"Words of Healing": The Literature of Automatic Writing as Treatment and Prescription in the Victorian Age

"The student who dives deep into the mysteries that enshrine Truth . . . will tell of her beauties, and proclaim to those who have ears to hear the words of healing." So wrote English cleric and spiritualist W. Stainton Moses in his Spirit Teachings (1883)-or, if Moses is to be believed, so wrote the spirit "Imperator," who, promising spiritual and bodily edification, enlisted Moses as his earthly amanuensis. Treating purportedly real spirit writings like those transcribed by Moses and the discourses of their reception in occultism, psychical research, and literature, this paper examines the phenomenon of automatic writing, also called spirit writing, passive writing, or psychography, as an evolving means of wellness and, later, a source of medical prescription from the 1850s through the 1890s. This essay suggests a yet-unintuited connection between the rise of automatic writing and the Spasmodic poetics alternately championed and critiqued by Sydney Dobell.

[Early attitudes to X-rays in Buenos Aires, 1896-1897: medicine, esotericism and popular fantasies]

The goal of this article is to document early attitudes to X-rays in scientific culture in the city of Buenos Aires. Using various types of periodical sources, the text explores the different reactions to the novelty among different actors in the literary world. Newspapers and weekly magazines for the general public quickly broadcast the discovery, stressing its marvelous or prodigious nature. Meanwhile, physicians in the city took contrasting positions, ranging from mistrust to enthusiasm. Lastly, spiritualists in the city wrote numerous texts about the innovation, and reinterpreted it in accordance with their strategies for self-legitimation.

In the shadow of the double: Psychiatry and spiritism in Cuba

This article traces the history of Cuba's first and only Spiritist mental clinic, founded in the 1940s in the central province of Camagüey and shut down by the revolutionary government in the 1960s. It analyzes the history of the clinic with respect to the virtual absence of institutional psychiatric care outside of Havana in these decades, but also in the context of a more enduring problematic: the persistent preference shown by Cubans for religiously grounded forms of mental healing. Namely, "In the Shadow of the Double" explores the broader geography of mental care within which Spiritists defined the uniqueness of their healing practice, vis-à-vis both institutional psychiatry, to which they theorized a relationship of strategic complementarity, and other forms of religiously grounded healing, which they disparaged as "backwards" and even dangerous. It is precisely this liminal status within the psychotherapeutic marketplace, I argue, that made their healing practice uniquely appealing to some, but also vulnerable to revolutionary atheism and public health extension after 1959. (PsycINFO Database Record

Combining psychiatry and spiritism: Therapies employed in a Brazilian sanatorium (1934-1948)

The purpose of this article is to present an historical account of an intersection that occurred in Brazil between popular healing treatments and conventional psychiatric practices during the first half of the 20th century. To illustrate our argument, we analyzed data retrieved from the medical records of patients admitted to the Spiritist Sanatorium of Uberaba, Brazil, between 1934 and 1948. Although the Uberaba Spiritist movement founded the institution, it was directed by a physician educated in the biomedical tradition at the Rio de Janeiro School of Medicine. Based on the theory of the circulation and appropriation of knowledge, we elucidated the adaptations and negotiations that were necessary for the reception and dissemination of the practice of the two different therapeutic methodologies on Brazilian psychiatric soil. (PsycINFO Database Record

Erich Fromm's Involvement With Zen Buddhism: Psychoanalysts and the Spiritual Quest in Subsequent Decades

The first section of this paper covers Erich Fromm's profound involvement with Zen Buddhism, culminating in his co-authoring the book Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis in 1960. It details why this was a groundbreaking endeavor, as it countered the pervasive psychoanalytic denigration of spiritual traditions, practices, and experiences. The second section describes the effect of Fromm's Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis on the author of this paper, as he came to clinical psychology and psychoanalysis from involvement in Indian philosophy. The third section is a case study of a spiritually advanced Hindu woman seen in intensive short-term psychoanalytic therapy in Bombay, describing the interface of the spiritual with psychoanalytic therapy. The fourth section explains what eventually led to a sea change in psychoanalytic attitudes toward spiritual traditions and practices, with a small but significant group of psychoanalysts becoming involved in one or another spiritual practice, and working with patients also so involved.

