Ryan A. Davis

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Decimonónica

Volume

9

Issue

1

Publisher

Decimonónica

Publication Date

2012

First Page

1

Last Page

16

Abstract

In July of 1906, Blanco y negro published a brief story by Blanca de los Ríos entitled “Metempsicosis: De las ‘memorias’ del doctor Hipnos,” which dramatizes the ominous dangers of hypnotism.1 In the story, a medical student, driven by his obsession for Susana, pays a traveling hypnotizer to “infundir mi alma en [el] cuerpo [de Alberto de San Andrés],” Susana’s husband (“Metempsicosis” 51). His subsequent confession to Susana about his actions precipitates her death, which in turn causes the student to go insane. In the final lines of the story, Hipnos reflects on the tragic outcome and the perils of hypnotism: “¿Infundieron en Alberto otra alma, ó […] le sugestionaron con la idea de habérsela infundido? ¡Qué importa! ¡Mataron en él el albedrío, la fe en el propio yo […] ¿Será esa fe la chispa animadora, el quid divinum, la esencia de Dios que prende en la célula psíquica […]?” (author’s emphasis). For Hipnos, the consequences of either metempsychosis or hypnotic suggestion for Alberto are more significant than the issue of which of the two pseudo-sciences actually led to his demise. Whatever the medical student’s method, he had robbed Alberto of both his will (“albedrío”) and his sense of self (“la fe en el propio yo”). In short he destroyed Alberto’s subjectivity, Alberto’s body being but the physical shell of an identity that no longer existed.

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