Pub Date : 2018-08-31DOI: 10.5325/PRETERNATURE.7.2.0154
Charlotte-Rose Millar
abstract:This article focuses on associations between early modern English witchcraft, demonic activity, temptation and transformation, and the night. It has a particular emphasis on "nightmare" encounters, a term used here not in the modern sense of a bad dream but in the premodern sense of a physical assault by a supernatural being. In most early modern nightmare encounters, victims reported that it was either the Devil or, more commonly, a witch assaulting them in the night. However, in stories of accused witches reporting nightmare encounters, we see a distinctly different belief: that devils could lie on potential witches as part of a process of demonic temptation and transformation. In this article I will argue that these nightmare encounters represented a physical manifestation of an internal struggle against Satan. In doing so I will revisit and reinterpret current scholarship on the nightmare and reinforce the importance of the demonic in English witchcraft belief.
{"title":"Dangers of the Night: The Witch, the Devil, and the \"Nightmare\" in Early Modern England","authors":"Charlotte-Rose Millar","doi":"10.5325/PRETERNATURE.7.2.0154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PRETERNATURE.7.2.0154","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article focuses on associations between early modern English witchcraft, demonic activity, temptation and transformation, and the night. It has a particular emphasis on \"nightmare\" encounters, a term used here not in the modern sense of a bad dream but in the premodern sense of a physical assault by a supernatural being. In most early modern nightmare encounters, victims reported that it was either the Devil or, more commonly, a witch assaulting them in the night. However, in stories of accused witches reporting nightmare encounters, we see a distinctly different belief: that devils could lie on potential witches as part of a process of demonic temptation and transformation. In this article I will argue that these nightmare encounters represented a physical manifestation of an internal struggle against Satan. In doing so I will revisit and reinterpret current scholarship on the nightmare and reinforce the importance of the demonic in English witchcraft belief.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"31 1","pages":"154 - 181"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87490765","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-08-31DOI: 10.5325/preternature.7.2.0215
Katherine Walker
abstract:I argue in this article for a reconsideration of Shakespeare's play in light of the phenomena of eating mummified flesh in early modern medicinal practice. At various junctures in Julius Caesar, characters imagine consuming Caesar's sanctified flesh as an act of revenge, dissolution, or medical regimen. As this article shows, however, such an act is never empirically neutral. Rather, Shakespeare's drama explores the intractable animus that inheres in the corpse, particularly in the material of Caesar's flesh. In attending to the preternatural discourses surrounding this type of consumption, the article provides a new lens for understanding the period's fascination with—and desire for—a panacea that enfolds imprecation and special consideration of the preternatural properties of the human body.
{"title":"Shakespeare and the Magic of Mummy: Julius Caesar's Consumed/Consuming Bodies","authors":"Katherine Walker","doi":"10.5325/preternature.7.2.0215","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/preternature.7.2.0215","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:I argue in this article for a reconsideration of Shakespeare's play in light of the phenomena of eating mummified flesh in early modern medicinal practice. At various junctures in Julius Caesar, characters imagine consuming Caesar's sanctified flesh as an act of revenge, dissolution, or medical regimen. As this article shows, however, such an act is never empirically neutral. Rather, Shakespeare's drama explores the intractable animus that inheres in the corpse, particularly in the material of Caesar's flesh. In attending to the preternatural discourses surrounding this type of consumption, the article provides a new lens for understanding the period's fascination with—and desire for—a panacea that enfolds imprecation and special consideration of the preternatural properties of the human body.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"1998 1","pages":"215 - 238"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88228128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-03-16DOI: 10.5325/PRETERNATURE.7.1.0088
Adam Lawrence
abstract:The socially and biologically diverse “Fairyland” we find in legends represented to those who believed in supernatural agency both an alternative model for social relations and a metaphor for the unpredictable nature of life, including sudden physical transformation. The changeling legend—in which a healthy human is exchanged for a malformed fairy—played a significant role not only in traditional “diagnoses” for congenital malformation but also in contemplating evolutionary change. Science-fiction authors like Theodore Sturgeon, Poul Anderson, Paul McAuley, and Harlan Ellison appear to have adapted the legend to reimagine the versatile folkloric changeling as a potential model in a technologically advanced environment, where sympathy and hospitality are often pushed to the wayside. In highlighting humanity’s changeling status, these authors encourage us to reverence those earth-dwelling denizens that possibly gave us our ethos in the first place.
