Mesmerism and the Rise of Mental Healing: A Hidden Influence

In the annals of American religious history, few influences have been as quietly transformative as mesmerism. Often dismissed as a pseudoscience of carnival showmen, mesmerism—the practice of inducing trance states through animal magnetism—provided a crucial bridge between religious healing and modern psychology. When it arrived in the United States in 1836, it ignited a cohort of practitioners who called their work “psychology” and speculated about mind-brain links, interior states, and mental healing (Schmit, 2005). This article uncovers how mesmerism’s discoveries of magnetic sleep and the unconscious mind became a hidden foundation for the New Thought movement, shaping the ideas of Phineas Quimby, Emma Curtis Hopkins, and the Fillmores, and ultimately influencing the self-help culture of today.

Historical Context

The antebellum United States was a fertile ground for new religious and philosophical ideas. The Second Great Awakening had loosened traditional Calvinist orthodoxy, while Transcendentalism and Swedenborgianism emphasized the individual’s inner spiritual experience. Into this ferment came mesmerism, a French method of treating illness by directing “magnetic fluid” through the body. Developed by Franz Anton Mesmer in the 1770s, it was transformed when his pupil, the Marquis de Puységur, discovered in 1784 that patients could enter a trance-like state—magnetic sleep—that revealed a realm of mental activity beyond conscious awareness (Crabtree, 1994). This discovery marked the beginning of modern psychological healing, but it also resonated with American religious sensibilities. As Robert Fuller (1982) argues, mesmerism offered the first psychological theory that met the everyday religious and intellectual needs of Americans, providing a framework for understanding the mind’s power over the body and the soul.

Main Narrative

The story of mesmerism’s influence on mental healing is a chronicle of ideas moving from the laboratory to the pulpit, from the trance stage to the prayer room. Its trajectory reveals how a scientific anomaly became a spiritual philosophy.

Definition: What Was Mesmerism?

Mesmerism, also called animal magnetism, was a therapeutic system based on the belief that an invisible fluid or force, manipulated by the healer, could cure illness and induce altered states. The practice involved passes of the hands, magnets, and sometimes the use of “magnetic sleep,” a trance state in which patients could access unconscious memories and even exhibit clairvoyance. This trance state, first identified by Puységur in 1784, revealed a “second consciousness” that could influence waking thought and action—a concept that would later be central to psychological healing (Crabtree, 1994).

Origins: From Mesmer to Puységur

Franz Anton Mesmer, a Viennese physician, developed his theory of animal magnetism in the 1770s, claiming that an imbalance of magnetic fluid caused disease. His techniques were controversial, but his pupil, the Marquis de Puységur, made the pivotal discovery in 1784 while treating a patient named Victor. Puységur found that Victor entered a sleep-like state and responded to commands, and that in this state he could diagnose his own illness. This “magnetic sleep” became the foundation of psychological healing, as it demonstrated a hidden mental realm (Crabtree, 1994).

Who Popularized It: The American Dissemination

Mesmerism reached the United States in 1836, and a cohort of Americans took it up with enthusiasm. As David Schmit (2005) documents, these practitioners published materials, gave lectures to thousands, conducted empirical investigations, and treated countless ill people. They understood their profession as addressing the mind, often referring to their work as “psychology.” They speculated about mind-brain links and investigated “interior states,” “mental healing,” and the controversial “higher mind powers” such as clairvoyance. Itinerant mesmerists in the 1830s placed subjects in trances to read sealed envelopes or describe distant locales, captivating audiences and blurring the line between science and spectacle (Fuller, 1982).

How Different New Thought Groups Understood It

The influence of mesmerism on New Thought was mediated through key figures who adapted its ideas. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, a clockmaker and mesmerist, began treating patients with magnetic passes but eventually shifted his focus to the power of belief and suggestion. He developed a mental healing method that he called “The Truth,” arguing that illness was caused by false beliefs and that correcting those beliefs could cure disease. Quimby’s ideas directly influenced Mary Baker Eddy, who founded Christian Science, and later Emma Curtis Hopkins, who taught that spiritual realization could heal. Hopkins, in turn, trained the founders of Divine Science (Nona Brooks and Malinda Cramer) and Unity (Charles and Myrtle Fillmore). These groups, while distinct, all embraced the core mesmerist insight that the mind—or spirit—could directly affect physical health. Fuller (1982) traces how mesmerism’s philosophy deeply influenced the Mind-Cure movement and New Thought, providing a psychological framework for religious healing.

