Healing and Hypnotherapy Special Mega Annual Issue 21 June 2017 | Page 45

Abbé Faria: Indian Hypnotist, Priest and
Philosopher,
"An Innovator in the History of Hypnosis."
A Brief Biographical Note.
Jose Custodio de Faria was born in Candolin, Bardez, Goa in 1756 to
a family which was descended from Hindu Brahmins prior to their
conversion to Christianity.
Faria left India in 1771 and went to Rome where he studied
Philosophy and took a Doctorate in Sacred Theology at the Roman
college Propaganda Fide. In 1780 he was ordained to the Catholic
priesthood and subsequently preached before the Pope.
In 1788 he left Rome for Paris and became involved in the French
Revolution. Subsequently Faria developed an interest in mesmerism /
hypnosis which he practised in Paris until 1811. From this time he
taught Philosophy in Marseilles where he also was a member of the
learned medical society.
He returned to Paris in 1813 where he began to give regular
demonstrations of hypnosis in a salon. During this period he engaged
in writing a four volume work which was published posthumously after
his death in 1819 at the age of 63.
The Book: De la cause du Sommeil lucide.
Faria uses the term 'lucid sleep' for what we now call hypnosis.
Shridhar Sharma (1979) describes four aspects of the nature of lucid
sleep or hypnosis and here I will briefly follow Sharma's account.
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Firstly Faria believed that lucid sleep was a pathological
distortion of normal sleep and in this sense he predicted what
was to become a common idea among the Charcot school that
hypnosis was related to hysteria.