A historical approach to psychical research: the case of Alexis Didier

A historical approach to psychical research: the case of Alexis Didier

Bertrand Meheust

...After the Academy of medicine's official dismissal, the practice changed. Mesmerizers such as Lafontaine or du Potet de Sennevoy gave public demonstrations as they felt they had no other choice. They performed on stage in order to show what they were able to do with their somnambulists and to prove the facts denied by ‘Official Science’.

Against the rejection of the Academies, for the first time (but surely not the last!) they used the new power of public opinion.Such was the atmosphere when, for the first time, in 1843, during a demonstration, a young Parisian, aged fourteen, went on stage and accomplished feats never witnessed before.

Let us consider now Alexis’ alleged abilities. If we accept the reports, his abilities covered all magnetic powers and extended them to such a point that it challenges not only skeptics, butpsychical researchers themselves. While thoroughly blindfolded, he would read texts or words enclosed in boxes, sealed envelopes, or simply people’s pockets. He would read sentences in an uncut book taken at random in a library. People would just give him the number of a page, and he could read a sentence of this page. He could ‘travel’ to a remote place, visit the consultant’s office, and read the title of a book left on purpose on the table. He could give a diagnosis of another person’s health problem. Based on an object having some link with a person, he could give the name of this person, or her address, or her dog’s name.

If we accept that Alexis cannot be dismissed as a fraud, we are obliged to consider the feats he produced as pointing to the broad spectrum of human potentialities. It is exactly what Dr Osty wrote in 1936: ‘N’assignons pas de limites aux phénomènes paranormaux’: Let us refuse to put limits to the paranormal phenomena.

The feats of Alexis oblige us to consider another dimension of the human personality, another dimension of the universe. Most modern laboratory procedures do not even begin to address this other dimension in an adequate manner.