Hypnotism, Mind Over Matter, and Victorian Scientists a jaja rant

I have read Victorian science books as well as books leading right up to the present asking the question why people are not looking into the sciences of telepathy, telekinesis, or even hypnotism.  

It seems that this is especially true of Americans.

The establishment fears these sciences and actively suppresses their research. The pharmaceutical companies practically own mental health care.

Are the pharmaceutical companies suppressing the research into the mind?

I am not sure.

But it is hard to profit off of auto-suggestion

but very lucrative to sell pills.....

however I am not one for conspiracy theories.....

the explanation could lie elsewhere in bureaucracy, lack of education, lack of funding or many complicated and subtle causes.....

Where ever this taboo comes from it has persisted throughout the 20th century and threatens to continue if we do not step up with open minds and defy convention.

 It seems that BELIEF:

and suggestion:

cause magic

or to be concise 

the phenomena of mind over matter

that has been documented, tested, experimented 

and fact checked for centuries......

This is an old problem…a problem discussed by Thomas Jay Hudson in his book Law Of Psychic Phenomena where the writer tries to come up with a working hypothesis that can apply to all metal phenomena. 

In it he discusses a scientist named Mesmer ( where the term mesmerized comes from) 

experimenting with hypnotism as a therapeutic agent and he meets a faith healer in his research…....

"He (Mesmer) achieved considerable success by such means (hypnosis) ,and published a work in 1766 entitled "De Planetarum Influxa." In 1776, however, he met Gassner, a Catholic priest who had achieved great notoriety by curing disease by manipulation, without the use of any other means. Mesmer then threw away his magnets, and evolved the theory of "animal magnetism." This he held to be a fluid which pervades the universe, but is most active in the human nervous organization, and enables one man, charged with the fluid, to exert a powerful influence over another.

Two years after meeting Gassner he went to Paris, and at once threw that capital into the wildest excitement by the marvelous effects of his manipulations. He was treated with contumely by the medical profession; but the people flocked to him, and many wonderful cures were effected. His methods, in the light of present knowledge, smack of charlatanism; but that he believed in himself was demonstrated by his earnest demand for an investigation. This the Government consented to, and a commission, composed of physicians and members of the Academy of Sciences, was appointed, of which Benjamin Franklin was a member. The report admitted the leading facts claimed by Mesmer, but held that there was no evidence to prove the correctness of his magnetic fluid theory, and referred the wonderful effects witnessed to the "imagination" of the patients. Their conclusion was that the subject was not worthy of further scientific investigation.

It is difficult at this day to conceive by what process of reasoning that learned body could arrive at such a conclusion. They admitted the existence of a motive force capable of controlling man's physical organization, that this force is amenable to control by man, and that this control is capable of being reduced to an art. 

Then they proceed to announce a discovery of their own, — a discovery, by the way, which turns out to be the most important which modern science had, at that time, contributed to the solution of the great problem. They discovered that the phenomena were purely subjective, thereby demonstrating the power of mind over matter.

If they had stopped there, or if they had concluded that this wonderful force was worthy of the most searching scientific investigation, they would have been entitled to the gratitude of all mankind, and the science would have been at once wrested from the hands of ignorance and empiricism. That they should content themselves with disproving Mesmer's theory of causation, and, after having themselves made a discovery of the true cause, should announce that their own discovery was not worth the trouble of further investigation, is inexplicable."

Damn You Benjamin Franklin!!!!!!

Read the entire book free here: 

http://www.psitek.net/pages/PsiTekTLOPPContents.html