A Brief History of Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy
Hypnotism as a tool for health seems to have originated with the Hindus of ancient India who often took their sick to sleep temples to be cured by hypnotic suggestion as also found to be the case in ancient Egypt and Greece. Hypnotic-like inductions were used to place the individual in a sleep-like state, although it is now accepted that hypnosis is different from sleep.
Anton Mesmer theorized in the 18th century that disease was caused by imbalances of a physical force. He would put people in a trance like state to help them overcome their disturbances. This was called mesmerism. The term Hypnosis comes from the Greek 'ypnos' which means sleep because of the Trance State. However Hypnosis is not sleep because the subject stays alert, can talk and move, and the brain waves differ.
Mesmer believed in the mysterious "magnetic fluid" which filled the whole universe and that any upset of the proper balance of this fluid in the body could cause a disease. Mesmer's enemies tried to discredit him in spite or because of the fact that he performed numerous spectacular healings.
The Marquis de Puysegur (1751-1825), a pupil of Mesmers, used 'animal magnetism' on a young peasant who entered into a state of sleep while still being able to communicate with Puysegur and respond to his suggestions. When the peasant 'awoke' he could remember nothing of what had occurred. Puysegur thought that the will of the person and the operators' actions were important factors in the success or failure of the 'magnetism', in other words psychological influences were extremely important in the whole process.
It was in 1841 that Dr. James Braid would bring mesmerism back but this time be as hypnosis. Braid coined hypnosis from the Latin word Hypnos which happened to be the Greek god of sleep. Dr. Braid would go on to discover the fixed gaze technique that could cause a sleeplike state of mind. Many more people would follow suit and in the twentieth century Milton Erickson would begin to use hypnosis in his psychiatric practice. From there it was in 1958 that the American Medical Association accepted hypnosis as a medical form of treatment.
Braid, as many scientists and physicians before and after him, recognized in hypnosis certain legitimate psychological phenomena of interest,
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but requiring much more systematic investigation to understand. Mesmer had come to believe that it was not physical forces via magnets but he himself that was producing the cures he produced. Others not long after Mesmer soon began to suspect that the human imagination played a much larger role in the process than did any physical forces or capacities of the mesmerist. This was important, because mesmerism went through a number of periods of great disrepute due to associations with occultism and various kinds of blatant charlatanism.
A split arose between those interested in hypnosis as a subject of scientific investigation and as an adjunct to medical treatment, and those who considered it a tool for personal or spiritual fulfillment, or for esoteric investigations of religious or 'magical' nature. Faith healing, mind cure, and Christian Science were all heavily influenced by hypnosis, and derived much of their impetus in the late 19th century from the reputation of Mesmer and later mesmerists. Various followers of the highly influential Theosophical Society and of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn magical fraternity found great affinity for the magnetic theories of mesmerism, which they often interpreted in a semi-metaphorical way rather than as literal electromagnetism.
Around this same time Jean Martin Charcot was demonstrating his views at the Salpetriere Hospital that hypnosis was a pathological state akin to hysteria, the two phenomena being interchangeable. Following conflict between the two schools, Bernheim’s view was accepted and Charcot discredited. However, two of Charcot’s pupils were to have a huge impact on psychological medicine.
Yet, even in this climate of opinion, there were a few who continued to work therapeutically with hypnosis. One of these was Auguste Ambroise Li?beault (1823-1904), a physician in rural Pont-Saint-Vincent, a French village in the region of Nancy. In 1866, Li?beault published his Du sommeil et des tats analogues considrs surtout au point de vue de l'action du moral sur le physique. In the Du sommeil, Libeault argued that concentration of attention on the idea of sleep induces the hypnotic state through the power of suggestion and that the therapeutic effects of hypnosis are, in effect, suggestive phenomena.
Learn hypnosis by reviewing these other articles on hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis:
