1784: The Marquis de Puységur and the psychological turn in the west

In 1970 Henri Ellenberger called attention to the previously unrecognized importance of Franz Anton Mesmer's "animal magnetism" in the rise of psychodynamic psychology in the West. This article takes the next step of tracing the course of events that led to Puységur's discovery of magnetic somnambulism and describing the tumultuous social and political climate into which it was introduced in 1784. Beginning from the secret and private publication of his first Mémoires, only a few copies of which remain today, the original core of his discovery is identified and the subsequent development of its implications are examined. Puysègur was initiated into his investigations by Mesmer's system of physical healing, which bears some resemblance to the traditional healing approaches of the East. But Puységur took Mesmer's ideas in an unexpected direction. In doing so, he accomplished a turn toward the psychological that remains one of the distinguishing features of Western culture.