Cesare Lombroso on mediumship and pathology

During the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, students of pathology such as Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), the author of the excerpt presented here, became involved in observing, investigating and theorizing about the phenomena of Spiritualism, and mediumship in particular. The Classic Text presented here consists of an excerpt from Lombroso's writings which focus on the Italian medium Eusapia Palladino (1854-1918), who greatly influenced Lombroso's beliefs. Lombroso illustrates neglected theoretical ideas combining the interaction of pathology and what seem to be real psychic phenomena that have not received much attention in historical studies.

[Investigations of psychic/spiritual phenomena in the nineteenth century: somnambulism and spiritualism, 1811-1860]

In the early nineteenth century, investigations into the nature of psychic/spiritual phenomena, like trances and the supposed acquisition of information unattainable using normal sensory channels, prompted much debate in the scientific arena. This article discusses the main explanations offered by the researchers of psychic phenomena reported between 1811 and 1860, concentrating on the two main movements in the period: magnetic somnambulism and modern spiritualism. While the investigations of these phenomena gave rise to multiple theories, they did not yield any consensus. However, they did have implications for the understanding of the mind and its disorders, especially in the areas of the unconscious and dissociation, constituting an important part of the history of psychology and psychiatry.

Joseph Maxwell on mediumistic personifications

The study of mediumship received much impetus from the work of psychical researchers. This included ideas about the phenomena of personation, or changes in attitudes, dispositions and behaviours shown by some mediums that supposedly indicated discarnate action. The aim of this Classic Text is to reprint passages about this topic from the writings of French psychical researcher Joseph Maxwell (1858-1938), which were part of the contributions of some psychical researchers to reconceptualize the manifestations in psychological terms. Maxwell suggested these changes in mediums were a production of their subconscious mind. His ideas are a reflection of previous theorization about secondary personalities and a particular example of the contributions of psychical researchers to understand the psychology of mediumship.

Treatment of singultus by sexual stimulation: Who was George T Dexter, MD (c1812-?)?

This short report attempts to shed light on the interesting but controversial personality of George T Dexter (ca1812 -?), the physician who first described manipulation of the female genitalia in a hysterical impressionable girl as being associated with the termination of singultus. Although his interaction with the young female patient would not meet today's ethical standards, his medical observation was valid and contributes to our understanding of the pathophysiology of singultus. He was well ahead of his colleagues who presented hiccup therapy case reports with similar or related pathophysiology mechanisms some 150 years later.

'Report of the Committee on Mediumistic Phenomena', by William James (1886): With an introduction by

Mediumship was a topic of great interest to some nineteenth-century students of mental phenomena. Together with the phenomena of hypnosis and other manifestations, mediumship was seen by many as a dissociative phenomenon. The purpose of this Classic Text is to present an excerpt of an article about the topic that William James (1842-1910) published in 1886 in the Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research about American medium Leonora E. Piper (1857-1950). The article, an indication of late nineteenth-century interactions between dissociation studies and psychical research, was the first report of research with Mrs Piper, a widely investigated medium of great importance for the development of mediumship studies. In addition to studying the case as a dissociative experience, James explored the possibility that Piper's mentation contained verifiable information suggestive of 'supernormal' knowledge. Consequently, James provides an example of a topic neglected in historical studies, the ideas of those who combined conventional dissociation studies with psychical research.

'S.W.' and C.G. Jung: mediumship, psychiatry and serial exemplarity

On the basis of unpublished materials, this essay reconstructs Jung's seances with his cousin, Helene Preiswerk, which formed the basis of his 1902 medical dissertation, The Psychology and Pathology of so-called Occult Phenomena. It separates out Jung's contemporaneous approach to the mediumistic phenomena she exhibited from his subsequent sceptical psychological reworking of the case. It traces the reception of the work and its significance for his own self-experimentation from 1913 onwards. Finally, it reconstructs the manner in which Jung continually returned to his first model and reframed it as an exemplar of his developing theories.

[The marvels of the incarnated man. Victor Melcior and the redefinition of mediumship (1901)]

Towards the end of the 19th century, new medico-psychological approaches were applied to mediumship through the scientific study of spiritualist phenomena. The spiritualist idea of the medium was replaced with the notion of the medium as an unstable human being capable of emanating psychic forces unconsciously. This paper analyses the redefinition of mediumship through the polemical articles of the Catalan physician Victor Melcior. On one hand, this microhistory allows the local debate to be placed within the scientific international context, describing the relationships among spiritualism, medicine and psychopathology at that time. On the other hand, it permits analysis of the reactions of some spiritualists to Melcior's theories and of the consequences of this debate for spiritualism in general.

