Whose Knocking? Spiritualism as Entertainment and Therapy in Nineteenth‐Century San Francisco.

In concentrating on spiritualism’s mediums and intellectual captains, scholars have paid little attention to the movement’s meaning to average séance‐goers. An investigation of spiritualism in nineteenth‐century California and Nevada – and especially in San Francisco – shows that mediums offered their patrons a valuable social product by tying together religion with entertainment and therapy. In doing so, spiritualists created a cultural technology of ‘spirit materialization’ that prefigured the electronic technology of spirit materialization in the twentieth century – telephone, film, radio, television. Spiritualists also helped create a therapeutic culture that prefigured psychotherapy. In reconciling Americans to the transience of nineteenth‐century social life, in offering them new conceptions of family and community, and by setting the stage for modern therapeutic culture and mass entertainment, Spiritualism became both a bridge to modernity and part of the infrastructure of modernity. The tension between religion, therapy, and entertainment, however, propelled spiritualism in contrary directions and ensured that it would not retain its popularity in the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]