Hélène Smith

"This work follows the story of an exceptional medium whose performances of possession in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries influenced some of the most renowned scientists and artists of her time. As Massicotte argues, Hélène Smith's creation of languages, performances of celestial scenes, and paintings of spiritual visions came to embody the extreme possibilities of a new form of subjectivity. Among many other scholars, psychologist Théodore Flournoy, linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, and surrealist artist André Breton spent years interpreting her marvelous experiences in secular terms, highlighting the complex facets of a deeply creative unconscious. In retracing their encounters, Massicotte sheds new light on the role of women in the history of depth psychology, as she demonstrates that studies of spiritual mediums forged a different unconscious than the now well-known studies of hysterics. In illuminating Smith's contributions to evolving understandings of the subject during a period understood by many as one of secularization, Massicotte also demonstrates how female embodiment became a crucial locus for the conceptualization of disenchantment in the modern world"--