Hypnotic Pioneers

The modern father of hypnosis was an Austrian physician, Franz Mesmer (1734 - 1815). He believed that there was a quasi-magnetic fluid in the very air we breathe and that the bodies’ nerves somehow absorbed this fluid. As a doctor, his main concern was how to effectively treat his patients, and he considered disease to be caused via a blockage of the circulation of this magnetic fluid in the blood and the nervous system. Curing disease would, in his view, involve correcting the circulation of this liquid.

Initially, he used a magnet, and later his hand, which was passed over the diseased body in an attempt to unblock the magnetic flow. The hand (and later the eyes) was believed to unblock the fluid by increasing its amount and flow as his hand passed over the affected area. The term 'animal magnetism' was born, and the procedure referred to as Mesmerism.

Another method he used was to fill a large tub with water, containing bottles of iron filings. Protruding out of the tub were iron rods which the common-folk held onto. Many of the patients had violent seizures or fell into deep sleeps which could cure many different kinds of ailments.

Mesmer became very famous in Paris at that time and the French government, at the suggestion of Marie Antoinette, offered him a life pension and enough money to set up a clinic. Because Mesmer refused to allow the government representatives to supervise the clinic a huge controversy raged and in 1784 the King of France appointed a Commission to investigate mesmerism.

The report concluded that animal magnetism and the magnetic field were figments of the imagination and Mesmer’s practices and theories were regarded as worthless. The fact that many people had been cured of their ailments seemed of no consequence.

Another forward thinker was John Elliotson (1791 - 1868), a professor at London University, who is famous for introducing the stethoscope into England. He also tried to champion the cause of mesmerism, but was forced to resign. He continued to give demonstrations of mesmerism in his own home to any interested parties, and this led to a steady increase in literature on the subject.

It wasn't until 1843 that the terms 'hypnotism' and 'hypnosis' were coined by James Braid (1795-1860), a Scottish surgeon working in Manchester. He found that some experimental subjects could go into a trance if they simply fixated their eyes on a bright object, like a silver watch.

He believed that some sort of neurophysiological process was involved and that hypnosis was very useful in disorders where no organic origin to the problem could be identified (e.g. headaches, skin problems etc.) He showed that a single stimulus (e.g. a word or an object) was enough to re-hypnotize his subjects.

The swinging watch, which many people associate with hypnosis, was popular in the early days as an object of fixation. Following his discovery that it was not necessary to go through all the palaver of mesmeric passes, Braid published a book in which he proposed that the phenomenon now be called hypnotism.

Meanwhile, a British surgeon in India, James Esdaile (1808 - 1859), recognized the enormous benefits of hypnotism for pain relief and performed hundreds of major operations using hypnosis as his only anesthetic. When he returned to England he tried to convince the medical establishment of his findings, but they laughed at him and declared that pain was character-building (although they were biased in favor of the new chemical anesthetics, which they could control and, of course, charge more money for). So hypnosis became, and remains to this day, an 'alternative' form of medicine.

Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939) was also interested in hypnosis, initially using it extensively in his work. He eventually abandoned the practice - for several reasons, not least that he wasn't any good at it! He favored psychoanalysis, which involves the patient lying on a couch and the analyst doing a lot of listening. He believed that the evolution of the self was a difficult process of working through stages of sexual development, with repressed memories of traumatic incidents the main cause of psychological problems.

Freud's early rejection of hypnosis delayed the development of hypnotherapy, turning the focus of psychology away from hypnosis and towards psychoanalysis. However, things picked up in the 1930's in America with the publication of the book “Hypnosis and Suggestibility” by psychologist Clark Hull (1884-1952), who demystified hypnosis saying that it was essentially a normal part of human nature (1933). The important factor was the subject's imagination - some people were more responsive or suggestible' than others to hypnosis.

During WWI, between 1914 and 1918, the Germans realized that hypnosis could help treat shell-shock quickly. It allowed soldiers to return to the trenches almost immediately. A formularized version of hypnosis, autogenic training, was devised by Dr. Schultz.

After WWII, Milton Erickson (1901-1980) of the US, had a major impact on the practice and understanding of hypnosis and the mind. He theorized that hypnosis is a state of mind that all of us are normally entering spontaneously and frequently.

See other websites about Hypnosis

www.nlp-consortium.com

www.erotic-hypnosis.org