Physiology or psychic powers? William Carpenter and the debate over spiritualism in Victorian Britain

This paper analyses the attitude of the British Physiologist William Benjamin Carpenter (1813-1885) to spiritualist claims and other alleged psychical phenomena in the second half of the Nineteenth Century. It argues that existing portraits of Carpenter as a critic of psychical studies need to be refined so as to include his curiosity about certain 'unexplained phenomena', as well as broadened so as to take into account his overarching epistemological approach in a context of theological and social fluidity within nineteenth-century British Unitarianism. Carpenter's hostility towards spiritualism has been well documented, but his interest in the possibility of thought-transference or his secret fascination with the medium Henry Slade have not been mentioned until now. This paper therefore highlights Carpenter's ambivalences and focuses on his conciliatory attitude towards a number of heterodoxies while suggesting that his Unitarian faith offers the keys to understanding his unflinching rationalism, his belief in the enduring power of mind, and his effort to resolve dualisms.

Capturing the will: Imposture, delusion, and exposure in Alfred Russel Wallace's defence of spirit photography

The co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, found himself deeply embroiled in a range of controversies surrounding the relationship between science and spiritualism. At the heart of these controversies lay a crisis of evidence in cases of delusion or imposture. He had the chance to observe the many epistemic impasses brought about by this crisis while participating in the trial of the American medium Henry Slade, and through his exchanges with the physiologist William Benjamin Carpenter and the psychical researcher Frederic Myers. These contexts help to explain the increasing value that Wallace placed on the evidence of spirit photography. He hoped that it could simultaneously break these impasses, while answering once and for all the interconnected questions of the unity of the psyche and the reliability of human observation.

Historical and cultural aspects of the pineal gland: comparison between the theories provided by Spiritism in the 1940s and the current scientific evidence

Significance has been attached to the pineal gland in numerous different cultures and beliefs. One religion that has advanced the role of the pineal gland is Spiritism. The objective of the present study was to compile information on the pineal gland drawing on the books of Francisco Cândido Xavier written through psychography and to carry out a critical analysis of their scientific bases by comparing against evidence in the current scientific literature. A systematic search using the terms "pineal gland" and "epiphysis" was conducted of 12 works allegedly dictated by the spirit "André Luiz". All information on the pineal having potential correlation with the field of medicine and current studies was included. Specialists in the area were recruited to compile the information and draw parallels with the scientific literature. The themes related to the pineal gland were: mental health, reproductive function, endocrinology, relationship with physical activity, spiritual connection, criticism of the theory that the organ exerts no function, and description of a hormone secreted by the gland (reference alluding to melatonin, isolated 13 years later). The historical background for each theme was outlined, together with the theories present in the Spiritist books and in the relevant scientific literature. The present article provides an analysis of the knowledge the scientific community can acquire from the history of humanity and from science itself. The process of formulating hypotheses and scientific theories can benefit by drawing on the cultural aspects of civilization, taking into account so-called non-traditional reports and theories.

The frog's dancing master: science, séances, and the transmission of myths

Myths are not uncommon in the history of neuroscience and their tenacity even when faced with suitable correctives is impressive. The possible origins and transmission of one such myth is examined: the oft repeated quotation, attributed to Luigi Galvani, that he was the "frog's dancing master." The statement does not occur in Galvani's writing and appears to have accrued features in the early nineteenth century, largely from French writers. In the 1870s, the quotation was used by William Crookes, the discoverer of thallium and inventor of Crookes' tube, in implicit support of his investigations into spiritualist phenomena. Crookes arranged séances with the psychic Daniel Dunglas Home and, being unable to explain them, introduced the concept of psychic force. A related myth concerns Galvani's accidental discovery of the neuromuscular action of electricity in the course of preparing a beneficial broth for his ailing wife. The two myths became entwined in the tangled web woven by commentators of Galvani's work. The myth-information is magnified by the World Wide Web.

