Thanks to its fantastical representation in movies, books and live entertainment, hypnosis, and ultimately Hypnotherapy, have been wrongly branded with many myths and misconceptions. Despite a history of clinical use, the stigma surrounding the method has tainted its legitimacy and labelled it as a esoteric or mystical.
Hypnosis has been around for thousands of years, with a history as rich and ancient as sorcery, magic, and medicine; but its scientific history began in the latter part of the 18th century with Franz Mesmer, a German physician. In 1774, Mesmer treated one of his patients Francisca Österlin for hysteria by having her swallow a concoction containing iron and then attaching magnets to parts of her body, producing what he called an “artificial tide”. Österlin claimed that she felt a mysterious fluid run through her body, after which her symptoms were relieved. Mesmer, however, didn’t believe the magnets had worked by themselves and asserted that he had contributed with his “animal magnetism”, resulting in him abandoning magnets altogether in favour of his own occult force.
In 1775, Mesmer was asked by the Munich Academy of Sciences to give his insight on the exorcisms carried out by the Austrian priest Johann Joseph Gassner. Whilst crediting Gassner for the sincerity of his beliefs, Mesmer argued that it was animal magnetism which produced the results, rather than a divine power. This clash between secular and religious beliefs resulted in the emergence of dynamic psychiatry.
Over time Mesmer was discredited for his occultist approach to medicine, but his method— known as mesmerism —continued to interest future medical practitioners, including Scottish surgeon James Braid. At a public performance by French magnetic demonstrator Charles Lafontaine in 1841, Braid went up on stage and examined the subjects of Lafontaine’s magnetism and concluded they were in a different state than himself, and after attending three of Lafontaine’s shows, he became convinced of the legitimacy of animal magnetism.
Braid took it upon himself to explore the principles behind Lafontaine’s practice, but rather than operate on other people, Braid chose a self-experimental route and implemented it upon himself. His successful self-hypnosis disproved the need for the gaze or ‘magnetism’ of an operator, but instead only required the subject to have a fixed vision; establishing what we know today as hypnosis.
The father of modern hypnotherapy, however, was French physician Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault, who explored the mesmeric technique whilst studying medicine at Strasbourg. After having a series of successes treating patients for free with hypnotherapy, his book Du Sommeil et Des Etats Analogues, which documented his findings, caught the attention of his fellow student Hippolyte Bernheim, and together they founded the Nancy School School of Hypnosis
Sigmund Freud was also impressed with the demonstrated possibility of hypnosis after having attended a performance of Hansen the “magnetist” and afterwards spent four months at the Salpêtrière hospital examining the potential of hypnotism. His belief in its effectiveness was further strengthened when his friend Joseph Breuer was employing hypnosis to regress hysterical patients in order to trace the origin of their symptoms such as forgotten traumas and memories.
According to his reports, hypnosis for therapeutic purposes was the “principal instrument of [his] work” during the first few years of his career as a physician, but by 1889 he recognised the limitations of hypnosis. He was frustrated that not all patients could be hypnotised, and he suspected a degree of illegitimacy running through the results of hypnosis patients, stating that many could, “suggest to himself whatever he pleases” (Freud, 1917, pp.451-2). Whilst hypnosis was appealing for its ease and quick results, he claimed the process was capricious and impermanent due to the heavy reliance on the harmony between patient and therapist and offered little to no insight into the dynamics of the patient’s problem. However, Freud openly credited hypnosis for paving the way to psychoanalysis and stressed that all psychoanalysts should “not forget how much encouragement and theoretical clarification we owe to it” (Freud, 1917/1963, p.462)
*** Above excerpt is created by Achology – Academy of Modern Applied Psychology – for the hypnotherapy practitioner program.