Introduction
Contrary to what may be supposed from the title of this chapter, I do not intend to approach the history of 19th century mystics through the lens of psychiatric analysis, still less to exclude the female mystics themselves from this story, but I propose to take a social history approach in looking at how the view of mysticism has been affected by the emergence of new disciplines and how it found itself involved in new power games.
The contemporary period, in effect, introduced new actors into that history: psychiatry[1] , psychology[2] , and psychoanalysis[3] , all emerged during the 19th century, bringing with them a new discourse in relation to social phenomena traditionally associated with religion. We should beware of an excessively binary representation of this; the different medical, psychological and religious approaches were far from being at all times mutually exclusive.
The special focus will be on the phenomenon of stigmatisation[4] , which greatly increased at the end of the 19th century and gave rise to much controversy. In this particular context, the mystical event cannot be thought of uniquely as an individual experience but also as a political and media event, produced in a moment of crisis. In this respect it has much in common with other social phenomena studied in the framework of this course, whether it be Moroccan Sufism or Protestant prophetism [see the relevant chapters].
