History
A short history of hypnotherapy
People have been exploring trance and focused attention for a very long time. Here is how we got from ancient healing temples to modern brain scans, in plain words, with sources at the bottom.
What Is Hypnosis?
Hypnosis is a natural state of mind with special identifying characteristics as follows:
- An extraordinary quality of mental, physical and emotional relaxation.
- An emotionalized desire to satisfy the suggested behavior. The subject feels like following the hypnotist's instructions, directions, and suggestions, except those that generate conflict with the subject's values; i.e., character attitudes, religious beliefs, and moral principles.
- The organism becomes self-regulating as the trance produces normalization of the central nervous system.
- Heightened and selective sensitivity to stimuli perceived by the five physical senses and the basic perceptions.
- Immediate lowering of psychic defenses.
- Lack of response to irrelevant, external stimuli.
Trance Defined
Trance is a natural state of awareness which anyone can have under the right circumstances and with the right hypnotist.
Unlike ordinary conscious awareness, which involves a constantly shifting focus of attention, the hypnotic state of mind (trance) involves a focusing of internal attention and an elimination of external distractions.
In hypnosis the subject is neither unconscious nor asleep—it is a special state of awareness in which there is a heightened receptivity to ideas and understandings and an increased willingness to respond to either positively or negatively to those ideas.
The field of focused conscious awareness narrows, and external stimuli (other than those given by the hypnotist) lose their significance.
In effect, the subject reduces contact with the external world except for the relationship with the hypnotist.
As subjects give up their focus on external stimuli and begin to focus on their internal world, they become less dependent upon their external reality to provide meaning and structure to their perceptions and responses.
History on Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy
Ancient roots
Hypnosis and even Hypnotherapy have been around for a very, very long time. The first written record is said to be in Ebers Papyrus, which is an ancient Egyptian record written in hieratic writing, and dates back thousands of years. This document contains over 700 magical formulas and remedies, and the mention of hypnosis is prevalent throughout the document. Some Egyptian hieroglyphics pertaining to hypnosis date back to 3000 B.C.
The Aboriginal people of Australia have also used hypnosis for 1000's of years. They refer to this state of mind as dream time, and also use techniques designed to create out of body experiences.
Elements of hypnosis are also seen in Persian magi, Celtic Druids, Chinese teachers of religion, Hindu Fakirs, African witch doctors, and in Shamanism. Has anyone heard of Aesculapius, the Greek god of medicine? The Greeks, in ancient times, erected temples in his name where priests spoke to patients in a sleep-like state. Apparently, the patients interpreted this as the gods speaking to them. Do you think this might have sped up their healing?
There is also evidence that Group Hypnosis began with ancient civilizations. Many of the group rituals included mass chanting and meditation to a steady drum beat and were also often parts of religious ceremonies. The techniques that we have for you today do not include drum beats or chanting, but they are ancient techniques.
Hypnos and the Greeks
The actual word Hypnosis comes from Hypnos, who is the Greek god of sleeping. In the past, it was thought that to put a person into a state of hypnosis was to put them to sleep. In modern times we know that hypnosis is not sleep, as the brain waves have been measured in both states and have been proven to be different. Also, someone in hypnosis can stay alert, and can talk and move. But, back to Hypnos. In ancient Greek, ceremonies and mysticism were used to provide even more reason for the people to believe in the temples and healers ability to heal. According to Greek Legend, the gods were looking for a place to hide the very greatest power that they held. They discussed placing it at the top of the highest mountain, but that was ruled out as they figured man would discover it there. Many other places were suggested, but none seemed safe enough.
Finally Hypnos suggested that the greatest gift be hidden in each of us because we would never think to look inside ourselves for it.
We should also mention the Greek Physician Hippocrates, who lived from 460-377 B.C. Hippocrates maintained that the brain controlled the entire body, as well as being the seat of disease. Think about it for a minute. I bet even your own parents and grandparents have used sayings like "you're going to make yourself sick with all that worrying or stress." How many religious doctrines use the power of positive thought and faith as a way to better health?
Freud and the 1920s revival
In the first half of the 20th century, hypnotherapy fell out of favor and vogue in Sigmund Freud's time, as he preferred psychoanalysis, dream interpretation, and free association. Freud actually rejected hypnosis as the tool to unlock repressed memory. However, by the 1920's people were beginning to use hypnotic techniques due largely to the work of Emile Coue, Anton Mesmer, James Braid, and Milton Erickson.
