillarger (1854) De la folie à double forme. Annales médico-psychologiques 2(6) : 369–391.

Baillarger

(1861) Communication à la Société Médico-Psychologique. Annales Médico- Psychologiques 7: 92–93.

Ballet

(1914) La psychose hallucinatoire chronique. Revue Neurologique 27: 41–46.

Ballet

Dheur

(1903) Sur un cas de délire de médiumnité. Annales Médico-Psychologiques 5: 264–271.

10.

Baruk

(1959) Traité de psychiatrie. Paris: Masson.

11.

Bastide

(1958) Le Candomblé de Bahia. Paris: Pocket; reprinted in 2001.

12.

Bastide

(1960) Les Religions africaines au Brésil: vers une sociologie des interprétations de civilisations. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

13.

Bastide

(1973) Poètes et Dieux. Études afro-brésiliennes. Paris: L’Harmattan; reprinted in 2002.

14.

Bragdon

(ed.) (2011) Spiritism and Mental Health. Practices from Spiritist Centers and Spiritist Psychiatric Hospitals in Brazil. Philadelphia: Singing Dragon.

15.

Brower

(2010) Unruly Spirits: The Science of Psychic Phenomena in Modern France. Chicago & London: Chicago University Press.

16.

Burlet

(1863) Du Spiritisme considéré comme cause d’aliénation mentale. Lyon: Richard.

17.

Capron

(1855) Modern Spiritualism: Its Facts and Fanatisms, its Consistencies and Contradictions. Boston: Bela Marsh.

18.

Cardeña

Lynn

Krippner

(eds) (2000) Varieties of Anomalous Experiences: Examining the Scientific Evidence. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

19.

Cavalier

(1868) Étude médico-psychologique sur la croyance aux sortilèges à l’époque actuelle. Montpellier: Editeurs du Montpellier médical.

20.

Ceillier

(1925) Du rôle des hallucinations psychiques dans l’exploration de l’inconscient. L’Évolution Psychiatrique 1: 142–154.

21.

Charcot

(1890) Oeuvres complètes. Leçons sur les maladies du système nerveux. Paris: Progrès Médical.

22.

Charuty

(1985) Le Couvent des fous. Paris: Flammarion.

23.

Claude

Dublineau

(1933) Intuitions délirantes, obsessions et syndrome d’action extérieure. L’Encéphale 28: 350–371.

24.

Clérambault

GG de

Brousseau

(1920) La fin d’une voyante. Présentation de malade. Bulletin de la Société Clinique de Médecine Mentale 12: 223–230.

25.

Clervoy

(2002) Esprit: Es-tu là ? La psychiatrie face à l’engouement spirite. Perspectives psychiatriques 41(3): 237–240.

26.

Cox

(2003) Body and Soul: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

27.

Crabtree

(2003) “Automatism” and the emergence of dynamic psychiatry. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 39(1): 51–70.

28.

Cuchet

(2007) Le retour des esprits, ou la naissance du spiritisme sous le Second Empire. Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 54(2): 74–90.

29.

Cuchet

(2012) Les voix d’outre-tombe: Tables tournantes, spiritisme et société au XIXe siècle. Paris: Seuil.

30.

Danion

Keppi

Singer

(1985) Une approche historique de la doctrine des dégénérescences et des constitutions psychopathiques. Annales Médico-Psychologiques 143(3): 271–280.

31.

Delay

(1942) Délire spirite avec écritures automatiques polymorphes. Annales Médico-Psychologiques 11: 362–366.

32.

Dessoir

(1889) Das Doppel-Ich. Berlin: Siegismund.

33.

Dowbiggin

(1991) Inheriting Madness. Professionalization and Psychiatric Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century France. Berkeley: University of California Press.

34.

Edelman

(1985) La vogue des tables tournantes. L’Histoire 75(2): 16–23.

35.

Edelman

(1995) Voyantes, guérisseuses et visionnaires en France, 1785–1914. Paris: Albin Michel.

36.

Ellenberger

(1970) The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.

37.

Encausse

(1943) Sciences occultes et déséquilibre mental (Thèse à la Faculté de Médecine de Paris, 1935). Paris: Payot.

38.

Engels

(2008) Understanding the glossolalia of Hélène Smith, the famous spiritist medium. In: Arveiller

(ed.) Psychiatries dans l’histoire. Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 141–148.

39.

(1973) Traité des hallucinations, 2 vols. Paris: Tchou; reprinted in 2004.

40.

Figuier

(1859) Tables tournantes. In: Luna

(ed.) Dictionnaire universel des connaissances humaines. Paris: Magiaty, 289–298.

41.

Flournoy

(1900) Des Indes à la planète Mars: Étude sur un cas de somnambulisme avec glossolalie. Paris: Félix Alcan.

42.

Grasset

(1904) Le Spiritisme devant la science. Paris: Masson.

43.

Hess

(1991) Spirits and Scientists: Ideology, Spiritism and Brazilian Culture. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

44.

Janet

(1889) L’automatisme psychologique. Essai de psychologie expérimentale sur les formes inférieures de l’activité humaine. Paris: Félix Alcan.

45.

Janet

(1893) L’état mental des hystériques. Paris: Félix Alcan.

46.

Janet

(1898) Névroses et idées fixes. Paris: L’Harmattan; reprinted in 2007.

47.

Janet

(1909) Les Névroses. Paris: Flammarion.

48.

Kardec

(1861) Le Livre des Médiums. Paris: Didier.

49.

Kelly

Crabtree

Gauld

Grosso

Greyson

(2007) Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

50.

Kern

(1936) Contribution clinique et pathogénique à l’étude des délires spirites (Thèse à la Faculté de Médecine de Paris). Paris: Jouve.

