ABADE FARIA - THE GREAT GOAN HYPNOTIST

STATUE OF ABADE FARIA

 Panjim City - Capital of Goa

Next to the old Secretariat

It was a grand Exposition of Saint Francis Xavier in 1952 held to mark the 4th centenary of the Saint's death. I was a young boy then holding my father's hand walking along the promenade in Panjim on our way to Old Goa, when I asked him why did that man push that woman down, pointing to the statue, and my father just couldn't stop laughing for a while! But then my father was a great historian and story-teller himself for everybody in the family, and related to me in simple terms about the great hynotist, so that I could understand. My late father, I might add, was undoubtedly very proud of this famous man.

Pictured above is a statue of Abade Faria hypnotizing a woman. It was sculpted and cast in bronze by a Goan sculptor named Ramchandra Pandurang Kamat in 1945. 

Abade Faria, or Abbe (Abbot) Jose Custodio de Faria,was born in Candolim, District of Bardez in Goa, Portuguese India, on May 31, 1746. He died in Paris on September 30, 1819.

Abade Faria was one of the pioneers in the scientific study of hypnotism. He introduced oriental hypnosis to Paris in the early 19th century.

After his arrest in Marseille in 1797 he was imprisoned and placed in solitary confinement by a law court in the infamous Chateau d'If* where by sheer persistence he trained himself using techniques of auto-suggestion or self-suggestion.

After his release from prison, Faria returned to Paris, where he met Alexandre Dumas, the novelist, who was so impressed with the Abbe that he used him as a character - the mad monk - in his novel, The Count of Monte Cristo.

In 1881 he was appointed as the Professor of Philosophy at the University of France at Nimes. He was also an elected member of the Société Medicale de Marseille at Marseille.

*The Chateau d'If was once a fortress that was later converted into a prison. It is located on a small island called If in the Frioul Archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea about a mile offshore in the Bay of Marseille.

Incidentally, its no wonder nor a coincidence that the Chateau was used partly as a fitting setting and location for the  novel by the great Alexandre Dumas namely 'The Count of Monte Cristo'.

Learn more about this fascinating man - Abade Faria. Just google his name and mine: Tonferns