Émile Coué
The first of these guys Emile Coue, was originally a pharmacist who made a study of the psychology of suggestion in France. In the 1920's he did exhaustive studies on the effects of suggestion, and his work and studies actually brought hypnotherapy back into vogue in Europe. Some of his most famous techniques are: repeating "every day in every way I am getting better and better." He also said if someone thinks they want to do something, but they can't-the harder they try, the less they will be able to. He also said "when the imagination and the will are in conflict the imagination always wins." Coue was an amazing success, with patients lined up around the block to see him.
Mesmer and the Franklin commission
Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) theorized that disease was caused by imbalances of a physical force, called animal magnetism, which affects various parts of the body. He was describing the universal energy connection between man and the world. Oftentimes using hands on healing (which had a huge impact on energy work today) Mesmer believed cures could be achieved by redistributing this magnetic fluid.
In 1784, a french royal commission chaired by Benjamin Franklin concluded that the effects of mesmerism, while genuine in many cases, were achieved by means of imagination and not by any physical force. In the course of their proceedings, the commissioners conducted what may well be the first controlled psychological experiments.
While Mesmer's theory was discredited, his practices lived on. A major transition occurred when one of Mesmer's followers magnetised a young shepherd. Instead of undergoing magnetic crisis, he fell into a somnambulistic (sleeplike) state in which he was responsive to instructions, and from which he awoke with an amnesia for what he had done. Later in the 19th century, the successful use of mesmeric somnambulism as an anesthetic for surgery (although ether and chloroform soon proved to be more reliably effective.)
James Braid
Dr. James Braid, a Scottish surgeon-is considered the father of Hypnosis. In 1843 he rejected animal magnetism. He rejected the term Mesmerism and came up with Hypnotism. He insisted that hypnosis had nothing to do with the operators charisma but rather the "fixity of vision" of the subject. He had great success with establishing self hypnosis and hypnosis on others using his silver watch eye fixation technique.
Carl Jung and Alchemical Hypnotherapy
Carl Jung (1875-1961) was a student and colleague of Freud's. He rejected Freud's psychoanalytical approach and developed his own interests namely the concept of collective unconscious and the use of archetypes. Though he didn't actively use hypnosis, he encouraged his patients to use active imagination to change old memories. He often used the concept of the inner guide in healing work. He believed that the inner mind could be accessed through tools like the I'Ching and astrology. Jung was a modern proponent of Alchemy-the medieval art of turning lead into gold. He used Alchemy as a metaphor for transmuting lead, or the base material of our lives (emotional debris, pain and trauma), into gold (the realization of self and transformation of consciousness).
Alchemical Hypnotherapy has been developed based on Jung's concepts. Using archetypes and inner guides, you gain access to your inner wisdom (gold) and are able to transform (base metal) past trauma by connecting with your inner archetypes anytime you need to.
Milton Erickson
Milton Erickson (1901-1980) developed many tips and techniques in hypnosis that were very different from what was commonly practiced. His style is known as an Ericksonian Hypnosis, which has greatly influenced many modern schools of hypnosis. "At the heart of the Ericksonian utilization approach is a humorous, respectful, and loving acceptance of the client's perceptions and behavior." (Dolan 1985) This includes problematic behavior. It's crucial for the therapist to accept problematic behavior as legitimate behavior, then to communicate back to the client in a nonjudgmental stance. Milton Erickson once said "a proper therapeutic goal is one that aids the patient to function as adequately and constructively as possible under those internal and external handicaps that constitute a part of his life situation and needs."
Erickson used hypnotherapy almost as a magician uses distraction to get the client in trance without them really realizing it's happening. Erickson would use Indirect Techniques and Conversational Hypnosis. He pioneered the idea that common experiences of wonderment, engrossment, and confusion are, in reality, just kinds of trance. And that we enter in and out of trance several times throughout the day without realizing it.
Dave Elman
Dave Elman was a radio personality as well as an author to a book entitled Hypnotherapy. Elman worked with many doctors and dentists and would place someone under hypnosis in under 3 minutes. The first heart operation using hypnosis rather than normal anesthesia was performed by his students with Dave Elman in the operating room as "coach." Dave Elman is most famous for his rapid induction techniques.
Adapted from John’s training materials at the California School of Hypnotherapy.
