Annie Payson Call (1853âÂÂ1940) was an American author of advice literature on nervous health and mindâÂÂbody composure. Based in Waltham, Massachusetts, she wrote for Ladies' Home Journal and published widely read books from the 1890s to the 1910s.
Call grew up in New England in an intellectual environment shaped by liberal Protestant and Swedenborgian currents. Religious-studies scholar Catherine L. Albanese places her among late-nineteenth-century American âÂÂharmonialâ writers influenced, directly or indirectly, by Emanuel SwedenborgâÂÂs doctrine of correspondence between spirit, mind, and body. This metaphysical background framed her concern with nervous health and repose as part of moral and spiritual discipline rather than medical treatment.
Her early worksâÂÂRegeneration of the Body (1888) and Power Through Repose (1891)âÂÂoffer practical counsel on muscular and mental relaxation, conscious breathing, and the quieting of will, addressed to readers struggling with overstrain and anxiety. According to historian of yoga Mark Singleton, CallâÂÂs writings exemplify a form of âÂÂproprioceptive therapyâ that sought harmony between body and mind through awareness and suggestion, anticipating later twentieth-century methods of guided relaxation and âÂÂmeditative movement.â Singleton argues that this popular pedagogy of relaxation anticipated or paralleled later twentieth-century techniques such as guided imagery and progressive relaxation which was presented as âÂÂyogic relaxationâÂÂ.
Scholars also situate CallâÂÂs program within the broader late-nineteenth-century culture of suggestion and âÂÂnervousâ therapeutics. There is no evidence that she trained in a medical school of hypnosis; rather, her emphasis on muscular release, attentive quiet, and the gentle use of suggestion for habit-reeducation reflects the popular diffusion of ideas debated in the Paris and Nancy schools and in Anglo-American hypnotic literature of the period. In addition, historians have located her pedagogy at the intersection of the late-nineteenth-century François Delsarte movement and contemporary suggestion/hypnosis debates. J. M. Andrick analyses the Lasell Seminary dispute over CallâÂÂs âÂÂnerve-trainingâ classes as a case of âÂÂDelsartean hypnosisâÂÂâÂÂa historiographical label for the blend of Delsartean posture/relaxation work with mild suggestion and guided imagery in womenâÂÂs education, not a term used by Call herself. Andrick further argues that the Lasell episode illuminates how such pedagogies fed into early twentieth-century relaxation training programs.
Call presented her techniques as means to self-control and everyday composure. Her tone is non-technical and moral-didactic, oriented to middle-class readers concerned with âÂÂnervesâ and overstrain.
Source: New General Catalog of Old Books and Authors
Singleton identifies Call as an early and influential popularizer of guided relaxation in the North Atlantic world, noting conceptual affinities with later mindâÂÂbody education and with some twentieth-century Western reinterpretations of yogic rest practices; he does not present Call as a source in Indian premodern yoga but as part of a modern Western genealogy of relaxation pedagogy that subsequently was presented as yogic. Albanese reads Call as representative of what she calls American harmonial religionâÂÂs emphasis on composure and practical spirituality rather than as a clinical authority.