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The “magnetism” demonstrations of the Danish “show-magnetist” Carl Hansen reached a special importance for Germany around 1879-1880. Hansen appeared in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Russia, France, Austria, and Great Britain, and Germany. To induce trance, he had his test persons fix their gaze on a polished piece of glass, made some sweeping motions with his hand over their face, closed their eyes and mouth, and ended the induction with some sweeping motions over the forehead. Frequently he laid his stiff subject across two chairs and stood on top of the rigid horizontal body (the “human plank feat”). In German-speaking countries, his demonstrations impressed a series of scientists, and excited a corresponding flow of publications: In Chemnitz, the physicist Weinhold published “Hypnotic Experiments, 1879”. In Breslau, the physicians Heidenhain and Berger were influenced to begin studies of hypnosis, as were Preyer and Eulenberg in Berlin, Rieger in Würzburg, Möbius and Wundt in Leipzig, and Krafft-Ebing and Benedikt in Vienna.

The magnetic performances of the Danish hypnotist Carl Hansen (1833-1897) impressed a series of medical scientists in Germany, and excited the scientific controversies about the phenomenon of “hypnosis”.
Around the end of the 19th century, the center of activity related to clinical and theoretical/empirical hypnosis shifted from France to Germany (Gauld, 1992, p. 421). This is shown somewhat by the contributions in the “Journal for Hypnotism”, which was distributed since 1892 by Grossmann, then from 1895 by Oskar Vogt and the Swiss August Forel – both prominent scientists of their time. Vogt was the director of the Institute for Brain Research of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Society (the equivalent of the modern Max Planck Institute); Forel was the director of the famous “Burghölzli” of the psychiatric clinic of the University of Zürich.

Oskar Vogt (1870-1959)
Sources:
1) Gauld, A. (1992). A history of hypnotism. Cambridge: University
Press.
2) Heidenhain, R. (1880). Der sogenannte thierische Magnetismus.
Physiologische
Beobachtungen. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel
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R. Heidenhain (1834-1917), professor of physiology at the University of Breslau.
Because of his great influence, the medical historian Gauld speaks of a “Hansen Phase” of hypnosis in the Germanic world 1). The hypnosis researchers of the “Hansen Phase” were not as interested in the therapeutic possibilities of hypnosis as they were in the physiologic mechanisms and the associated theoretical problems.
An important work of this period came from the pen of the well-known physiologist Heidenhain from the University of Breslau 2). He believed that a deeply hypnotized subject had no consciousness, and would therefore experience post-hypnotic amnesia. He explained the patient’s lack of consciousness by an inhibition of the cortex, meaning that activities inspired by suggestions were not directly controlled by motor centers, but rather by automatic motor controls. Heidenhain saw this as the fundamental phenomenon of hypnosis.

Journal of Hypnotism (published by Oskar Vogt and August Forel)
Like Heidenhain, the internationally-renowned brain researcher Oskar Vogt (he was asked by the Soviet government to carry out the preservation of Lenin’s brain) developed a physiological theory of hypnosis. He believed, probably based on his ideas about sleep, that under hypnosis only the area of the brain that could receive spoken suggestions was particularly active, while the others were clearly deactivated. With this theory he could explain a variety of hypnotic phenomena (eg., hallucinations). Vogt was very important in encouraging the study of hypnosis in Germany. Because of his stature in the scientific world, the investigation of hypnosis acquired a seriousness and attention (incidentally, one of Vogt’s students was Korbinian Brodmann (1868-1918), whose histological classification of the cortex still has importance today).
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