Klaus Brand, M. A.

Curriculum Vitae:

PH.D. project:

Mesmerism dicourse in 19th-century Western Europe and North America

In 1784, a commission meeting took place in Paris that, for the first time, was to decide on the scientificalness of the animal magnetism discovered by Franz Anton Mesmer (1734−1815). The result was explicit: there was no invisible substance that, with its uneven distribution in the body, was supposed to be responsible for all illnesses and that could be influenced by the magnetiser in such a way to bring about healing. Hence, the mesmerists’ successes were owed to the imagination and the method was charlatanry. Despite this early rejection of Mesmerism on the part of the universities, the method spread in many different variations during the course of the 19th century in Western Europe and in the U.S. Its followers were emphatic on Mesmerism and proclaimed it to be a science, but the opposite side excluded it from medicine, which was in the process of differentiation, calling it nonsense, pseudo-science and religion. Accompanied by the risk of scientific discrediting, however, the emerging field of psychiatry dealt particularly with artificial somnambulism – referred to as hypnosis by James Braid in 1843. Many authors of Romanticism picked up the motif of the magnetiser, who submitted mostly young female patients to his will, thus shaping the discourse on Mesmerism. In conjunction with spiritistic ideas, Mesmerism − which, originally, was explicitly not intended as religious − came to be a spiritual esoteric world-view in the course of the 19th century. The mental healing movement in the U.S., which is the source of Christian Science, and Blavatsky’s theosophy are directly related to Mesmerism. Similarly to Mesmerism melting into religious movements, some mesmeristic methods were also integrated into scientific medicine under new labels. The grim scientific political disputes had ended by the turn of the century. In retrospect, Mesmerism is now mostly seen as a pseudo science and as the source of some spiritual religious forms of self-healing and of mental healing.

By focussing on the discourses held in 19th-century scientific journals and shaped by literary texts, I will ask for the actual descriptions of Mesmerism as a (non-) science and as a (non-) religion. This approach will be based on synchronous sections by means of a method of cultural poetic discourse analysis. In this consideration of how these descriptions changed in mutual reaction and how they were argued argumentatively by the different parties involved, an important chapter of the scientific politically influenced differentiation and professionalisation of medicine can be traced. The perspective of Mesmerism as a religious historical phenomenon reveals its influence on contemporary spiritual religious movements such as those in the field of alternative medicine, which should not be underestimated. Moreover, the formulation of the cultural poetic approach is intended to contribute to an interdisciplinary, cultural scientific integration of methods.

Research Interests:

• Cultural scientific methods and methodological justification of Cultural Science(s) and Cultural Studies
• (New) Religious movements within the context of different/new media
• Spirituality, esotericism and so-called New Age phenomena as religious sociological issues
• Cultural theories, theories of ritual and performance theories

Function within the Cluster/membership in projects and groups:

• Member of the study group Luhmann's Systems Theory
• Member of the study group The Mixing of Religions - Religiously Multiple Identities
• Member of the study group Charting the Boundaries of the Religious Field
• Member of the study group Between Fact and Fiction
• Member of the study group Emic and etic perspectives on Religion and Politics

Publications:

• Amerikanische Spiritualität und Esoterik in Rhonda Byrne's The Secret (Veröffentlichungen des Centrums für Religiöse Studien Münster, Bd. 10), LIT-Verlag, Münster 2010.
• Tieropfer und ihre Anlässe, in: Jan Dübbers: Tiere der Bibel (Begleitbuch zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung, hgg. von Alfred Hendricks, LWL-Museum für Naturkunde - Westfälisches Landesmuseum mit Planetarium), Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe, Münster 2010, pp. 60-62.

Courses (in german):

Summer semester 2009

• Tutorial: Religious scientific film analysis. The film Mesmer (Dennis Potter, 1994) as a religious scientific object.
  

Winter semester 2007-2008:

• Research colloquium (together with Prof. Dr. Annette Wilke as the responsible supervisor): Cultural scientific method formation and reception in religious studies.

Lectures:

• June 25-26, 2009: Workshop "Die Chronik des Gallus Anonymus", Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics", WWU Münster; contribution: Die poetische Funktion in der Gallus-Chronik aus literaturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive
• October 11-12, 2010: Conference "Konstruktionsgeschichten. Narrationsbezogene Ansätze in der Religionsforschung", Pro*Doc "Interferenzen" at the "Centre for Religion, Economy and Politics" (ZRWP), University of Basel; contribution: Narrative Strategien zur Konstruktion von Wissenschaft und Religion in Texten des 19. Jahrhunderts
• February 15, 2011: Tag der Graduiertenschule, Exzellenzcluster "Religion und Politik", WWU Münster; contribution: „Es ist nun einmal nicht zum Experiment gekommen“. Mesmerismusnarrationen zwischen Fakten und Fiktionen

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