Phreno-Mesmerism (or Phrenopathy)
An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)
An application of the principles of Mesmerism to the science of phrenology. Mesmerism and phrenology had for some time been regarded by the English mesmerists as related sciences when it was discovered that a somnambule whose bumps" were touched by the fingers of the operator would respond to the stimulus by exhibiting every symptom of the mental trait corresponding to the organ touched. Thus signs of joy, grief, destructiveness, combativeness, and friendship might be exhibited in rapid succession by the entranced patient. Among those who claimed to have discovered the new science were Dr. Collyer, a pupil of Dr. Elliotson's; and the Rev. Laroy Sunderland, though the former afterwards repudiated it. As time went on enterprising phreno-mesmerists discovered many new cerebral organs as many as a hundred and fifty being found beside those already mapped out by Spurzheim and Gall. Among its supporters phreno-mesmerism numbered the distinguished hypnotist Braid , who expressed himself fully satisfied of its reality. He has recorded a number of cases in which the patient correctly indicated by his actions the organs touched, though demonstrably ignorant of phrenological laws, and inaccessible to outside information. Braid himself offers but a very halting and inadequate physiological explanation, and since he may be supposed to have been fully alive to the factors of suggestion and hyperæsthesia, it would seem advisable to admit the possibility of mental suggestion, or telepathy, by means of which the expectation of the operator, reproducing itself in the mind of the patient, would give rise to the corresponding reactions.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When the Encyclopaedia of Occultism described this in 1920, it still treated phrenology as a "science" and offered telepathy as the best explanation for why a mesmerised subject would burst into grief or combativeness when the operator pressed a particular part of the skull. Phrenology's core claim — that character can be read from bumps on the cranium — is now wholly abandoned; the brain does have specialised regions, as Broca's 1861 work on speech showed, but they correspond to nothing palpable on the skull, and the "hundred and fifty" organs the phreno-mesmerists added were pure invention. The effects themselves are real enough and are now explained by suggestion, expectancy and unconscious cueing from the operator — the ideomotor response and the experimenter-expectancy effect — rather than by thought transference. Braid himself, who coined the word hypnotism, came to reject the phrenological reading of his results and attributed them to suggestion, so even the account's star witness had moved before 1920.
Written for this edition, 2026.