Emotions, Religious Experience, & the Emergence of Psychiatric Medicine: Exploring the Case of the Seeress of Prevorst

"Emotions, Religious Experience, & the Emergence of Psychiatric Medicine: Exploring the Case of the Seeress of Prevorst." Facilitated by Tom Robisheaux & Meghan Woolley. The Emotions Research Group invites you to join Tom Robisheaux in a collaborative exploration of one of the sensational cases from the beginning of modern psychiatric medicine. When Friedericke Hauffe, the young peasant woman later known as the seeress, fell ill and lapsed into a somnambulic state, physicians from across Germany came to study her illness and the uncanny experiences of the spirit world that she and others reported. How might one understand such an account about illness, emotional experience, and spirits? What challenges do the source and Hauffe's case present the historian and the social science researcher? What theories of emotions might help make sense of the experience of a female somnambulist and those fascinated by her case? Participants in this workshop will read and discuss the evidence from the provocative medical case history written about her: The Seeress of Prevorst (1845). The excerpts from The Seeress of Prevorst (1845) will be sent to all participants and should come ready for an open-ended discussion about it and what it might suggest about the history of emotions.

RSVP to microworlds-lab@duke.edu.

***Lunch will be Served.***