From India to the planet Mars: a case of multiple personality with imaginary languages

In 1900, Theodore Floumoy, Professor of Psychology at the University of Geneva, first published his now classic five-year investigation of Miss Helene Smith, a trance medium claiming to have clairvoyant powers, who could allegedly communicate in both Sanskrit and the Martian language, and, supposedly, was also able to manifest her past reincarnations as Marie Antoinette, a Hindu princess, and a visitor to other planets. The reasoned sceptic will almost certainly stop reading here. After all, why would a physician or historian of medicine want to look into a book about spiritualism written by a psychologist one hundred years ago? The reasons are several; but I will name only three. First, the book is a pioneering text in an era of medical psychology that has already passed, but which may actually have flourished in advance of today. Second, the text is an example of the early, important, but presently still overlooked historical relationship between investigation of the paranormal and the development of modem psychotherapeutics. Third, Floumoy's text reiterates an important relationship between psychology and medicine that has cogency today because of new advances in the neurosciences related to multiple states of consciousness.