Hélène Smith

Abstract 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. 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, this book sheds new light on the role of women in the history of depth psychology, demonstrating that studies of spiritual mediums forged an unconscious different from 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, the book also demonstrates how female embodiment became a crucial locus for the conceptualization of disenchantment in the modern world.