ABSTRACT
Spiritualism, widespread in America, was not only an occultist by-product of the new scientific discoveries and, in certain cases, a new mode of mass entertainment, a pastime, but also lent support to a literal belief in communication with the souls of the departed. In Europe, where the Society for Psychical Research came into being, spiritualism was an opportunity to study still-unknown aspects of the human mind - such as telepathy - and to develop a renewed model of the psyche. As has already been seen with hypnosis and the rapport between hypnotist and patient, extemporaneous or stable erotic ties - not always easy to manage - were set up between medium and seeker.
At the start of the twentieth century, three books introduced the first hypotheses about the unconscious psyche: The Interpretation of Dreams by S Freud, L’Inconnu et les problèmes psychiques by C Flammarion, and Des Indes à la Planète Mars by T Flournoy. Meanwhile, the confrontation with occultism and spiritualism began to play a part in the training of the period’s dynamic psychiatrists.