{"title":"From Fairy Host to Mutant Community: The “Singular” Changeling in Folklore, Medical Discourse, and Theories of Evolutionary Change","authors":"Adam Lawrence","doi":"10.5325/PRETERNATURE.7.1.0088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PRETERNATURE.7.1.0088","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:The socially and biologically diverse “Fairyland” we find in legends represented to those who believed in supernatural agency both an alternative model for social relations and a metaphor for the unpredictable nature of life, including sudden physical transformation. The changeling legend—in which a healthy human is exchanged for a malformed fairy—played a significant role not only in traditional “diagnoses” for congenital malformation but also in contemplating evolutionary change. Science-fiction authors like Theodore Sturgeon, Poul Anderson, Paul McAuley, and Harlan Ellison appear to have adapted the legend to reimagine the versatile folkloric changeling as a potential model in a technologically advanced environment, where sympathy and hospitality are often pushed to the wayside. In highlighting humanity’s changeling status, these authors encourage us to reverence those earth-dwelling denizens that possibly gave us our ethos in the first place.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"70 1","pages":"118 - 88"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90401559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-03-16DOI: 10.5325/PRETERNATURE.7.1.0050
M. Mencej
abstract:The article discusses the experience of being “carried by witches” narrated to me repeatedly during my field research in rural eastern Slovenia in 2000–2001. The experience, which was ascribed to the agency of witches who “enchanted” their victims and led them astray, typically occurred in the forest at night and implied disorientation, sometimes (but not necessarily) the vision of light(s) that people followed or were drawn to, and a shift of consciousness. The article argues that particular neurological conditions (out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences) may have provided a basis for the experience of at least some of the subjects in the memorates, and that various cultural concepts explaining the experience, and cultural patterns of structuring narratives about it, may have been adopted by people in order to cope with and make sense of what they experienced in a society that does not grant cultural value to altered states of consciousness.
{"title":"“Something Came Over Him”: Narratives on Being “Carried by Witches” and Their Possible Connection to Altered States of Consciousness","authors":"M. Mencej","doi":"10.5325/PRETERNATURE.7.1.0050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PRETERNATURE.7.1.0050","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:The article discusses the experience of being “carried by witches” narrated to me repeatedly during my field research in rural eastern Slovenia in 2000–2001. The experience, which was ascribed to the agency of witches who “enchanted” their victims and led them astray, typically occurred in the forest at night and implied disorientation, sometimes (but not necessarily) the vision of light(s) that people followed or were drawn to, and a shift of consciousness. The article argues that particular neurological conditions (out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences) may have provided a basis for the experience of at least some of the subjects in the memorates, and that various cultural concepts explaining the experience, and cultural patterns of structuring narratives about it, may have been adopted by people in order to cope with and make sense of what they experienced in a society that does not grant cultural value to altered states of consciousness.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"40 1","pages":"50 - 87"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81346657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-03-16DOI: 10.5325/PRETERNATURE.7.1.0001
Heidi Marx-Wolf
abstract:This article uses the notion of the body as “machinic assemblage” in the works of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari as a lens through which to approach the complex nature of embodiment in the work of the third-century Platonist and student of Plotinus, Porphyry of Tyre. In particular it focuses on the many assemblages Porphyry’s embryonic and demonic bodies make with other beings and forces in the late ancient cosmos. It concludes that by using this lens, we are invited to shift our attention away from approaches to ancient discussions on embodiment that focus on ontology and questions of static, singular essences and organisms, and instead focus on multiplicity and becoming. This approach, the article argues, gives rise to a more nuanced and complex picture of ancient cosmological and taxonomic thinking.
本文以德勒兹(Gilles Deleuze)和瓜塔里(Felix Guattari)作品中的身体“机械组合”概念为视角，探讨三世纪柏拉图主义者、普罗提诺(Plotinus)的学生波菲利(Porphyry of Tyre)作品中体现的复杂本质。它特别关注斑岩的胚胎和恶魔体在古代宇宙晚期与其他生物和力量的许多组合。它的结论是，通过使用这个镜头，我们被邀请将我们的注意力从关注本体论和静态，单一本质和有机体问题的古代具体化讨论的方法转移到关注多样性和成为。这篇文章认为，这种方法产生了一幅更微妙、更复杂的古代宇宙学和分类学思想的图景。
{"title":"Living Plants, Dead Animals, and Other Matters: Embryos and Demons in Porphyry of Tyre","authors":"Heidi Marx-Wolf","doi":"10.5325/PRETERNATURE.7.1.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PRETERNATURE.7.1.0001","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article uses the notion of the body as “machinic assemblage” in the works of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari as a lens through which to approach the complex nature of embodiment in the work of the third-century Platonist and student of Plotinus, Porphyry of Tyre. In particular it focuses on the many assemblages Porphyry’s embryonic and demonic bodies make with other beings and forces in the late ancient cosmos. It concludes that by using this lens, we are invited to shift our attention away from approaches to ancient discussions on embodiment that focus on ontology and questions of static, singular essences and organisms, and instead focus on multiplicity and becoming. This approach, the article argues, gives rise to a more nuanced and complex picture of ancient cosmological and taxonomic thinking.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"78 5 1","pages":"1 - 26"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89539201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-03-16DOI: 10.5325/PRETERNATURE.7.1.0027
R. Hutton
abstract:Relatively little attention has been paid to representations of witches and cunning folk (popular magicians) in British literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There have been a few pioneering works, but they have adopted different definitions of witches, concentrated on different spans of time, and reached different conclusions (and half of them are still contained in unpublished theses). This study covers the whole period between 1800 and 1940 and operates a consistent and rigorous set of definitions of the figures under consideration. It considers images of the witch as villain, victim, and heroine along with parallel images of cunning folk, and it demonstrates what remains constant in them and what changes over this long span of time. In doing so, it is intended to make a contribution to a better understanding of the place of witchcraft and magic in the modern British imagination.
