Mesmerismus Research Institute

The Mesmerismus Research Institute is the research institute of the Balkan International Academy Foundation, a public benefit foundation registered in Sofia, Bulgaria (EIK 177241869). The institute studies non-verbal hypnosis: what a person's body does when they are approached, looked at or touched without words, read alongside the original documents of those who first described it.

Origin

The institute grew from two questions that Dr. Marco Paret asked himself after learning the method of the gaze from Virgilio T. and Professor Erminio Di Pisa. The first question is where this knowledge came from; the second is what happens in the body of a person who is stopped by a gaze. The Magnetic Library grew from the first, the Audiovisual Observatory from the second.

Animal magnetism was born in Europe in the eighteenth century, when physicians observed that one person's presence, gaze and slow hand movements could produce strong bodily reactions in another. In the nineteenth century hypnosis became verbal, and many bodily phenomena described by the magnetisers were reinterpreted as "suggestion". The institute puts the body back at the centre.

Mesmerismus® is a registered trademark of Dr. Marco Paret, who created it and who directs the foundation. The name identifies his approach to non-verbal hypnosis, which the institute documents and studies.

The three lines of research

The institute's programme follows three lines, each starting from a known model and re-read in the light of what the body shows.

Human and animal hypnosis

one paradigm

In 1938 the Hungarian physician and psychiatrist Ferenc András Völgyesi (1895–1967) published Menschen- und Tierhypnose (Zürich and Leipzig: Orell Füssli), arguing that hypnotic states in humans and animals share a common biological origin. The institute starts from non-verbal induction (gaze, presence, magnetic passes) and observes in people responses very similar to tonic immobility in animals: sudden stillness, catalepsy, changes in muscle tone and breathing, and the release that follows.

A neurofunctional reading of polyvagal theory

Polyvagal theory, proposed by the American neuroscientist Stephen Porges, describes three states of the nervous system: safety and social engagement, mobilisation for fight or flight, and immobilisation and shutdown. Since in 2023 the psychophysiologist Paul Grossman judged its anatomical premises untenable, the institute uses the three states as functional descriptions of what the body does, to be tested on observable behaviour, and not as established neuroanatomy.

From techniques to relationship

NLP refounded

In classic neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), communication builds the relationship. The institute reverses the order and tests NLP procedures by their effect on the synchrony and regulation observable between two people, keeping what holds. In the School this approach is called NLP3: it brings together NLP, non-verbal hypnosis and polyvagal regulation.

The principle

The principle that guides the institute is a single sentence.

The relationship is the space in which communication is built — and that space is non-verbal.

Put simply: what changes a person is less a technique applied to them than the quality of the bond in which that technique takes place.

Resources

The institute rests on two resources, both active.

• The Magnetic Library: 3,839 catalogued works on animal magnetism, hypnotism and related fields.
• The Audiovisual Observatory: an archive of courses and demonstrations filmed from 2011 to 2026, within more than thirty years of practice.

The scientific committee is being formed; the institute's Annals, with articles carrying a DOI, are planned.

Collaborate

The institute develops its research with external collaborators: associate researchers, visiting scholars, source translators and digitisation volunteers. All roles are unpaid, and every contribution is credited by name. Each year the institute opens a Call for Papers; the first theme is "Fascination: the gaze as induction".

External links

• Mesmerismus Research Institute — the institute's page on the foundation website
• Collaborate and apply — roles, criteria and application form
• Balkan International Academy Foundation — foundation website (EN, BG, FR, IT)

This page is part of the Paret Method Wiki, the body of research on mesmerism, fascination and non-verbal hypnosis curated by Dr. Marco Paret, creator of the Mesmerismus® method. The practical side is taught in the seminars of Dr. Marco Paret's School: www.marcoparet.com.