History of Hypnosis

Spiritual Perspective: ~3500 BCE: - shamans, witch doctors, priests etc.
Power was solely in the control of educated and gifted priests and doctors.
Trance induced via tribal dancing, music, superstitious artefacts and mystical rituals.
Sleep temples in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, where the sick would sleep in the temple whilst the priest would perform healing rituals. Healing in the form of a dream.

Religious Perspective: ~3500 BCE: - omnipotent higher being
Power was somewhat within man’s domain, but ultimately from a higher being.
Trance induced via prayer, meditation and belief in the healing power of God.

Pre-scientific Perspective: ~1000 BCE – 1700 CE: - beginning of self-direction
The concept of mind over matter became an accepted notion. Power is starting to be more within man.
Fakirs in India would enter self-induced trance and become able to withstand incredible levels of pain and perform other seemingly impossible feats.
Jean-Joseph Gassner, a priest, instructed a patient how to heal herself. This was the first explicit reference to the individual’s power to heal himself.

Scientific Perspective: 18th century – 20th century: - self-healing based on scientific reasoning
Franz Anton Mesmer used magnetic plates to influence what he called, ‘Animal Magnetism’ allowing it to flow normally, thus healing his patients. Hence the term, ‘Mesmerising’
Based on the scientific principles of magnets at the time.
Patients could learn to manipulate the ‘Animal Magnetism’ themselves with practice, but only with the guidance of the mesmerist.
Abbe de Faria, observed that the power lied within the subject. His induction was only one word – sleep.
James Braid in 1846 criticised Mesmer’s claims as being non-scientific. Instead he claimed it was due to the power of suggestion and coined it ‘hypnotism’.
Self-hypnosis observed but not understood.
Albert Moll claimed that hypnotic trance was on a continuum of consciousness including the waking state and that speech was the most powerful method of suggestion.
Stage hypnosis became popular at the end of the 19th century.

Medical Perspective: - 19th century – present: - Self-hypnosis
Self-hypnosis observed by Braid.
Auguste Liebult around 1850, used verbal suggestions with his patients. He told the patients the power was within them and believed that anyone can influence their own body by focusing attention and desiring the body to heal.
Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893), the father of modern neurology, believed, mistakenly, hypnosis was a pathological condition, hysteria. Sigmund Freud was a disciple of Charcot.
Pierre Janet (1859-1947) coined the term ‘subconscious’, for those thoughts, beliefs and fixed attitudes that are dissociated from awareness. He is considered a pioneer of modern psychotherapy.
Professor Bernheim, who was vehemently against Charcot’s views, emphasised the power of suggestion and the power of words to influence.
Josef Breuer (1842-1925) noted that patients with hysteria would spontaneously slip into hypnotic states. Breuer developed free association as a cure for hypnosis.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) the father of psychodynamics, learnt under both Charcot and Breuer. He was originally a hypnotherapist and published a book on it, but later abandoned hypnotherapy due to frustration that he was not successful in hypnotising everyone.

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