A longer timeline
Ancient times
Healing sleep in Greek temples
In ancient Greece, people looking for healing went to temples of Asclepius, the god of medicine, and slept there. Priests offered words of advice and comfort to the sleepers, and patients took those words as the god speaking to them in their dreams. Scholars often point to these temples as an early root of hypnosis, even though nobody at the time would have called it that.
1770s
Mesmer and “animal magnetism”
Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815) was a German-born physician who trained in Vienna. He believed an invisible fluid flowed through all living things, and that illness came when its flow was blocked. He called this force “animal magnetism.” After being discredited in Vienna, he moved to Paris in 1778, where his group sessions around a tub of “magnetized” water became the fashion.
1784
Benjamin Franklin’s commission puts it to the test
In March 1784, King Louis XVI appointed a commission to investigate. Its members included Benjamin Franklin, the chemist Antoine Lavoisier, the astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly, and the physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. They tested the method as practiced by Mesmer’s follower Charles d’Eslon, using blindfolds and pretend treatments. People reacted when they believed they were being magnetized, and felt nothing when they were magnetized without knowing it.
In their report, signed August 11, 1784, the commissioners concluded there was no evidence for a magnetic fluid. The effects came from touch, imagination, and imitation. Their tests are often described as some of the earliest controlled experiments.
1813–1819
Abbé Faria and the power of expectation
José Custódio de Faria, a Catholic priest born in Goa, India, began giving public demonstrations in Paris in 1813. He dropped the elaborate rituals of the magnetizers. Instead, he asked people to close their eyes and focus on sleep, then gave one firm command: “Sleep.” Faria argued that the trance came from the person’s own expectation and readiness, not from a force flowing out of the operator. His book on what he called “lucid sleep” came out in 1819, the year he died.
1841–1843
James Braid gives it a name
James Braid was a Scottish surgeon practicing in Manchester, England. In November 1841 he went, skeptical, to a demonstration by the traveling magnetizer Charles Lafontaine, and then began running experiments of his own. He concluded that the effects came from intense focus, such as staring at one bright object, and not from any magnetic fluid.
He called the state “neuro-hypnotism,” or nervous sleep, after Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep, and the word was soon shortened to “hypnotism.” His 1843 book Neurypnology spread the new term. Later he realized it was not really sleep and suggested “monoideism,” meaning focus on a single idea, but the older name stuck.
1845–1846
Surgery under mesmerism in India
James Esdaile, a Scottish surgeon with the East India Company, worked at a hospital in Hooghly, near Calcutta (today Kolkata). In April 1845 he began using mesmerism to spare patients pain during operations, and went on to perform many more surgeries this way. A government committee came to observe his work in 1846, and that same year he published Mesmerism in India. Chemical anesthetics like ether and chloroform soon replaced the method, because they worked faster and more reliably.
1880s
Charcot and the Nancy school disagree
In Paris, the famous neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot studied hypnosis at the Salpêtrière hospital. He saw it as tied to hysteria, a sign of a nervous system disorder. In the city of Nancy, the physicians Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault and Hippolyte Bernheim disagreed. They argued that hypnosis works through suggestion, a normal human response rather than a sign of illness.
By the 1890s the Nancy school had become the leading voice in hypnotherapy, and suggestion is still central to how hypnosis is understood today.
1885–1895
Freud tries hypnosis, then moves on
A young Viennese doctor named Sigmund Freud went to Paris in 1885 to study with Charcot, and later watched Bernheim at work in Nancy. Back in Vienna he used hypnosis with patients, and in 1895 he and his colleague Josef Breuer published Studies on Hysteria.
Freud later wrote that he “soon came to dislike” hypnosis. He replaced it with free association, asking patients to say whatever came to mind, and that became the heart of psychoanalysis. Because Freud was so influential, his turn away from hypnosis carried a lot of weight.
1914–1945
Two world wars
During World War I and World War II, some doctors used hypnosis to help treat soldiers with combat stress, known then as “shell shock” or “combat neurosis.” It was one of the ways hypnosis stayed in medical use after Freud turned away from it.
1949–1964
Dave Elman teaches doctors
Dave Elman (born 1900) started out as a vaudeville performer and stage hypnotist known for very fast inductions, and later became a radio host. In 1949, a group of physicians who had seen his methods asked him to teach them. He went on to teach hypnosis to physicians and dentists, while making clear that he taught technique and did not practice medicine himself. His 1964 book Findings in Hypnosis, later republished as Hypnotherapy, is still regarded as a classic.