51.

Lacan

(1932) De la psychose paranoïaque dans ses rapports avec la personnalité. Paris: Le François.

52.

Lachapelle

(2005) Attempting science: the creation and early development of the Institut Métapsychique International in Paris, 1919–1931. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 41(1): 1–24.

53.

Lachapelle

(2011) Investigating the Supernatural: From Spiritism and Occultism to Psychical Research and Metapsychics in France, 1853–1931. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

54.

Le Maléfan

(1999) Folie et spiritisme. Histoire du discours psychopathologique sur la pratique du spiritisme, ses abords et ses avatars (1850–1950). Paris: L’Harmattan.

55.

Le Maléfan

(2001) De Clérambault et la voyante H.C. L’Évolution Psychiatrique 66(3): 506–511.

56.

Le Maléfan

(2003) Gilbert Ballet et la médiumnité. Contribution à l’histoire de la PHC et des divisions subjectives. L’Évolution Psychiatrique 68(1): 63–72.

57.

Lévy-Darras

Maillard

(1910) Un cas de délire d’interprétation: délire d’influence télépathique. L’Encéphale 5: 401–412.

58.

Lévy-Valensi

(1910) Spiritisme et folie. L’Encéphale 5(6): 696–716.

59.

Lévy-Valensi

(1927) L’Automatisme mental dans les délires systematizes chroniques d’influence et hallucinatoires. Le Syndrome de dépossession. Paris: Masson.

60.

Lévy-Valensi

(1948) Précis de psychiatrie, 3rd edn. Paris: Baillière.

61.

Lévy-Valensi

Génil-Perrin

(1912) Délire spirite. L’Encéphale 7: 89–90.

62.

Lewis-Fernández

Kleinman

(1995) Cultural psychiatry: theoretical, clinical and research issues. Psychiatric Clinics of North America 18(3): 433–448.

63.

Magnan

(1890) Leçons cliniques sur les maladies mentales. Le délire chronique. Paris: Lecrosnier et Babé.

64.

Maleval

(1996) Logique du délire. Paris: Masson.

65.

Marie

Vigouroux

(1899) Spiritisme et folie. Xè Congrès des aliénistes et neurologistes de France et de l’étranger. Marseille and Paris: Masson.

66.

Méheust

(1999) Somnambulisme et médiumnité, 2 vols. Paris: Les Empêcheurs de Penser en Rond.

67.

Monroe

(2008) Laboratories of Faith. Mesmerism, Spiritism, and Occultism in Modern France. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

68.

Moreira-Almeida

Neto

(2005) Spiritist views of mental disorders in Brazil. Transcultural Psychiatry 42(4): 570–595.

69.

Moreira-Almeida

Neto

Cardeña

(2008) Comparison of Brazilian spiritist mediumship and dissociative identity disorder. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 196(5): 420–424.

70.

Moreira-Almeida

Neto

Greyson

(2007) Dissociative and psychotic experiences in Brazilian spiritist mediums. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics 76(1): 57–58.

71.

Moreira-Almeida

Silva

Almeida

Neto

(2005) History of ‘Spiritist madness’ in Brazil. History of Psychiatry 16(1): 5–25.

72.

Myers

FWH

(1903) Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green.

73.

Owen

(1989) The Darkened Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism in late Victorian England. London: Virago.

74.

Plas

(2000) Naissance d’une science humaine, la psychologie: les psychologues et le “merveilleux psychique”. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.

75.

Plas

(2012) Psychology and psychical research in France around the end of the 19th century. History of Human Sciences 25(2): 91–107.

76.

Reinsel

(2003) Dissociation and mental health in mediums and sensitives: a pilot survey. Proceedings of Presented Papers of PA 2003 Annual Convention: 200–221.

77.

Richet

(1905) La métapsychique. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 19: 2–49.

78.

Rodiet

Heuyer

(1931) La Folie au XX^e siècle. Étude médico-sociale. Paris: Masson.

79.

Roxo

(1938) Delirio espirita episodico nas classes populares do Rio de Janeiro. Archivos Brasileiros de Medicina 28(2): 59–72.

80.

Séglas

(1888) L’hallucination dans ses rapports avec la fonction du langage. Les hallucinations psychomotrices verbales. Progrès Médical 8(33–34): 124–126.

81.

Shamdasani

(1994) Encountering Hélène: Théodore Flournoy and the genesis of subliminal psychology. In: Flournoy T, From India to the Planet Mars: A Case of Multiple Personality with Imaginary Languages by Théodore Flournoy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, xi–li.

82.

Sharp

(2006) Secular Spirituality: Reincarnation and Spiritism in Nineteenth-Century France. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

83.

Taine

(1870) De l’intelligence. Paris: Hachette.

84.

Trimble

(1995) Spiritualism and channeling. In: Miller

(ed.) America’s Alternative Religions. Albany: State of New York Press, 331–337.

85.

Weisberg

(2004) Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.

86.

Wolffram

(2006) Parapsychology on the couch: the psychology of occult belief in Germany, 1870–1939. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 42(3): 237–260.

87.

Wolffram

(2009) In the laboratory of the Geisterbaron: experimental parapsychology in Germany. Clio Medica 88: 131–189.

Spiritist delusions and spiritism in the nosography of French psychiatry (1850–1950)

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Dangers of spiritism for mental health: the view of Kardec and the spiritist movement

The intervention of the alienists

Neurologists and alienists confronted with the dangers of spiritism

Spiritist delusions, mediumistic delusions and spiritist madness (1901–21)

The certainties

The doubts and the questionings

From spiritist delusions to spiritist psychoses (1920–59)

The end of an entity

Spiritism and psychiatric knowledge

Conclusion

Footnotes

Notes

References