ABSTRACT
This chapter is going to seem a little strange to some readers, but no history of hypnotism would be complete without covering, in even more detail, the topic of the paranormal abilities which have been claimed, ever since Mesmer's time, to be awoken in certain hypnotized subjects. The theory underlying the supposed connection between hypnosis and paranormal feats is not in itself implausible. In hypnosis the subject's attention is withdrawn from all the distractions of the outside world and allowed to focus on fewer stimuli. Perhaps this withdrawal from the outside world allows it to uncover reaches of the mind which are not normally in play, because we are normally too distracted by sensory data and so on. It is at any rate clear that our sensory apparatus and ego systems are designed as much as anything as filters, to limit the amount of material getting through. What might happen if those filters are removed? This is the kind of question the occult mesmerists were asking themselves from early in the nineteenth century.