Historical Development: From Trance to Truth

The chronological arc of mesmerism’s influence is a story of transformation. From 1784 to the 1830s, it was a European curiosity. In 1836, it arrived in America and flourished for two decades, reaching its peak in the 1840s and 1850s. By the 1860s, its more sensational aspects—clairvoyance and magnetic passes—gave way to a more refined focus on mental suggestion. Quimby, who practiced as a mesmerist, began to emphasize the power of the patient’s own mind, and his student Warren Felt Evans wrote books on mental healing that became foundational to New Thought. The movement coalesced in the 1880s and 1890s with the founding of organizations like Emma Curtis Hopkins’s Christian Science Theological Seminary (later the Hopkins Metaphysical Association), Divine Science, and Unity. These groups institutionalized the mental healing principles that had originated in mesmerism, publishing periodicals such as Unity Magazine and Science of Mind magazine, which carried the ideas into the twentieth century.

Related Concepts: Transcendentalism, Swedenborgianism, and Christian Science

Mesmerism did not develop in a vacuum. It intersected with Transcendentalism, which emphasized the innate goodness of the individual and the power of intuition, and with Swedenborgianism, which proposed a correspondence between the spiritual and physical worlds. These currents shared a belief in a higher, hidden reality accessible through inner experience. Christian Science, founded by Mary Baker Eddy, emerged directly from Quimby’s mental healing but diverged by denying the reality of matter entirely. New Thought, in contrast, maintained a more pragmatic approach, viewing the mind as a tool for healing and success. Fuller (1982) shows how mesmerism’s psychological theory met the religious needs of Americans by offering a way to understand the mind’s role in health and salvation.

Modern Legacy: From New Thought to the Human Potential Movement

The legacy of mesmerism extends far beyond the nineteenth century. Its insights into the unconscious mind and the power of suggestion influenced the development of psychotherapy, as Adam Crabtree (1994) demonstrates in From Mesmer to Freud. In the New Thought tradition, the principles of mental healing evolved into the teachings of Ernest Holmes, who founded Religious Science in 1927 and wrote The Science of Mind. Holmes synthesized New Thought ideas with a pragmatic philosophy of affirmative prayer. Later, the human potential movement of the 1960s, with its focus on self-actualization and mind-body connection, drew directly on this heritage. Today, the emphasis on positive thinking, visualization, and the placebo effect in popular self-help culture owes a profound debt to the mesmerists who first explored the hidden powers of the mind.

Why It Matters in New Thought History

Mesmerism is often overlooked in accounts of New Thought, yet it was the seedbed from which the movement grew. Without the discovery of magnetic sleep and the subsequent exploration of mental healing, the core New Thought belief in the power of consciousness to shape health and circumstances would have lacked its empirical foundation. Mesmerism provided a vocabulary—“interior states,” “mental healing,” “psychology”—that allowed religious healers to articulate their practices in a scientific idiom. It also bridged the gap between religious faith and scientific inquiry, a tension that New Thought continues to navigate. For students of New Thought history, understanding mesmerism is essential to grasping how the movement emerged from a complex interplay of religious revivalism, philosophical idealism, and early psychological experimentation. It reveals that New Thought was not a sudden revelation but a gradual evolution of ideas, with mesmerism as its hidden catalyst.

Primary Sources

• Phineas Quimby’s Manuscripts (c. 1850s–1860s): Quimby’s writings and lecture notes, held at the Library of Congress and the Quimby Resource Center, document his transition from mesmerism to mental healing.
• Warren Felt Evans, The Mental Cure (1869): Evans, a former Swedenborgian minister, applied Quimby’s ideas and helped popularize mental healing.
• Emma Curtis Hopkins, High Mysticism (1918): A key text of New Thought that synthesizes Quimby’s teachings with spiritual healing.
• Unity Magazine (founded 1891): The Fillmores’ periodical that disseminated New Thought teachings to a wide audience.
• Charles Poyen, Progress of Animal Magnetism in New England (1837): A firsthand account of mesmerism’s introduction to America.