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It is by now generally acknowledged that the origin of Dynamic Psychiatry can be traced back to one man, Franz Anton Mesmer (), the founder of the doctrine and practice of Animal Magnetism, and that a shift from magnetism to hypnotism was brought about in 1784 by one of his disciples, the Marquis de Puységur; that the knowledge of hypnotism was taken over or rediscovered later by Charcot and by Bernheim, from which the teachings of Janet developed, and finally psychoanalysis and the other modern schools of Dynamic Psychiatry.
Historians of psychiatry usually describe this development as though it had been the result of a natural process; one discovery leading to a further one, despite phases of opposition and partial oblivion.
The purpose of the present article is to inquire whether the analysis of the cultural and particularly the sociological context of this development would not make it more intelligible.
We will take care to distinguish between historical facts and their interpretation. We will first give a brief account of Mesmer and