Le magnétisme animal et la Restauration de 1814: l’invention d’une continuité

This chapter focuses on a crucial turning point in the history of animal magnetism, corresponding to the Restoration of the monarchy in France. A new generation of magnetists, which had begun to develop in the last years of the Empire around the Marquis de Puységur and Joseph-Philippe Deleuze, began to organize itself in 1814, founding a journal, the Annales (then Bibliothèque) du Magnétisme Animal, and a society. They prevalently followed the psychological approach that had emerged following the ‹discovery› of the phenomena of artificial somnambulism, diverging from the fluidist theories of Mesmer. Nonetheless, they linked up with Mesmer’s legacy, recomposing the contrasts that tore apart the magnetist movement of the 1780s within a linear evolution. In a political and ideological context characterized by a tendency to return to the ancien régime, the image of continuity with late eighteenth-century Mesmerism is thus constructed, destined to be perpetuated in later narratives until it converged in Henri Ellenberger’s historical synthesis.