Thanks to the generosity of Dr. Clare Mingins, I’m pleased to offer not one but three (!) copies of a fascinating book as a prize for the latest draw, into which all current and new supporters on Patreon (at the “Galileo” level and above) will be entered. Franz Anton Mesmer, the Discoverer of Animal Magnetism … Read more
About every other Christmas I go into full geek mode and binge-watch the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings movies. In the concluding part, ‘The Return of the King’, there’s a scene where Aragorn, finally having come to terms with his kingship, lays his hands on the wounded with the intent to restore … Read more
In keeping with mesmerism and hypnotism as the themes of the last prize (a copy of Adam Crabtree’s From Mesmer to Freud), I selected Alison Winter’s seminal study Mesmerized. Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain for the next draw. Published in 1998 by University of Chicago Press, Winter’s meticulously researched study continues to set the … Read more
From its inception in 2013, Forbidden Histories has been a labour of love – I currently receive no funding for my research and pay all expenses to run this website, produce Youtube videos, and promote FH out of my own pocket. (Sadly, ad revenue and Amazon and AbeBooks affiliate commissions do not even begin to … Read more
Among the key figures in the hidden history of the human sciences are the Munich philosopher Carl du Prel (1839-1899) and the Cambridge classicist and psychologist Frederic W. H. Myers (1843-1901). Eclipsed by psychoanalysis, Jungian analytical psychology and other depth psychologies throughout the twentieth century, the contemporary significance and reception of these writers was considerable. … Read more
James Kennaway, PhD, is a Historian of Medicine at Newcastle University. His book Bad Vibrations: The History of the Idea of Music as a Cause of Disease is a study of the notion that music can cause illness, from eighteenth-century fears of over-stimulated nerves to the Nazi concept of ‘degenerate music’, concluding with a discussion … Read more
1874 is a significant year in the history of psychology. Wilhelm Wundt published the first edition of Outlines of Physiological Psychology, and Franz Brentano issued his epistemological study, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. Another event in the same year is usually passed over by chronologists of the mind sciences: The foundation of Psychische Studien (Psychical … Read more
Last Thursday I had the privilege of giving a talk in the excellent Damaging the Body lecture series, ably organised at Barts Museum of Pathology, London, by Jo Parsons and Sarah Chaney. Surrounded by hundreds of jars filled with various organs and body parts of dead people (no nibbles were served in case you’re wondering), … Read more