Dark precursors to an esoteric psychoanalysis

This chapter traces the origins of the “dark precursors” to psychoanalysis to the various mesmeric, somnambulistic and hypnotic “currents” arising out of the Christian theosophical, German idealist and Romantic “traditions,” as exemplified in the writings of Jacob Boehme, F.W.J. Schelling, G.W.F. Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer. It subsequently explores how these developments contributed to a complex genealogical matrix conjoining mesmerism, animal magnetism, artificial somnambulism and hypnotism to psychoanalysis. The chapter concludes by showing how Freud’s early interest in hypnosis provided a conceptual “conduit” for the “encryption” of esoteric “traces” within a nascent psychoanalysis.