Press coverage of the new psychology by the New York Times during the progressive era

Press coverage of psychology by the New York Times was examined for the Progressive Era. Following a period in which psychology was associated with spiritualism, psychoanalysis, and the Emmanuel movement, the Times gave editorial preference to reports about psychology's applications. Reaching an audience that was both affluent and influential, the topics emphasized by the Times included the lie detector, psychological applications in the work place, mental tests, and child psychology. These areas reflected issues of social concern to Progressives, publicized the rise of the psychologist as expert, and aided psychology in its challenge to common sense.

[Interpretation of writings in the psychopathologic approach to spiritualism (1850 - 1950)]

We propose a chronological review of the psychopathological interpretations of writings produced by spiritualists during their practices of trance or by spiritualists turned delirious. The interest is to highlight the exemplary role that psychiatrists or psychopathologists made attributed to mediumnism in the elaboration of psychiatric knowledge.

We fall down: the African American experience of coping with the homicide of a loved one

Rates of homicide among African Americans are much higher than those of other racial or ethnic groups. Research has demonstrated that homicide can be psychologically debilitating for surviving family members. Yet, exploring the experiences of homicide victims’ surviving loved ones has received little attention. This study examined the coping strategies of African American survivors of homicide. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 8 African American family members (ages 18-82) of homicide victims. Survivors were recruited from the Massachusetts Office of Victim Services and from homicide survivor support, school, and community groups throughout the New England area. Interviews were conducted using open-ended questions derived from coping, support network, grief, and bereavement literatures. Results indicate that the primary coping strategies utilized by African American survivors of homicide victims are spiritual coping and meaning making, maintaining a connection to the deceased, collective coping and caring for others, and concealment. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

[Equivocal quintessence. Spiritual alchemy and counterfeit money in 16th-century Spain]

One of the main obsessions of the early modern era was that of determining the notions of true and false, in order to apply them to various fields of knowledge and thus establish the divide between the lawful and unlawful. This trend was to have a particular impact on the fields of religion and science, where it became necessary to distinguish not only between true and false spirits, relics or miracles, but also between genuine and fake astrologers and alchemists. Situated in the middle ground between idealism and materialism, alchemy was prime territory for such tensions, as was demonstrated by a trial held in 1593 at the Jeronymite monastery of Santa Enracia in Saragossa, whose prior accused a friar of making "silver out of smoke and jewels from goblins".

[The politics of the self: psychological science and bourgeois subjectivity in 19th century Spain.]

This paper offers an analysis of the process of institutionalization of psychological knowledge in Spain following the educative reforms implemented during the second third of the 19th century, which prescribed its inclusion in the curricular program of the new secondary education. After a detailed examination of the theoretical orientation, the ideological assumptions and the socio-political connections of the contents transmitted to the students throughout the century, its militant spiritualism is interpreted as a highly significant attempt on the part of the liberal elites to articulate a pedagogy of subjectivity intended to counteract the trends toward reduction, naturalization and fragmentation of psychic life inherent to the development of modern science.

R.D. Laing and theology: the influence of Christian existentialism on "The Divided Self"

The radical psychiatrist R.D. Laing's first book, "The Divided Self" (1960), is informed by the work of Christian thinkers on scriptural interpretation -- an intellectual genealogy apparent in Laing's comparison of Karl Jaspers's symptomatology with the theological tradition of "form criticism." Rudolf Bultmann's theology, which was being enthusiastically promoted in 1950s Scotland, is particularly influential upon Laing. It furnishes him with the notion that schizophrenic speech expresses existential truths as if they were statements about the physical and organic world. It also provides him with a model of the schizoid position as a form of modern-day Stoicism. Such theological recontextualization of "The Divided Self" illuminates continuities in Laing's own work, and also indicates his relationship to a wider British context, such as the work of the "clinical theologian" Frank Lake.

[The religious imaginary of Hansen's disease patients: a comparative study of former inmates of the asylums of São Paulo and current Hansen's disease patients]

The article analyzes the religiosity of Hansen's disease patients who lived during two distinct treatment periods of the sick: that of internment in asylums and the current practice. Ten semi-structured interviews focused on health, religion and Hansen's disease, broaching the ways the two groups faced religion. In the former inmate group, the presence of institutionalized religion was noted, which served the purposes of vigilance and isolationist therapeutics. Present day Hansen's disease patients still feel the stigmatic weight of'leprosy" in certain situations. Five questionnaires were also given to DHDS health professionals, who presented their considerations concerning the patient's religion and the treatment.

