page_title: Abbé Faria
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Abbé Faria / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: Statue of Aba de Faria next to old Secreteriate
context_page_description: Abbé Faria, or Abbé José Custódio de Faria, was a Luso-Goan Catholic monk who was one of the pioneers of the scientific study of hypnotism, following on from the work of Franz Mesmer. Unlike Mesmer, who claimed that hypnosis was mediated by "animal magnetism", Faria understood that it worked purely by the power of suggestion. In the early 19th century, Abbé Faria introduced oriental hypnosis to Paris.
  He was one of the first to depart from the theory of the "magnetic fluid", to place in relief the importance of suggestion, and to demonstrate the existence of "autosuggestion"; he also established that what he termed nervous sleep belongs to the natural order. From his earliest magnetizing séances, in 1814, he boldly developed his doctrine. Nothing comes from the magnetizer; everything comes from the subject and takes place in his imagination generated from within the mind. Magnetism is only a form of sleep. Although of the moral order, the magnetic action is often aided by physical, or rather by physiological, means–fixedness of look and cerebral fatigue.
  Faria changed the terminology of mesmerism. Previously, the focus was on the "concentration" of the subject.
context_section_description: José Custódio de Faria was born in Candolim, Bardez in the erstwhile territory of Portuguese Goa, on 31 May 1756. He was the son of Caetano Vitorino de Faria of Colvale, and Rosa Maria de Sousa of Candolim. He also had an adopted sister, Catarina who was an orphan. Caetano was in turn a descendant of Anantha Shenoy, a Goud Saraswat Brahmin, village clerk and Patil of the same village who converted to Christianity in the 16th century. He was a Goan Catholic of the Bamonn caste, and was also of partial African descent.
  Since his parents had irreconcilable differences, they decided to separate and obtained the Church's dispensation. Caetano Vitorino joined the seminary to complete his studies for the priesthood (which he had interrupted to get married), and Rosa Maria became a nun, joining the St. Monica convent in Old Goa, where she rose to the position of prioress.
caption: Statue of Abbé Faria hypnotising a woman next to the Old Secretariat (Idalçao palace) in Panjim, Goa
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