A history of hypnosis

History of Hypnosis
Daniel Olson

History of Hypnosis - Daniel Olson, Hypnosis
The History Of Hypnosis
Group Hypnosis began with ancient civilizations. Many group rituals, such
as mass chanting and meditation to a steady drum beat were parts of
religious ceremonies. There was healing of the mind before any medical
practice.
The term Hypnosis comes from the Greek 'ypnos' which means sleep
because of the Trance State. However Hypnosis is not sleep because the
subject stays alert, can talk and move, and the brain waves differ.

The rst type of hypnosis to be accepted and experimented with was
animal hypnosis. In the 1600's, people calmed chickens hypnotically by
various means, such as balancing wood shavings on their beaks or tying
their heads to the ground and drawing a line with chalk in front of their
beaks. In France, farmers learned to hypnotize hens to sit on eggs not their
own. In the mid 1800's in Germany, traveling shows went from town to
town with birds, rabbits, frogs, salamanders and others. In Manchester, a
famed event was LaFountaine hypnotizing a lion. In the late 1800's,
Hungarian hypnotist, Volgyesi hypnotized all the animals at the Budapest
zoo. Scientists and biologists such as Preyer, Verworn and Emile Mesmet
studied animal re exes (like paralysis from fear) that might cause such
phenomena.
B. Danilewsky (from the famed Salpetriere) experimented with animal
hypnosis and studied its physiological workings in animals. In 1904, after
winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov, a Russian
physiologist, found that dogs, if given a signal before food, would, after a
time, salivate when given the signal without food. This was related to the
conditioning of human behavior. Because much experience pertained to
conditioning and reconditioning re exes and patterns of behavior, Pavlov
became interested in hypnosis, which he thought induced states similar to
his experiments.

Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer started the concept of magnetism, a theory of a
universal uid present in everything with uniform characteristic at all levels
of creation with m magnetic vibrations. He cured a young girl of
convulsions by placing magnets on her thighs and stomach. Then began
relying on the laying on of his hands to use his own uid in healing. He
turned his home in Vienna into a clinic. His reputation increased; the
fashionable set of Swabia and Switzerland consulted him. After curing the
director of the Munich Academy of Sciences, he was unanimously elected a
member of the Bavarian Academy.
He restored the sight of a young famous, female musician, Mille Paradies,
who had gone blind at age 4 when she heard a noise at her bedroom door.
When her parents came to take her home, she didn't want to leave. Her
mother slapped her, Mesmer intervened, so her father drew a sword.
Mesmer did likewise and forced him back.
The mother fainted and the girl (who had gone blind again) remained with
Mesmer. This caused a tremendous scandal.
So in 1778 he went to Paris. The king arranged for French Academy of
Sciences members to witness Mesmer's experiments. They said cures
were due to imagination and therefore not valid. They said medicine
already had many cures for the diseases magnetism cured.

Mesmer would treat 30 patients in a vat lled with two or three layers of
bottles of magnetized water at the bottom. The neck of each bottle pointed
to the center and bent iron rods were inserted into perforations in the lid
covering the entire container so that they could be applied to the a ected
body par. A rope was used for this also. Patients were placed face to face
whenever possible, as close as possible to each other touching thighs,
knees and feet as much as possible so that the magnetic uid could
continually circulate. Singing and harmonicas accompanied this. Often
patients would cough, spit, feel heat or pain, or be rocked by convulsions
lasting ve hours (these were carried into adjoining room padded on all
sides). Mesmer wore a lilac silk coat and carried a long iron wand with
which he would touch the patient's bodies. He also magnetized then with
his eyes, the laying on of his hands, or putting his ngers into a pyramid
shape passing his hands, lightly all over patient's body beginning with the
head. He would continue this until the patient was saturated with healing
fluid and swooned from pain or pleasure.
Mesmer published a treatise in 1779 trying to impress the Academy
doctors. He became such a success with his patients he had to take on
assistant magnetizers. He opened a clinic at Creteil, then bought Hotel
Bullion to set up four tubs. He also magnetized a tree at the end of the
street rue Bondy. Thousands attached themselves to it with a rope
attempting cures. Mesmer cured many learned people who published
accounts of their cures. He became wealthy and lived elegantly. He
demands a castle and got it.

