Hypnosis in various forms has been around for thousands of years. As a health tool it seems to have roots in ancient India, Egypt and Greece, where people were taken to sleep temples to be placed in a sleep like state, and cured by hypnotic suggestion. However it’s documented history is relatively short, and the scientific definition and exploration into uses is relatively recent.
Dr Franz Anton Mesmer, an Austrian physician, was the forefather of hypnosis. He developed the concept of magnetism. He claimed to be able to heal people with magnets, and later, with the magnetism in his own hands. When passed over a diseased body this was meant to unblock the magnetic flow. This led to magnetic somnambulism, which was basically a hypnotic state. Dr Bema, in 1837, started to explore hypnotism and surgery. James Esdaile used mesmeric sleep as anesthetic in the 1840’s. Major operations were undertaken with little or no pain.
In 1843, James Braid, a Scottish surgeon who was working in Manchester, was intrigued with the idea of mesmerism and he published his theories and coined the phrase ‘hypnotism’. He had heard of Oriental meditation techniques, and drew parallels between hypnotism and yoga meditation. He found that some subjects would go into a trance like state if they fixated their eyes on a bright object, like a silver watch. He also demonstrated how a single word could put subjects back into a hypnotised state.
Ambrose-August Liebeault was a psychologist who worked mainly with the poor, using hypnotism to cure their woes instead of medicine. A professor who visited him to expose him as a fraud, Hippolyte Bernheim, was later convinced of the practice’s validity. He regarded hypnosis as a special form of sleeping. Clark Hull later claimed that hypnosis was a normal part of human nature, and identified the imagination as an important factor.
It wasn’t until 1955 that the British Medical Association supported the therapeutic use of hypnotism, and the American Medical Association in 1958.
Today hypnosis is used in medicine, in dentistry, and in therapy. It is used to help people lose weight and stop smoking, in any area where suggestion to the subconscious mind proves beneficial. Care should be taken, especially when using hypnosis to treat people with traumatic circumstances. Misuse can lead to ‘false memory syndrome’, as it can be difficult hen under hypnosis to separate fact from fiction.