“The Mesmerist’s Victim” (post 1) by Alexandre Dumas (post 12): One of the mesmerist’s (hypnotist’s) victims is his wife

Hypnosis (mesmerism) and multiple personality are related subjects. People with multiple personality have tended to go into trances ever since their traumatic childhood. Their alternate personalities have been created as a psychological defense by using, in effect, self-hypnosis.

Since an admirable, key character in The Count of Monte Cristo is named after Abbé Faria, an actual figure in the history of hypnosis, I was interested to read The Mesmerist’s Victim to learn more about what hypnosis meant to Dumas.

The mesmerist, Joseph Balsamo—a.k.a. Baron Balsamo, Count Fenix, magician, miracle worker, wizard—is mysterious and sinister. His wife lives in his home, but in a secret annex.

“Lorenza Feliciani was his wife, but she railed at him for keeping her a prisoner, and a slave, and envied the fate of wild birds.

“Lorenza,” he softly pleaded, “why do you, my darling, show this hostility and resistance?…

“Because you horrify me—you are not religious, and you work your will by the black art!” replied the woman haughtily…

“Sleep!” he said “imperatively.”

“Scarcely was the word pronounced before Lorenza bent like a lily on its stalk” and “her whole countenance brightened up, as if the breath from Love’s own lips had dispelled the cloud” (1, pp. 43-44).

“Hence she who hated him when in her senses greeted him with a tender embrace” (1, p. 64).

In other words, her regular personality, who hated him, was put to “sleep,” allowing her alternate personality, who loved him, to come out.

1. Alexandre Dumas. The Mesmerist’s Victim [1848]. Translated by Henry Llewellyn Williams. The Echo Library, 2015.