Audiobook Sample
Listen to the sample to experience the story.
Please wait while we verify your browser...
- Title: Complete Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism
- Author: A. Alpheus
- Narrator: LibriVox Volunteers
- Length: 03:49:12
- Version: Abridged
- Release Date: 01/01/2016
- Publisher: LibriVox
- Genre: Non-Fiction, Psychology
- ISBN13: SABLIB9783603
As I settled into my favorite armchair with a cup of jasmine tea – the same ritual I’ve maintained since my days researching at Harvard – I found myself transported back to that pivotal moment in my Comparative Literature seminar when we debated the boundaries between science and mysticism in fin de siècle literature. This memory came rushing back as I began listening to A. Alpheus’s “Complete Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism”, a fascinating 1903 time capsule now available as a free audiobook through LibriVox.
“A Historical Séance Through Sound”
The LibriVox volunteer narration – with its charmingly uneven cadences that recall the earnest amateur spirit of early 20th century scientific societies – proves unexpectedly fitting for this text. There’s something wonderfully meta about listening to multiple narrators (each chapter features a different volunteer) perform a work about the fluidity of consciousness. The audio quality varies slightly between chapters, but this actually enhances the experience, making it feel like attending a series of lectures from different turn-of-the-century researchers.
“Through a Cultural Lens”
What fascines me most is how Alpheus’s work captures that liminal period when psychology was emerging from its mystical chrysalis. The chapters on mesmerism particularly resonated with my research on cross-cultural healing practices – I found myself recalling my fieldwork in Kyoto, where I observed how traditional Japanese hypnotic techniques (like those used in Morita therapy) both converged and diverged from Western approaches. Alpheus’s description of ‘animal magnetism’ would make fascinating comparative study material alongside Eastern energy concepts like qi or prana.
“Narrative Consciousness”
The audiobook format uniquely amplifies the book’s themes. When the narrator describes hypnotic induction techniques, I found myself – as I often tell my Berkeley students – ‘performing the readerly equivalent of a receptive trance.’ There’s an intriguing dissonance between the text’s authoritative tone and our contemporary understanding of these practices. The chapter on spiritualism, read with particular gravitas by one volunteer, transported me to those heated debates in my graduate seminar about whether spiritualism was proto-feminist space (as many mediums were women) or merely another form of patriarchal spectacle.
“Critical Analysis”
While the scientific content is dated – modern listeners will recognize the blend of earnest inquiry and pseudoscience – the book shines as cultural artifact. The section on ‘mind-reading’ (what we’d now call cold reading techniques) offers particularly rich material for analyzing how Victorians conceptualized interpersonal connection. I found myself making margin notes (mentally, of course) about parallels to contemporary ‘neuromania’ where we’ve simply replaced Mesmer’s fluids with dopamine explanations.
“Audio Hypnosis”
The narration’s variability – some readers adopt dramatic period-appropriate tones while others use contemporary speech patterns – creates an intriguing cognitive dissonance. This isn’t the polished uniformity of commercial audiobooks, but rather what Walter Benjamin might call the ‘auratic’ quality of amateur performance. The stumbles and hesitations make the experience feel more like discovering a manuscript than consuming a produced commodity.
“Recommendations”
This audiobook will particularly appeal to:
1. Historians of psychology seeking primary sources
2. Literature scholars studying fin de siècle culture
3. Podcast listeners who enjoy ‘You’re Wrong About’-style media archaeology
4. Writers researching period-authentic paranormal practices
For contemporary listeners, I suggest pairing this with Ann Braude’s “Radical Spirits” or Alison Winter’s “Mesmerized” for critical context. And if you’re interested in the performance aspect, try listening alongside recordings of early 20th century séance music for full immersion.
“Personal Reflection”
This listening experience reminded me why I fell in love with studying cultural history – that moment when you realize even our most ‘scientific’ truths are shaped by their cultural moment. As the final chapter on spiritualist photography concluded, I found myself in that delicious scholarly limbo between skepticism and wonder that first drew me to academia.
In scholarly solidarity and shared curiosity,
Prof. Emily Chen
