Johann Joseph Gassner
Johann Joseph Gassner 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.