However he never got the sanction of the medical body. The Faculty of
Medicine ordered Dr. Charles Desion to renounce magnetism or be struck
from the roll of doctors. Deslon asked the king to appoint a commission to
rule on the e ectiveness of magnetism. Two commissions concluded an
unqualified condemnation of magnetism.
Because of this, and a failure with Prince Henry of Prussia Mesmer
doubted whether he still had his magnetic power. He retreated to live in
the forest by a lake. He was imprisoned in Vienna for some political
comments. In 1802, France granted him a pension. The King of Prussia
invited him to teach animal magnetism in Berlin, but he declined. He
stayed in France, caring for the poor, until his death in 1815. Although
magnetism was condemned by the medical body. It continued to ourish
with research, studies and demonstration. Three brothers, disciples of
Mesmer's secret society.
The Society of Harony' (a philanthropic organization), practiced magnetism.
One of them organized a tub and o ered 600 pounds to anyone who could
prove cures were not genuine. One patient, Victor, would fall into a trance
and speak with incredible ease and diagnostic accuracy about the course
of his own and others; illnesses, could read thoughts and carry out orders
easily. He could not remember anything when awakened from trance. This
was defined as (magnetic) somnambulism.

In 1825, Dr. P. Foissac invited the Academy of Medicine to examine his
somnambulists whom he declared capable of diagnosing diseases, with
inspiration bordering on the genius of Hypocrites. Conclusions of
Academy, e ects of magnetism were due to boredom, monotony and
imagination (except for second sight), but occasionally magnetism alone
produced results.
In 1837, Dr. Bema proposed to demonstrate to the Academy magnetized
clairvoyance. His claims were rejected and magnetism denied. The
Academy o ered 3000 francs to anyone who could read in the dark
without using his eyes. No one could. Berna proposed to an Englishman,
dr. John Elliatson, chairman of the Royal Medical and Surgery Society,
teacher at the University of London, and one of the founders of its hospital,
studied magnetism's surgical use and its action on the nervous system. He
performed major surgical operations with patients under hypnosis
including amputations of limbs. The University forbade this, so he
resigned. Public opinion, his results, and many doctors were behind him,
however, and in 1846 he started a "mesmeric Hospital." Other mesmeric
hospitals were then founded. (Many years later, he suddenly declared the
hypnotic techniques could no longer alleviate pain.)
In 1845, a Scottish doctor, James Esdale, opened a hospital in Calcutta and
began a famous serious of operations with no pain and almost no deaths.
His practice was made up of rajahs with 100 prominent witnesses. In India,
so many had been afraid of operations, they had lived with tumors
sometimes as large as their bodies (up to 80 pounds). By the time he left,
he had performed over 2000 operations.

In 1841, a Swiss named LaFontaine gave three performances of
magnetizing a lion at the London zoo. James Braid, a Scottish surgeon, was
present and convinced it was all a hoax. But he became curious why one
subject couldn't open his eyes and conducted experiments with his wife
and a servant. Decided a xed gaze paralyzed nerve centers and destroyed
the balance of the nervous system. Two years later, he published his
theories call 'hypnotism' for the rst time in modern conception.
Hypnotism was no longer associated with magnetism and a universal fluid.
Four years later, Braid regretted his choice of the work, for those who slept
were in minority and those who were in uenced were concentrating their
thoughts. He had excellent results and published a book
called"Neurhypnology" on his theory calledBraidism.In 1866, Ambrose-
Auguste Liebeault became a psychologist treating mainly the poor with no
diagnosis or examination.
He suggested in a monotonous but penetrating a tone they feel better with
suggestions regarding health, digestion, circulation, coughing, etc. He had
100's of cures. A professor from the University of Nancy, Hippolyte
Bernheim arrived to expose him and instead was convinced. Together, they
founded what is known as the Nancy school.
Prior to Freud, suggestion was the only known method of psychotherapy.
This was used extensively with good results. Bernhei joined Liebeault and
they conducted a clinic together. In 20 years, they treated over 30,000
patients together with suggestions under hypnosis. They had such amazing
success that doctors from all over Europe came to study under them,
including Freud.

