Statue of Abbé Faria

Bronze of the Goan-born pioneer of modern hypnosis, mid-trance

The bronze statue in front of the Adil Shah Palace catches Abbé Faria mid-trance — he leans forward over a kneeling woman, his hand extended, in the moment of inducing what he called sommeil lucide or "lucid sleep." The pose is theatrical and unmistakable; the statue is one of the most photographed monuments in central Panaji.

Faria is a curiously underappreciated Goan figure — born here in 1756, ordained a priest, exiled to Portugal for revolutionary sympathies, and finally writing the first serious treatise on hypnotism in Paris in 1819. Dumas borrowed his name for Edmond Dantes's tutor in The Count of Monte Cristo. A short five minutes' detour from the Church of the Immaculate Conception.

things to do sight
A story
Abbé José Custódio de Faria, born in Candolim in 1756, became one of the founders of modern hypnotism — half a century before Mesmer's practices were renamed and systematised, Faria was teaching what he called "lucid sleep" in Parisian salons. Alexandre Dumas borrowed his name for the wise old prisoner in *The Count of Monte Cristo*. The statue, by the Goan sculptor Ramchandra Pandurang Kamat, was unveiled in 1945.

Other places in Things to Do