Magnetismo terapeutico/en

The therapeutic magnetism (French magnétisme curatif, German Heilmagnetismus) is the European clinical tradition that, starting from the synthesis of Franz Anton Mesmer (Vienna 1734 - Meersburg 1815), developed a practice of non-pharmacological treatment of psychosomatic dysregulations based on the action of a field generated by the operator — the magnetizer — in the relationship with the client. Together with fascination and hypnosis from the same tradition, it constitutes one of the three fundamental pillars of the Paret Method School and of all modern Mesmerism of the European hermetic-magnetic lineage.

Therapeutic magnetism must be distinguished from magnetism as a physical phenomenon (the force of magnetic poles in magnets and electromagnetic fields) and from the 19th-20th century fluidic interpretations that claimed to reduce it to a measurable physical energy. In the contemporary tradition of the School, therapeutic magnetism is best understood as the relational practice through which an operator in a state of Integral Presence co-regulates a client's autonomic nervous system, activating in them the ability to return to an integrated state that the pathological dysregulation had obscured.

I. Origins: Mesmer and the first synthesis

Franz Anton Mesmer studied medicine in Vienna in the 1760s and in 1766 defended a doctoral thesis — De planetarum influxu in corpus humanum ("On the Influence of the Planets on the Human Body") — which synthesized the medieval astrological tradition with the Newtonian cosmology of his time. Mesmer proposed that a universal fluid (fluidum universale) exists that permeates the universe and living bodies, and that diseases consist of a poor distribution of this fluid in the organism. The cure would consist of restoring the harmonious distribution through appropriate interventions by the operator.

In the early 1770s, Mesmer experimented with metal magnets, but discovered that the curative effect was achieved even without magnets — simply through hand contact and the presence of the operator. From this discovery emerged the concept of animal magnetism (magnétisme animal): magnetism is a property of the living (animal in the Latin sense of "endowed with a soul," anima), not of inorganic matter.

In 1778, Mesmer moved to Paris and opened a clinic that quickly became famous for its results on nervous diseases, paralysis, hysteria, and depression. He developed characteristic techniques:

Magnetic passes of the hands along the client's body (passes longitudinales);
Touch on specific points;
Concentration of the magnetizer's gaze on the client;
Magnetic baquet (a collective device in which multiple patients were connected via iron rods to a "magnetized" container);
Glass music (Mesmer played the glass harmonica to accompany sessions with a characteristic sound atmosphere).

The sessions often produced mesmeric crises — beneficial convulsions with tremors, contortions, emotional discharges — after which the original symptoms were often reduced or disappeared.

II. The Royal Commission of 1784

The success of Mesmer's clinic attracted the attention of French medical and political authorities. In 1784, Louis XVI established a Royal Commission to examine the Mesmerian method, composed of Benjamin Franklin, Antoine Lavoisier, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, Jean Sylvain Bailly, and other illustrious scientists of the time.

The Commission conducted experiments to verify the existence of a physical magnetic fluid. They demonstrated that the therapeutic effects occurred even when the client did not know they were being magnetized (placebo before the term existed) and that the magnetizer did not produce measurable physical variations in the client. They concluded that the phenomenon was real but of an imaginative nature — what we would today call a psychosomatic effect mediated by relationship and expectation.

The Commission's conclusion was ambivalent for the Mesmeric tradition:

On one hand, it denied the existence of a physical fluid, discrediting the original theoretical framework;
On the other hand, it recognized the clinical efficacy of the treatments, attributing it to psychosomatic mechanisms.

The subsequent tradition split between a current that continued to defend the physical fluid (becoming increasingly marginal to official medicine) and a current that accepted the psychosomatic reinterpretation and developed magnetism as a branch of psychology — a current that would culminate in magnetic somnambulism, medical hypnosis, and finally psychoanalysis.

III. The lineage of therapeutic magnetism

Over the two centuries following Mesmer, therapeutic magnetism developed through a chain of historical figures that the Paret Method School recognizes as its direct genealogy.

Marquis de Puységur (Armand-Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, 1751-1825), a direct student of Mesmer, discovered in 1784 magnetic somnambulism — a state of deep trance during which clients answered questions with surprising lucidity. He paved the way for the use of magnetism as a psychological device for accessing unconscious content.
Charles Lafontaine (1803-1892), a Swiss-French magnetizer, developed the public demonstration of magnetism in European theater halls. It was during one of his demonstrations in Manchester (1841) that the Scottish surgeon James Braid coined the term hypnotism (from the Greek hypnos, sleep) to describe the phenomena he had observed.
Donato (Alfred-Edouard d'Hont, 1845-1900) — see page Donato — The Father of Fascination — developed the specialization of magnetic fascination through the gaze, a branch of the Mesmeric tradition that would become the distinctive matrix of the contemporary Paret Method.
Maestro Dante Caravelli and Prof. Erminio Di Pisa — 20th-century Italian figures who kept the Donatist tradition of fascination alive and transmitted it in a direct line to Marco Paret.
Marco Paret — contemporary synthesis of the European magnetic tradition through the Paret Method and its developments (Springer paper 2026, Integral Presence Federmindfulness, third axis of the wiki).

