Professor Heidenhain — La Controversia Scientifica con Donato/en
Page title: Professor Heidenhain — The Scientific Controversy with Donato
The Professor Rudolf Heidenhain (1834-1897) is the German physiologist at the University of Breslau whom Donato cites in the journal Le Magnétisme as the main representative of the academic opposition to fascination — and whom he explicitly refutes on two crucial points.
Heidenhain's thesis and Donato's response
Heidenhain, after seeing the performances of the magnetizer Hansen in Breslau in 1880, published a physiological explanation of hypnosis that excluded any psychic element: for him it was pure reflex cortical inhibition, without the subject's will and without consciousness.
Donato challenges Heidenhain on two specific points, which he considers fundamental:
First: Heidenhain claimed that subjects could not repeat words, songs, or laughter during fascination — that only muscular facial expressions were imitable. Donato replies: «It is an error» — and Dr. Dufour, in his letter, confirms that the subjects repeated Donato's words «with the same imitation of the musical tone», even in foreign languages.
Second: Heidenhain claimed that fascination suppressed both the ability to act and the will to act. Donato corrects: «Contrary to the assertion of the learned physiologist Heidenhain, the subject can lose the power to act, while retaining the full will to act and complete freedom of spirit.» This is the fundamental distinction between fascination and deep somnambulism: in fascination consciousness is intact.
Theoretical importance
The controversy with Heidenhain is not merely academic — it touches the core of the theory of fascination. Heidenhain reduces it to a mechanical nervous reflex; Donato insists it is a psychic phenomenon in which the subject's consciousness is preserved and the will is suspended without being annulled. This distinction is still at the center of the neuroscientific understanding of trance today.
Sources
- Donato (Alfred d'Hont), Le Magnétisme — Journal de Psycho-Physiologie, Paris 1886 — fasc. 1-50, fasc. 50-104, fasc. 104-154, fasc. 154+
See also
- Donato — Il Padre della Fascinazione
- La Fascinazione come Fenomeno Psicofisiologico — Donato e la Scienza
- Karl Hansen — Il Magnetizzatore Danese
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