History of Hypnosis
The beginnings of hypnosis is lost in the mists of prehistory. Shamans and "witch doctors" and other religious leaders use trance and hypnotic phenomena. My guess is that the cave paintings were an aid to visualization and were used for religious rituals which induced trance. Diodorus of Sicily writes, "The ancient Egyptian priests threw each other into trances." The first recorded use of hypnosis is the sleep temples of Egypt about 3000 years ago. The high priests would enter these temples in their full regalia and chant sacred chants and put the patients to sleep and suggested they be cured. These types of temples were later introduced to the Greek and Roman worlds. It is thought that the magi of Babylonia and Persia practiced some rituals which gave them control over the mind and body of men. Hippocrates believed in somnambulistic powers.
Paracelsus, the great physician of the Middle Ages, believed in a theory of double magnetism wherein he believed that magnetic fluid of a healthy body attracts the weaker and deteriorated magnet of an unhealthy one. The idea of usage of magnets (real or animal) increased until Mesmer who heralded in the beginning of modern hypnosis. At first he used magnets in the treatment of patients. Later he used his hands in the mistaken idea that his body had become magnetized. He managed to produce many cures and had a huge prosperous practice in Paris. However a royal commission discredited him and he returned to Vienna and continued a small practice.
The Marquis de Puysegur, initially a follower of Mesmer, discovered that the behaviors of individuals in trance were similar to those of sleep walkers. The Marquis named this induced trance condition Artificial Somnambulism.
The Abbe Faria argued that trance was a form of waking sleep that he named lucid sleep — not to be confused with lucid dreaming. The Abbe anticipated some of the modern concepts of hypnosis, including the idea that some persons are more susceptible to trance than others and that a good "magnetizer" actually succeeds by exerting his ability to concentrate the power of suggestion onto others.
Scientific hypnosis was introduced by James Braid, British surgeon who did much to divorce trance phenomenon from prevailing theories of animal magnetism. In 1841, when well established in a surgical practice at Manchester, Braid developed a keen interest in mesmerism, as hypnotism was then called. Proceeding with experiments, he rejected the popular notion that the ability to induce hypnosis is connected with the magical passage of a fluid or other influence from the operator to the patient. Instead, he adopted a physiological view that hypnosis is a kind of nervous sleep, induced by fatigue resulting from the intense concentration necessary for staring fixedly at a bright, inanimate object. Braid introduced the term "hypnosis" (from Hypnos the Greek God of sleep) in his book Neurypnology (1843). Interestingly he later realized that hypnosis is different from sleep and tried to change the term to mono-ideaism, but thankfully (for us) the term hypnosis had stuck. He was mainly interested in the therapeutic possibilities of hypnosis and reported successful treatment of diseased states such as paralysis, rheumatism, and aphasia. He hoped that hypnosis could be used to cure various seemingly incurable "nervous" diseases and also to alleviate the pain and anxiety of patients in surgery.
Following Braid’s pioneering work, Dr. Esdaile performed many operations in Calcutta, India with help of hypnosis as the anesthesia. He managed to cut the death rate from more than 40% to less than 5%. However, when he returned to Britain he was blackballed by the church and other surgeons. Soon afterward, chemical anesthesia was discovered and hypnosis went from medical practice to circuses and shows.
However, in the meanwhile, Bernheim and Liebeault formed the Nancy School in France. They wrote that hypnosis involved no physical forces but was a combination of psychologically mediated responses to suggestions. At about the same time, the Austrian physician Sigmund Freud visited France and was impressed by the therapeutic potential of hypnosis for neurotic disorders. On his return to Vienna he used hypnosis (with the collaboration of Joseph Breuer as the hypnotist) to help neurotics recall disturbing events that they had apparently forgotten. However, Freud had badly fitting false teeth and could not speak well. Thus he was not a good hypnotist and soon when he stopped his collaboration with Breuer, Freud dropped hypnosis in favor of free association.
There were so many important contributors to our field in this century. I will name a few and a quote or discovery: William W. Cook MD (1901): "Hypnotism is the most practical science of the age.... It does not require years of study to become a hypnotist for this great blessing to mankind is a natural endowment possessed by all...."
Emil Coué (1900s) : "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better." "All hypnosis is self-hypnosis."
Clark Hull (1933 authored Hypnosis and Suggestibility): "Anything that assumes trance causes trance."
George Estabrooks (1943): Very directive approach.
Leslie LeCron (1943): Ideomotor signals. Hypnotic depth.
Milton H. Erickson: Non-directive permissive approach – metaphors – telling stories. "Your patients will be your patients because their conscious minds are out of rapport with their unconscious minds." "I allow my patients to enter a trance in which ever way they desire." "When a client walks in I assume he brings in both his conscious and unconscious minds."
Dave Elman (1964): The Elman method.
Bandler and Grinder: NLP. "All communication is hypnosis.... I disagree, nothing is hypnosis; hypnosis doesn’t exist." "When we first started you could only practice hypnotherapy if you were an MD so we just gave it a new name NLP and did hypnosis."
Finally a most important date: 1958 – at last AMA accepts hypnosis as a useful tool within the tools available to medicine.