Bernheim wrote a book on hypnosis 'De la Suggestion,"which Freud
translated trying to nd a physiological explanation of suggestion in the
nervous system.
At the Salpetriere in Paris, many doctors originated numerous theories of
hypnosis from ischemia being the cause of hypnosis and post-hypnotic
amnesia which might cause permanent brain lesions (Neynert) to being a
type of sleep (August Forel). In general, it was agreed that hypnosis
inhibited certain cortical activity in the brain allowing suggestions to be ore
readily accepted. Jean-Martin Charcot, head of the Salpetriere, believed it
was an alternate state of consciousness.
Whereas the Nancy school was based on psychology and verbal
suggestion using light hypnosis with no amnesia e ect the Chariot School
studied physiology, re exes and physical means to a ect these, like deep
hypnosis with amnesia, magnets or metal plates (e ects discovered in
1876 by Dr. Burcq). Transference (one patient's ailments passing to
another) was discovered. This was perfected by a neurologist, J.F.F.
Babinski. He became head of the clinic when Charcot died. Babinski
changed his mind about the physical e ects of hypnosis and accepted the
theory of suggestibility. He tried to prove Hysteria was the diseased
manifestation of hypnosis. Soon, hypnosis was associated with neuroses
and weakness; no one wanted to be hypnotizable. Hypnosis sank into
obscurity, except for Dr. Pierre Janet, head of the pathological psychology
laboratory, who still believed in hypnosis. Christian Science (a religion that
teaches that diseases can be cured by spiritual means) and psychoanalysis
swept the U.S. and Europe, replacing hypnosis.

In 1880, the daughter (known in case histories as Anna O) a patient of Dr.
Joseph Brier (A Viennese internist and Freud's collaborator) developed
hysterical symptoms. She would go into spontaneous hypnosis and tell
Brier childlike stories, sleep and awake refreshed. If he did not come one
day, she would worsen until she told him two stories the next day. After
her father's death, she began to include memories from the early months
of nursing her father where he symptoms began. Each time she did, the
symptoms gradually disappeared until she was cured. The emotional
ordeal Breuer was put through caused him to refer all patients of this type
to Freud. Freud continued to use this method.
Freud's theories at this point were as follows: People normally have doubts
and misgivings, which they succeed in controlling. The physical exhaustion
caused by nursing an ill person might predispose on to psychic states
thereby causing loss of control. He thought the failure to react to a trauma
caused suppression, which caused problems. When he insisted that
patients "remember", they would often do so, but he found much
resistance and came up with the theory of defense. This was also applied
to sexual life-the e ect of pushing away sexual feelings could transfer to
another object causing obsessions hysteria, etc.
Freud and Breuer thought discharge of intense feelings of traumatic events
was a purge for the patient. Sharing the emotional experience often
produced a speedy curative effect.

Freud found that many hysterics had had infantile sexual traumas such as
seductions, assaults, etc. However in 1885, he started having doubts and
nally gave up this train of ideas. He did so because he was not able to
hypnotize many people, and found much resistance; he doubted whether
his treatments could overcome the ego's resistance and supply the real
answer or he would have had more satisfactory conclusions. He found out
that many of the incidents people had supplied when he insisted they
remember were not accurate. He underwent self-analysis and then went
into di erent areas of psychology-free association and dream
interpretation.
In the 1920's, Emil Coue, originally a pharmacist, made a study of the
psychology of suggestion and operated a clinic in Nancy, France. His
successes helped to make autosuggestion for self-bene t the vogue in
Europe. He made an exhaustive study of the e ects of suggestion. At rst,
he supplied intensive details with he suggestions, but later switched to
generalizations in order to allow the subconscious to work out its own best
solution and include all that the person might be aiming at. His most
famous techniques are: 1) repeating every day again and again, "Every day,
in every way, I am getting better and better" 2) if someone thinks that they
want to do something, but they can't the harder they try, the less they will
be able to (i.e., always thing positive); 3) "when the imagination and the will
are in con ict, the imagination always wins" (used as a theory of why
hypnosis worked); and 4) an idea always tends towards realization and a
stronger emotion

always counteracts a weaker one. Many others in Europe (but not in US)
worked with suggestive techniques. Coue was an amazing success. Coue is
considered the initiator of T. H. Schultz's autogenic training, which is
derived from hypnosis. This is a method of physical conditioning to
produce psychobiological alteration in the subject with no psychological
techniques used. The patient obtains control over the voluntary muscles
(with which he is most familiar), and then the circulatory system, heart,
respiration, organs and head. The hypnotist is not needed and results can
be measured.
In the 1930's in the US, psychosomatic medicine (concerned with the
numerous diseases cured by suggestion. These included: hemiplegia,
multiple sclerosis, cerebrospinal sclerosis, lead poisoning, hysterical
disorders, neuropath disorders, neuroses, pares and pareses and
contractures, gastrointestinal disorders, various pains, rheumatic diseases,
neuralgia, menstrual disorders, anemia, intermittent fever, tuberculosis,
tremors, and spasms, involuntary quivering of eyelids, chronic torticollis,
amaurosis, mutism, constipation or dyspepsia, Chorea, stammering,
moistness of hands, neurasthenia, obsessions, consumption, in uenza,
asthma or nervous origin, mental imbalances, phobias, obsessions, tics,
psychosexual anomalies, morbidtendencies, functional language
Disorders, and functional language disorders, and organic diseases.

