Abbé Faria

Faria statue in Panaji , Goa

José Custódio de Faria , known under the name Abbé Faria (born May 30, 1756 in Candolim , Bardez , Goa , India ; † September 20, 1819 in Paris , France ), was a Portuguese priest , hypnotist and is considered one of the founders of the Dynamic psychiatry.

Alongside Franz Anton Mesmer and the Marquis de Puysegur , he was one of the most important hypnotists and magnetists in the history of this discipline. Although almost forgotten today, many of his discoveries are still used in hypnosis today. Several authors used him as a literary figure .

Life

Faria was born in 1756 in the municipality of Bardes, which was in Goa, which at that time belonged to Portuguese India and was the seat of the viceroy. His father was the clergyman and later a revolutionary against the predominance of the continental Portuguese in India, Caetano Vitorino de Faria, his mother the later nun Rosa Maria de Sousa. Allegedly, the paternal family descends from the Brahmin Antü Shenoi .

In 1771 he and his father came to Lisbon for the first time in Europe and stayed there until 1772. He then went to Rome to defend his theological doctorate at the “Collegio da Propaganda Fidei” and to finish his spiritual studies. In 1772 he returned to Lisbon as a priest and stayed there until 1788.

In 1788, a year before the French Revolution, he went to Paris. In 1795 he is said to have been involved in an uprising against the National Convention . In France he also maintained a long friendship with the hypnotist Marquis de Puysegur. Between 1802 and 1811 he lived in Paris and carried out hypnotic experiments and healings there. From 1811 to 1812 he was professor of philosophy at an academy in Marseille and was then transferred to Nîmes as a punishment. There he was banned from therapeutic work by the police. In 1813 he returned to Paris, where he lived until his death and gave regular lectures there on mesmerism and hypnosis.

Abbé Faria died in Paris on September 20, 1819. In 1945 a memorial was built for him in Goa, which was then still in Portugal.

hypnotist

He was the first to find a connection between hypnosis and suggestion. He is also considered one of the founders of dynamic psychiatry. He is said to have only called to people: "Sleep" after fixing his palm, and then they fell into a trance. He spoke of the fact that the hypnotized person was actually the one to whom the hypnosis was due and not the other way around. According to his terminology, women and hysterics in particular were most influenced by hypnosis. For the first time he named the hypnotist as a Concentrateur , the hypnotized as a Concentré and the state as a Concentration . He was also probably the first to work with the so-called “ post- hypnotic suggestion ”: A person who was previously hypnotized does things that were previously told to him in hypnosis, although he is already awake again. Faria has also described herself as a Brahmin (Sanskrit: possessor of holy knowledge, supreme priest of Hinduism). His Indian origins enabled the hypnotist to deal with Indian mysticism and mythology and to incorporate some of it into his science and experiments.

Literary figure in Dumas, Chateaubriand and Vernet

In the novel The Count of Monte Christo ( Le Comte de Monte Christo ), written by Alexandre Dumas in 1846 , he appears as an Italian sage who helps the poor and innocent Edmond Dantes with his treasure and his wisdom. François de Chateaubriand mentions him negatively in his Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1849). The French painter and playwright Jules Vernet (1793–1843) processed the story of the Abbé in a one-act play in 1816 with the title: Magnetismomanie-comedie, folie . He and his work are also briefly mentioned in Umberto Eco's "The Prague Cemetery" (Hanser, München 2011, p. 364)

plant

• De la cause sommeil lucide, ou estude de la nature de la homme. Volume I. 1819.

literature

• Joaquim Heliodoró da Cunha Rivara, Charles J. Borges, Renato da Cunha Soares: Goa and the revolt of 1787. Concept Publishing Company, 1996, ISBN 81-7022-646-5 , pp. 99 ff.
• Portugal-India-Germany. Files from the V German-Portuguese Working Talks, 1998, Center Portuguese-speaking World, University of Cologne.

Web links

Commons : Abbé Faria  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ hypnosis. With audio CD: A textbook for psychotherapists and doctors . BeltzPVU, 2004, ISBN 3-621-27545-2 , p. 18 ff ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed on July 3, 2010]).