The Svengali Influence

Last week, in Manhattan's Carnegie Hall, an audience that had come to watch a demonstration of hypnosis got more than it bargained for. The star attraction, Franz Polgar, was illustrating his powers on a dark-haired young woman when he was interrupted by shouted challenges from rival Hypnotist Ralph Slater (who performs in Loew's neighborhood theaters). Ushers rushed back & forth trying to restore quiet, but the meeting ended in uproar.

Mesmer & Magnetism. Hypnotism has been inspiring public interest and noisy argument ever since the days, in 18th Century Paris, when Franz Anton Mesmer developed his controversial technique. It was first called mesmerism and then hypnotism (from a Greek word meaning sleep). In Mesmer's day, "magnetism" was the scientific catchword that "atomic" is today. Mesmer had already been kicked out of his native Vienna for acting on his belief that people got sick when they ran short of "magnetic fluid." He was out to show Paris that he could relieve the shortage. The Mesmer clinics are described in two recently published books: Hypnotism Comes of Age, by Bernard Wolfe and Raymond Rosenthal (Bobbs-Merrill; $3), and The Story of Hypnotism, by Robert W. Marks (Prentice-Hall; $3).

Mesmer's method was to fill tubs with "magnetized water" (iron filings and pieces of glass). Hopeful sufferers sat around the tubs clutching at protruding iron rods while harmoniums, pianos and musical glasses tinkled and Mesmer and assistants in purple silk coats hovered about.

A scientific committee (which included Benjamin Franklin and that most gruesome of inventors, Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin) investigated Mesmer and declared that his theories were unscientific. But the experiments went on. A later Viennese physician, Sigmund Freud, experimented for a while with electricity and hypnotism, and then abandoned hypnotism for his own techniques of psychoanalysis. He reasoned that a patient under hypnosis is apt to say what the physician wants him to say instead of revealing his "unconscious" mind. Besides, Freud decided, hypnotism's effects are too ephemeral and not everybody can be hypnotized.

"Cures" & Quacks. Did Freud give up hypnotism too soon? Authors Wolfe and Rosenthal, sure that he did, report hypnotic effects that make Svengali* look like a tyro. They claim that hypnotism has cured numerous cases of psychoneurosis, made childbirth painless and alcoholics sober. They reassure prospective patients by saying that no one can be forced to act against his moral principles while in a trance (e.g., a girl cannot be hypnotically seduced if she does not want to be; if she does, the authors add gravely, "hypnosis is an unnecessarily involved and roundabout route").

Author Marks is a bit more skeptical of hypnotism's pure power for good. He reports some hypnotic cures, but links them with faith healing. He also thinks that phenomena like the appeal of such different people as Hitler and Sinatra can be explained by mass hypnotism.

Modern psychiatrists hesitate to dip a toe into Mesmer's tubs. Some use hypnotism occasionally in combination with other methods. Physicians fear that a man in a hypnotic trance might be made to ignore signs of dangerous disease. All are agreed that hypnosis is dangerous in the hands of quacks--to whom the U.S. people every year pay some $375,000,000.

* In George L.P.B. du Maurier's popular novel, Trilby, Svengali hypnotized the beauteous but frog-voiced heroine into a famous singer.

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