Inca of the blood, Inca of the soul: embodiment, emotion, and racialization in the Peruvian mystical tourist industry

In the context of the globalizing New Age movement and of the "turismo mistico" (mystical tourism) industry emanating from Peru, white and mestizo New Age practitioners and tourists fashion ideologies emphasizing the spiritual energy which supposedly resides in Quechua bodies, even as they freely appropriate Quechua cosmology and ritual for a hybridized New Age Andean spirituality. This case shows how racialized structural inequalities are expressed and experienced by tourists and New Age movement leaders through particular, essentialist representations of the body and through a common repertoire of emotional responses to inequality, commodification, and privilege. The paper provides an ethnographic account of how racialization may be perpetuated, negotiated, and resisted through religious systems, particularly through the work of constructing ideologies and experiences of the body and of emotional subjectivity.

['The spirit has left the bottle': the medieval Arabic physician 'Abd al-Latĭf ibn Yŭsuf al-Baghdădĭ: his medical work and his bizarre affiliation with twentieth-century spiritualism]

The Arabic physician 'Abd al-Latĭf ibn Yŭsuf al-Baghdădĭ, lived at the crossroads of the twelfth and the thirteenth century. His unbridled curiosity and his unquenchable thirst for knowledge of any kind brought him to far-away countries and regions and put him in contact with all sorts and conditions of people. The great Egyptian famine of the years 1200-1202 enabled him to study and examine thousands of human cadavers and skeletons at first hand. This led to a new understanding of the anatomical structure of the human body, and rejected the more or less antiquated ideas of the Greek doctor Galen of Pergamum. However, 'Abd al-Latĭf's vision was granted only a short life. After his death, his discovery sank into oblivion and as a consequence it was never again mentioned in Arabic medical manuals. From then on the Arabic physicians once more referred to the anatomical data which were developed and taught by Galen. Relatively few specimens of his remaining medical work were preserved for posterity. However, his Book of the two advices (or: K. al-Nasĭhatain) is of the utmost importance as a source for the medical thinking and the medical treatment in the late twelfth and the early thirteenth century A.D. During the years following World War I, 'Abd al-Latĭf's name reappeared within the spiritualistic movement in England. He became known as Abduhl Latif the great Persian physician and acted as a control of mediums. Until the late sixties, he practised the art of healing as the head of a medical mission somewhere in the Spheres.

Charles Richet: medical scientist, innovator, peace thinker and savant

This article looks at the life of Professor Charles Richet (1850-1935), a distinguished medical scientist who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1913 for his work on anaphylaxis. He was also an aeroplane engineer, an investigator of psychic phenomena, active in the medical and international peace movement as a member of the leading peace organisations of the time including the International Medical Association for the Suppression of War, and the French Peace League. He also promoted controversial views about eugenics and the means of constructing what he considered to be a strong and healthy society.

History of 'Spiritist madness' in Brazil

Spiritism is widely accepted in Brazil and influences psychiatric practice, especially through religious-oriented hospitals. However, during the first half of the twentieth century it was considered an important cause of mental illness. This paper first reviews opinions on 'Spiritist madness', written by the most eminent psychiatrists of the time, and then discusses the epistemological factors that have contributed to the conflict between medicine and Spiritism. We critically examine the appropriateness of the methods used in the debates, and how this has led to inferences about associations and causal relationships.

Attempting science: the creation and early development of the Institut métapsychique international in Paris, 1919-1931

In 1919, the Institut métapsychique international (IMI) held its first meeting in Paris. With their choice of a name, the founders made their intentions clear. By using the term métapsychique rather than the more common sciences psychiques, they indicated a departure from previous enterprises of such kind in France. By attaching the label international to it, they signified that this orientation was to affect not just French research on psychical phenomena, but that of the whole community. This article tells the story of the first 12 years of the IMI in its attempts to impose a program of research and to incorporate psychical phenomena into the scientific corpus in particular ways. The article ends in 1931 with a spectacular attempt by members of the IMI to dominate the international psychical research community. The failures of the IMI, both with psychical researchers and the scientific community in general, are explained here in terms of characteristics of the institute and the field itself.

