JB Rhine - New Frontiers of the Mind

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37 466

NEW FRONTIERS OF THE MIND

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NEW

26

FRONTIERS OF THE MIND

strong enough; but with this subject, where doubt is intense to begin with, proof plus plausibility is necessary*

To make

plausible a

new and

strange

type of phenomenon, it must be connected with the already known; in other words, it must be "naturalized."

The

attempts at experimentation were and there is ground for skepticism fragmentary, in connection with them* The first were bound up with the history of mesmerism. During the last earliest

quarter of the eighteenth century a German physician named Mesmer, then practicing in Vienna,

made

the tremendously important discovery that one person can influence another mentally in a

curious and at that time wholly unknown way* This type of influence Mcsmcr named "animal magnetism**; those after it

him

has become well

called it

"mesmerism*" and

known

tism." In recent years

it

to us today as "hypnohas advanced to a respect*

able place

among recognized psychological Dr. Mesmcr himself reported at least one

realities.

instance

of apparent extra-sensory perception, This was in itself a trivial incident; one of !m patients in a trance was able to locate a lost dog. She "*AW"

her mesmerized

Among some common

it

in

state*

of Mesmer's followers

practice to rely

upon

this

it

became

a

supposed ability

for the diagnosis of and prescription for di*ea