{"title":"Witches and Cunning Folk in British Literature 1800–1940","authors":"R. Hutton","doi":"10.5325/PRETERNATURE.7.1.0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PRETERNATURE.7.1.0027","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Relatively little attention has been paid to representations of witches and cunning folk (popular magicians) in British literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There have been a few pioneering works, but they have adopted different definitions of witches, concentrated on different spans of time, and reached different conclusions (and half of them are still contained in unpublished theses). This study covers the whole period between 1800 and 1940 and operates a consistent and rigorous set of definitions of the figures under consideration. It considers images of the witch as villain, victim, and heroine along with parallel images of cunning folk, and it demonstrates what remains constant in them and what changes over this long span of time. In doing so, it is intended to make a contribution to a better understanding of the place of witchcraft and magic in the modern British imagination.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"126 1","pages":"27 - 49"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78747387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-09-14DOI: 10.5325/PRETERNATURE.6.2.0278
A. Mendez
abstract:This article compares and contrasts England's first three Witchcraft Acts (1542, 1563, and 1604) with demonological treatises published by English theologians and clerics between 1580 and 1627 with the intention of highlighting the different ways both types of texts defined witches and their actions. This research focuses on cunning folk as healers to emphasize the disparity of interests and aims that underpinned the representation of witchcraft in civil law and religious treatises concerning that issue. I suggest that during Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, discussions about the definition of witchcraft became one of the battlefields where those who thought the English Reformation had achieved its ends and those who propelled a more thorough disciplining of the population to create a godly society collided. I argue that demonological works served, among other purposes, to express grievances about the official religious policy.
{"title":"To Accommodate the Earthly Kingdom to Divine Will: Official and Nonconformist Definitions of Witchcraft in England (ca. 1542–1630)","authors":"A. Mendez","doi":"10.5325/PRETERNATURE.6.2.0278","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PRETERNATURE.6.2.0278","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article compares and contrasts England's first three Witchcraft Acts (1542, 1563, and 1604) with demonological treatises published by English theologians and clerics between 1580 and 1627 with the intention of highlighting the different ways both types of texts defined witches and their actions. This research focuses on cunning folk as healers to emphasize the disparity of interests and aims that underpinned the representation of witchcraft in civil law and religious treatises concerning that issue. I suggest that during Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, discussions about the definition of witchcraft became one of the battlefields where those who thought the English Reformation had achieved its ends and those who propelled a more thorough disciplining of the population to create a godly society collided. I argue that demonological works served, among other purposes, to express grievances about the official religious policy.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"1 1","pages":"278 - 309"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2017-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75577546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-09-14DOI: 10.5325/preternature.6.2.0212
Stefanie A. Goyette
abstract:Hidden knowledge in the Old French lays and fabliaux predominantly concerns the bodies, behaviors, and desires of women, who are portrayed as jealously guarding their secrets while men seek to discover them. In the twelfth-century Lai de Graelent and various Old French fabliaux from the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, women are marked with the trait of monstrosity, indicating the bodily site of hidden knowledge. The body itself thus becomes the secret, representing the material difference that supposedly produces epistemological difference, and these two registers are conflated as knowledge is sought by violating the body. This article connects the lays and fabliaux, which are rarely studied together, and argues that women in these tales can exploit perceptions of monstrosity to short-circuit the violence inherent to conventions that pose them as the ultimate object of knowledge.