During wartime, hypnosis was used to put soldiers back into action.
Hypnosis reduced the stress and the soldier was able to overcome
environmental pressure (such as in the case of Anna O). Although hypnosis
was not an accepted practice, there were so many soldiers with illnesses
caused by wartime trauma that many psychiatrists used the same
technique as Breuer, a reliving of the emotional stressful war situation, to
cure the patient quickly. This worked well, and hypnosis gained some
respectability.
Hypondotia (hypnotism in dentistry) was begun in 1948 and has become
wide spread. The American Society of Psychosomatic dentistry (an
association of ethical dentists who are trained and certi ed to apply
hypnotic techniques) has been established.
Surgeons had tried everything on a 15-year-old boy who had ichthyosis
(" sh skin" disease). In 1951, after hypnotherapy with Dr. A.A. Mason, the
boy's arm was cured in ten days. In slightly more than a month, the rest of
his body was healed. Because this was a reversal of the natural course of a
congenital disease, this incident helped in Great Britain's o cial
recognition of hypnosis in 1955 as an example of psychosomatic medicine.

Dr. Mason also wrote of a girl who, because of chemical anesthesia for
breast surgery, stayed in the hospital for a month after surgery with
postoperative deliriums, continuous vomiting and excessive bleeding. She
needed a second operation. As a hypnotic test, she had a tooth extracted
while in a trance with no pain) when he accidentally got alcohol in her eye
thus enabling the nurse to wipe the alcohol out of her eye. Dr. Mason
indicated how many surgical accidents could be avoided this way,
especially in preserving the coughing re ex, since blood, saliva, or vomit
entering the respiratory tract causes most deaths under anesthesia.
In 1958, the American Medical Association approved a report on the
medical uses of hypnosis. It encouraged research on hypnosis although
pointing out that some aspects of hypnosis are unknown and
controversial.
The British Medical Association expressed a similar opinion shortly
thereafter. Later, the Italian Medical Association for the Study of Hypnosis
was founded.
Hypnosis is used in law and the FBI to aid memory and rehabilitate
criminals. The most famous example is the Chowchilla, California
kidnapping case. Under Hypnotic induction, a school bus driver recalled a
license number that led the police to the abductors of a school bus full of
children. Hypnosis was also used as psychotherapy for some of the
children who had been greatly disturbed. Some police departments have
appointed their own o cial hypnotists. The NYC police hypnotist has won
national acclaim in solving di cult criminal cases. Today hospitals,
psychiatric clinics, jails, courtrooms, sports, schools, even churches and
synagogues use hypnosis.

Until his death in 1980 Milton H. Erickson, almost single-handedly took
hypnosis o the stage and into respected medical practice. Erickson, a
noted psychiatrist, who studied with some of the most in uential
hypnotists of modern times, including Clark Hull, among others. A
contemporary of Andre Weitzenho er, a partner in training with Leslie
Lechron (who is given credit for ideomotor signals).
From Erickson came two gentlemen by the names of Richard Bandler and
John Grinder who formally modeled Ericksons genius in hypnosis on the
advice of Gregory Bateson (one of the geniuses of the 20th century). This
came to be known as Neuro-Linguistic- Programming, NLP. The purpose of
this discipline is to model people of true genius, from hypnosis to business
to psychotherapy and even to pistol shooting in the military.
Since its beginning in the early 1970's it has grown into a popular and
useful addition to
our knowledge of hypnosis. One of the most important developments
from NLP is the notion that you can use words to induce a hypnotic trance,
and even more importantly produce change. What came to be known as
the Milton Model, Bandler and Grinder modeled Erickson's ability to
produce covert trance with just words. These two very capable gentlemen
proved that trance didn't have to be direct, as in the stage hypnotist
approach, to be useful and functional.

In the 1990's, hypnosis has come full circle, it has been talked about on
radio, shown on most national TV talk shows, from Oprah to Donohue, and
been written up in major magazines, from Cosmopolitan to Success
Magazine. Most everybody has a friend or a family member who has gone
to a hypnotist for something. Even medical doctors are sending their
patients to a hypnotist for habit control - stop smoking, weight control,
stress reduction, as a rst choice. This was unheard of 20 years ago, as
doctors only referred to a hypnotist as a last resort. As hypnosis becomes
more and more popular, whether or not it becomes main stream, only
time will tell.
Copyright 1995, Daniel Olson

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