Couchoud, as a psychiatrist, accepted the idea that a religious movement could originate with psychological events such as visions, interpreted by imagination, very close to the symptoms of some psychiatric diseases. As a matter of psychiatric interest, he wanted to visit a French female "mystic" ("mystique"), Marthe Robin (1902-1981), not far from Vienne, where he had retired. She was a female peasant, paralyzed since 1928 following undocumented mental traumas, and spending her life in bed, in a dark room, reportedly without food. She had claimed visions of the Virgin Mary, and having received the stigmata in 1930.