Thurber on Mental Healers

A sort of psychologist.

“One time my mother went to the Chittenden Hotel to call on a woman mental healer who was lecturing in Columbus on the subject of ‘Harmonious Vibrations.’ She wanted to find out if it was possible to get harmonious vibrations into a dog.

‘He’s a large tan-colored Airedale,’ mother explained.

The woman said that she had never treated a dog but she advised my mother to hold the thought that he did not bite and would not bite. Mother was holding the thought the very next morning when Muggs got the iceman but she blamed that slip-up on the iceman.

‘If you didn’t think he would bite you, he wouldn’t,’ mother told him. He stomped out of the house in a terrible jangle of vibrations.”

James Thurber, The Dog That Bit People (1933).