![cover image](https://wikiwandv2-19431.kxcdn.com/_next/image?url=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Johann_Joseph_Gassner.jpg/640px-Johann_Joseph_Gassner.jpg&w=640&q=50)
Johann Joseph Gassner
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Johann Joseph Gassner (22 August 1727 in Braz, near Bludenz, Vorarlberg – 1779 Pondorf, now part of Winklarn, Bavaria) was a noted exorcist.
![Thumb image](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Johann_Joseph_Gassner.jpg/640px-Johann_Joseph_Gassner.jpg)
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.[1] Henri Ellenberger, in his "Discovery of the Unconscious", placed the dispute between Gassner and Franz Anton Mesmer at the center of modern psychotherapy.[2]