Interiors, intentions, and the "spirituality" of Islamic ritual practice

The Arabic term niyya (intention) is prominent in texts of Islamic ritual law. Muslim jurists require niyya in the "heart" during such ritual duties as prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage. Western scholars often treat niyya as a "spiritual" component of Islamic ritual. Muslim jurists, however, consistently treat niyya as a formal, taxonomic matter, a mental focus that makes a given act into the specific named duty required by religious law. Although the effort to thrust niyya into a "spiritual" role is meant to defend Islam from charges of "empty ritualism," it subtly reinforces the characterization of Islam as rigidly legalistic. Much scholarship on niyya belies the scholars' own definition of "proper religion" centered on an inner, individual, nonmaterial dimension of the self. Instead of trying to wash away the formalism of niyya, I argue that scholars ought to recognize that such embodied practices are properly religious rather than spiritually defective.

"The Sphinx must solve her own riddle": Emerson, secrecy, and the self-reflexive method

This article offers a fresh approach to the religious thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson, exploring (1) the particular conception of secrecy in connection with which he understands the human spiritual predicament and (2) his response to this predicament by means of a self-reflexive turn in his writing-a procedure designed to undermine quests for truth elsewhere and so to restore the self to the wholeness implicit in its initial conditions. The operation of this method will be traced through a number of Emerson's major works, including the second "Nature" (from Essays: Second Series), "History," and the poem "The Sphinx." Along the way, Emerson's thought will be discussed in relation to the history of Emerson criticism, alternative views of secrecy in religion, and the theory and practice of religious nondualism, to which Emerson's intellectual project bears considerable resemblance.

"Automatism" and the emergence of dynamic psychiatry

This article is about the clash of two explanatory paradigms, each attempting to account for the same data of human experience. In the first half of the nineteenth century, physiologists investigated reflex actions and applied a recently coined word, "automatism," to describe actions which, although seeming to arise from higher centers, actually result from automatic reaction to sensory stimuli. Experiments with spinal reflexes led to the investigation of the reflex action of the brain or "cerebral automatisms." Reflex actions of this kind were used to explain everything from acting compulsively to composing symphonies. Physiological explanations of phenomena of this kind seemed insufficient to some and, in the 1880s, Frederic Myers and Pierre Janet developed psychological frameworks for understanding these phenomena, positing hidden centers of intelligence at work in the individual, outside ordinary awareness, which produce what came to be called "psychological automatisms." Their attempts to unify this psychological framework with the existing physiological one failed. Nevertheless, their work played a crucial role in paving the way for what Ellenberger called dynamic psychiatry, which accepts the reality of an unconscious dynamic of the psyche.

Erotic literature in nineteenth-century Bali

Two nineteenth-century Balinese genres in which the erotic predominates are epic kakawin poetry and tutur (religious manuals) on sexual yoga. The article points to the strong intertextual links between these diverse genres. Through their focus on practical sexual matters and on the pursuit of sexual pleasure as integral to spiritual growth, tutur and kakawin also offer insight into notions of gender and sexuality in nineteenth-century Bali.

More lurid than lucid: the spiritualist invention of the world "sexism"

Nineteenth-century American spiritualists coined the word sexism long before its modern incarnation in order to refer to a complex of ideas about human sexuality and reproduction that were consonant with the general advancement of women's rights. Among these ideas was the belief that spirit and mind were ascendant over matter and could act directly on it. In their view, a woman's sensitive spiritual nature gave her the power to join spirit and matter. She could provide a way for exalted spirits to enter the world through her, in the mental character and even the physical form of her offspring, by focusing her own and others' spirits into the embryo growing within her, as if she were making a photograph. The goal of enhancing this ability would justify changing law and custom to ensure women's autonomy and freedom, especially to protect their decisions about sexual relations in order to regulate favorable and unfavorable impressions on the embryo. Emphasizing the embryo's sensitivity to spiritual impressions, however, also led some progressives to the conclusion that women's autonomy should be restricted. Women had to be kept away from even immaterial influences that would adversely affect them during pregnancy.

[Eustress and therapeutic success]

Kamlanie is a particular spell used by the Siberian medicine-man to heal a patient, by invoking animal and human spirits. This article proposes to explain the healing capability of the medicine-man not only through the hypnotic suggestion: the healing messages, in the same moment when they arrive to the patient, would become special sound signals, directly reaching the immune system.