Parallel to this direct line, magnetism has been renamed and reabsorbed into other therapeutic traditions:

Medical hypnosis (Braid, Liébault, Bernheim) and the Nancy School of Suggestion — absorb the phenomena of magnetic somnambulism into the 19th-century psychological vocabulary;
Psychoanalysis (Freud) — reabsorbs hypnosis as one of its origins, only to later distance itself to privilege interpreted speech;
Contemporary clinical hypnosis (Erickson and successors) — recovers magnetism in the form of conversational induction of altered states of consciousness;
Somatic psychotherapy (Reich, Lowen, Boyesen, Levine, Berceli) — rediscovers the phenomena of the magnetic crisis through a psychological-bodily path;
Contemporary Energy Medicine (Reiki, Quantum Touch, Polarity Therapy) — reformulates magnetism in orientalizing vocabularies, often losing the technical rigor of the original European tradition.

The Paret Method School recognizes all these lineages as relatives of its own work, but firmly maintains its identity in the continuous European magnetic tradition that from Mesmer arrives to the present day without interruption through the chain of personal transmission Donato-Caravelli-Di Pisa-Paret.

IV. Techniques of contemporary therapeutic magnetism

Therapeutic magnetism in the contemporary form of the Paret Method School is articulated into four families of techniques, all practiced in a state of Integral Presence of the operator.

Magnetic passes — regular movements of the hands along the client's body, near or slightly in contact, with a slow rhythm coordinated with the client's breathing. Their function is to regulate autonomic tone and to mobilize any blocked energies. Techniques include passes longitudinales (from top to bottom), passes courtes (on specific areas), and passes inversées (from bottom to top, used to reactivate the organism after a discharge).
Fascination — therapeutic use of the gaze to induce states of absorption and hyperempiria. See the specific page Fascination (basic technique). Magnetic fascination is a technical specialization requiring years of practice and presence of the operator.
Laying on of hands — prolonged hand touch on specific areas (shoulders, forehead, solar plexus, lower abdomen) to establish a relational field of safety and to support the client's autonomic system in its own regulation.
Controlled magnetic crisis — the mesmeric crisis of the School's modern Mesmerism: conscious and accompanied induction of a state of autonomous movement that allows the discharge of blocked autonomic tensions. An advanced technique requiring specific training.

The four families are not alternatives but complementary: a typical session in the contemporary tradition may alternate opening magnetic passes, fascination to establish depth, laying on of hands on specific areas, and — when appropriate — induction of the controlled crisis.

V. The polyvagal reinterpretation of magnetism

The School's Springer 2026 papers reformulate therapeutic magnetism in the vocabulary of Polyvagal theory by Porges. In the new grammar:

the operator's magnetic field is the ventro-vagal co-regulation that the embodied and prosodic presence produces in the client's system;
magnetic passes are multisensory safety signals (slow touch, relaxed proximity, shared slow breathing) that shift the system towards the ventro-vagal mode;
fascination is a state of prolonged visual co-orientation that activates the social engagement circuit and its endocrine correlates (oxytocin);
the magnetic crisis is a somatic release sequence (stillness → discharge → completion → re-engagement) controlled within the safety field.

This reinterpretation does not reduce magnetism to neurophysiology: it retranslates the phenomena that the Mesmeric tradition had accurately described in the vocabulary of its own eras into a grammar recognizable and verifiable by the contemporary scientific community. The School's key phrase — "maps certify each other, they do not dissolve into one another" — applies here exemplarily: the magnetic map and the polyvagal map work on the same terrain with distinct vocabularies, and each offers practical resources that the other does not provide alone.

VI. Therapeutic magnetism in the contemporary clinical landscape

Contemporary therapeutic magnetism, in the form of the Paret Method, operates in a clinical landscape that includes:

Medical hypnosis (Italian Society of Clinical Hypnosis, American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, etc.) — academically recognized, predominantly verbal;
Somatic psychotherapy — bioenergetics, biodynamics, Trauma Releasing Exercises, Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing;
Contemplative mindfulness — Kabat-Zinn's MBSR, MBCT, and the School's Integral Presence protocol Federmindfulness;
Integrative medicine — complementary therapies integrated with conventional medicine, including acupuncture, homeopathy, phytotherapy, energy therapies;
Energy Medicine — Reiki, Polarity Therapy, craniosacral therapy, which reformulate magnetism in often orientalizing vocabularies.

The Paret Method School distinguishes itself in this landscape through four characteristics:

Direct historical continuity with the European magnetic tradition from Mesmer to the present day, without absorption into other traditions;
Centrality of the non-verbal — fascination, magnetic passes, the operator's state of presence come before verbal induction work;
Contemporary integration of polyvagal theory as a grammar of translation towards academic science, without replacing the original magnetic grammar;
Explicit ethical framework — see page Ordinary trances — which distinguishes the therapeutic-initiatic use of techniques from their manipulative applications.

Sources

Historical tradition of magnetism

Franz Anton Mesmer, De planetarum influxu in corpus humanum (1766).
Franz Anton Mesmer, Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal (1779).
Marquis de Puységur, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire et à l'établissement du magnétisme animal (1784).
Rapport des commissaires chargés par le roi de l'examen du magnétisme animal (1784).
Charles Lafontaine, Mémoires d'un magnétiseur (1866).

Historical studies

Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry, Basic Books, 1970.
Adam Crabtree, From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychological Healing, Yale University Press, 1993.

Contemporary tradition of the School

Marco Paret, Le Flux Magnétique et les Savoirs Anciens (2017).
Marco Paret, L'Energia Segreta della Mente (2009).
Marco Paret, Hypnosis, Polyvagal Theory, and Somatic Liberation (Springer chapter in preparation).
Marco Paret, Metodo Paret™ — Presenza Integrale™ (Federmindfulness proposal 2026).

Polyvagal convergence

Stephen W. Porges, The Polyvagal Theory, Norton, 2011.