Johann Joseph Gassner

Johann Joseph Gassner (22 August 1727 in Braz, near Bludenz, Vorarlberg – 1779 Pondorf, now part of Winklarn, Bavaria) was a noted exorcist.

While a Catholic priest at Klösterle he gained a wide celebrity by professing to "cast out devils" and to work cures on the sick by means simply of prayer; he was attacked as an impostor, but the bishop of Regensburg, who believed in his honesty, bestowed upon him the cure of Pondorf.

Gassner's methods have been linked to a special form of hypnotic training. He has been described as a predecessor of modern hypnosis.Henri Ellenberger, in his "Discovery of the Unconscious", placed the dispute between Gassner and Franz Anton Mesmer at the center of modern psychotherapy.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wood, James, ed. (1907). "^{article name needed}". The Nuttall Encyclopædia. London and New York: Frederick Warne. 

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