1950s–1970s
Milton Erickson’s gentle, indirect style
Milton H. Erickson (1901–1980) was an American psychiatrist often called the father of modern clinical hypnosis. Rather than giving commands, he used a natural, conversational, indirect style fitted to each person, now known as Ericksonian hypnosis. In 1957 he and colleagues founded the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, and he served as its first president.
1955 and 1958
Medical associations take it seriously
In April 1955 the British Medical Association released a report on the medical use of hypnotism. As the Manchester Guardian reported at the time, the committee found that hypnotism had a definite, if small, place in medicine. It said hypnotism could sometimes be the treatment of choice in certain psychosomatic conditions, had some use in surgery and dentistry when there was reason to avoid anesthetics, and should be taught to medical students along with its limits and dangers.
In September 1958 the American Medical Association’s Council on Mental Health published its own report, “Medical Use of Hypnosis,” in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It backed hypnosis as a proper tool for trained physicians and dentists and encouraged more research and training. Both reports stressed that it belongs in the hands of properly trained professionals.
2016
A look inside the hypnotized brain
At Stanford University, psychiatrist David Spiegel and his team used brain scans (fMRI) to watch 57 people during guided hypnosis. Of those, 36 were highly hypnotizable and 21 were not. Only in the highly hypnotizable group, and only during hypnosis, the researchers saw three changes: less activity in an area that keeps watch for what might need our attention, stronger links between areas that help process and control what is happening in the body, and weaker links between areas involved in doing something and areas involved in reflecting on ourselves.
It is one study, and researchers still do not agree on a single theory of what hypnosis is. But work like this is helping science understand it better.
Where this leaves us
Hypnotherapy has come a long way from tubs of “magnetized” water. It now rests on an idea that Faria, Braid, and the Nancy doctors each reached in their own way: focused attention and suggestion can help a person work on goals they choose. That is the tradition I trained in as a Clinical Certified Hypnotherapist.
Please know: hypnotherapy is not medical or psychological treatment, and it does not replace care from a licensed doctor or therapist. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Hypnosis”. www.britannica.com
- John F. Kihlstrom, University of California, Berkeley, “Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy” (encyclopedia chapter, PDF). www.ocf.berkeley.edu
- National Geographic, “Was this hypnotic health craze an elaborate hoax or a medical breakthrough?” (Mesmer, 2019). www.nationalgeographic.com
- Founders Online, U.S. National Archives, “Report of the Royal Commission to Investigate Animal Magnetism” (1784). founders.archives.gov
- American Journal of Psychiatry, “Abbé Faria (1756–1819): From Lucid Sleep to Hypnosis” (2016). psychiatryonline.org
- Campbell Perry, “The Abbé Faria: A Neglected Figure in the History of Hypnosis,” in Hypnosis at its Bicentennial (Springer, 1978). link.springer.com
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “James Braid”. www.britannica.com
- Lindsay B. Yeates, “James Braid (II): Mesmerism, Braid’s Crucial Experiment, and Braid’s Discovery of Neuro-Hypnotism” (UNSW). unsworks.unsw.edu.au
- JSTOR Daily, “The Mesmeric Dr. James Esdaile”. daily.jstor.org
- Wellcome Collection, James Esdaile, Mesmerism in India (1846). wellcomecollection.org
- Wikipedia, “History of hypnosis”. en.wikipedia.org
- Library of Congress, “Sigmund Freud: Conflict & Culture” exhibition, The Individual: Therapy. loc.gov
- Sigmund Freud, “The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis,” Lecture 2 (1910), Classics in the History of Psychology, York University. psychclassics.yorku.ca
- Dave Elman Hypnosis Institute, “Dave Elman” biography. www.elmanhypnosis.com
- American Journal of Psychiatry, “Milton Hyland Erickson, 1901–1980” (2005). psychiatryonline.org
- Erickson Biography, “About”. www.ericksonbiography.com
- The Guardian archive, “From the archive, 22 April 1955: The medical value of hypnotism”. www.theguardian.com
- PubMed record, “Medical use of hypnosis,” JAMA 168(2):186–189, September 13, 1958. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- The New York Times archive, “Hypnosis Therapy Backed by A.M.A.” (September 12, 1958). www.nytimes.com
- Stanford Bio-X, “Study identifies brain areas altered during hypnotic trances” (2016). biox.stanford.edu
- Jiang, White, Greicius, Waelde & Spiegel, “Brain Activity and Functional Connectivity Associated with Hypnosis,” Cerebral Cortex (2017). academic.oup.com
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