From public spectacle to medical practice via “scientific spiritualism”: Zoologist Nikolai Vagner and the early studies of hypnotism in Imperial Russia, 1880-1909

Nikolai’s project seeks to examine the early history of hypnosis in one of the least studied settings in its global history, Imperial Russia. It focuses on the role of Nikolai Vagner (1829-1909), an eminent zoology professor at St. Petersburg University, prolific litterateur, and ardent spiritualist, in the popularization, legitimization, and institutionalization of research and theorizing on hypnotism in his homeland. In 1890 Vagner’s efforts culminated in founding a Russian Society of Experimental Psychology to investigate “hypnotic phenomena.” But a decade later the society was taken over by Vagner’s critics led by the country’s leading psychiatrist Vladimir Bekhterev and reconstituted as a Society of Normal and Pathological Psychology. A detailed analysis of these events will help illuminate the social geography, cultural boundaries, and disciplinary ecology of scientific knowledge, medical practices, and public engagements associated with hypnosis, and place the Russian case on the global historical map with a greater precision.