古法国文学中隐藏的知识主要涉及女性的身体、行为和欲望，她们被描绘成小心翼翼地保守自己的秘密，而男性则试图发现这些秘密。在12世纪的莱·德·格莱朗(Lai de Graelent)和从12世纪到14世纪的各种古法国寓言中，女性被标记为怪物的特征，表明隐藏知识的身体部位。因此，身体本身就成为了秘密，代表了物质上的差异，这种差异被认为会产生认识论上的差异，当人们通过违反身体来寻求知识时，这两个领域就被混为一谈了。这篇文章将剧本和寓言联系起来，这两者很少被放在一起研究，并认为这些故事中的女性可以利用对怪物的感知来缩短传统中固有的暴力，这些传统将她们视为知识的最终对象。
{"title":"Fabricating Monstrosity: Secrets and Violence in the Lay of Graelent and Several Old French Fabliaux","authors":"Stefanie A. Goyette","doi":"10.5325/preternature.6.2.0212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/preternature.6.2.0212","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Hidden knowledge in the Old French lays and fabliaux predominantly concerns the bodies, behaviors, and desires of women, who are portrayed as jealously guarding their secrets while men seek to discover them. In the twelfth-century Lai de Graelent and various Old French fabliaux from the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, women are marked with the trait of monstrosity, indicating the bodily site of hidden knowledge. The body itself thus becomes the secret, representing the material difference that supposedly produces epistemological difference, and these two registers are conflated as knowledge is sought by violating the body. This article connects the lays and fabliaux, which are rarely studied together, and argues that women in these tales can exploit perceptions of monstrosity to short-circuit the violence inherent to conventions that pose them as the ultimate object of knowledge.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"15 1","pages":"212 - 235"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2017-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86973327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-09-14DOI: 10.5325/PRETERNATURE.6.2.0236
Andrew W. Keitt
abstract:Popular religion in late medieval and early modern Europe posited an invisible world densely populated with both personal spirits and impersonal forces that interacted constantly with the natural and social realms in ambiguous and unpredictable ways. This represented a stark contrast to elite theological discourse, which insisted on dividing the spirit world into a strict moral dichotomy of good and evil spirits, operating within a rigid causal taxonomy of natural, preternatural, and supernatural. During this period, deviations from this elite theological consensus were increasingly labeled "superstitious." The cognitive science of religion postulates that beliefs about demons and spirits are constrained by the evolved cognitive architecture of our species, and in this article I show that the patterns of religious belief and practice targeted by the critics of superstition are compatible wth key hypotheses in the cognitive science of religion.
{"title":"Rethinking with Demons: The Campaign Against Superstition in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe from a Cognitive Perspective","authors":"Andrew W. Keitt","doi":"10.5325/PRETERNATURE.6.2.0236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PRETERNATURE.6.2.0236","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Popular religion in late medieval and early modern Europe posited an invisible world densely populated with both personal spirits and impersonal forces that interacted constantly with the natural and social realms in ambiguous and unpredictable ways. This represented a stark contrast to elite theological discourse, which insisted on dividing the spirit world into a strict moral dichotomy of good and evil spirits, operating within a rigid causal taxonomy of natural, preternatural, and supernatural. During this period, deviations from this elite theological consensus were increasingly labeled \"superstitious.\" The cognitive science of religion postulates that beliefs about demons and spirits are constrained by the evolved cognitive architecture of our species, and in this article I show that the patterns of religious belief and practice targeted by the critics of superstition are compatible wth key hypotheses in the cognitive science of religion.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"8 1","pages":"236 - 277"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2017-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86035004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-09-14DOI: 10.5325/PRETERNATURE.6.2.0337
H. Wolffram
During the early twentieth century, several prominent fraud trials that featured mediums as defendants captured public attention in Germany. Of particular note were the trials of the "flower medium" Anna Rothe in 1902 and the criminal-telepath Else Günther-Geffers in 1928, which were given substantial coverage in the German daily press. While these sensational trials focused the public on the question of the reality of mediumistic phenomena and psychical researchers on discovering the mechanism by which mediums achieved their supernormal feats, a small number of jurists and criminologists used such cases to explore the nature of female criminality. Among them was the criminologist Erich Wulffen, whose books Psychologie des Verbrechers (Psychology of the criminal) and Das Weib als Sexualverbrecherin (Woman as sexual criminal) used Rothe and Günther-Geffers as examples of a particular type of criminal: the hysterical female swindler.
在二十世纪早期，几起以灵媒为被告的著名诈骗案在德国引起了公众的注意。特别值得注意的是，1902年对“花媒”安娜·罗特(Anna Rothe)的审判，以及1928年对犯罪心灵感应者Else g nther- geffers的审判，这两起案件在德国日报上得到了大量报道。当这些耸人听闻的审判把公众的注意力集中在灵媒现象的真实性问题上，把心理学研究者的注意力集中在发现灵媒实现其超常壮举的机制上时，少数法学家和犯罪学家利用这些案件来探索女性犯罪的本质。犯罪学家埃里希·伍尔芬(Erich Wulffen)就是其中之一，他的著作《犯罪心理学》(Psychologie des Verbrechers)和《作为性罪犯的女人》(Das Weib als Sexualverbrecherin)以罗特和格内格弗斯(ganger - geffers)为例，描述了一种特殊类型的罪犯:歇斯底里的女骗子。
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