Hypnosis as a means of managing health seems to have originated in various ancient cultures such as the Hindus of ancient India, the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans who often took their sick to sleep temples to be cured by hypnotic suggestion. Hypnotic-like inductions were used to place the individual in a sleep-like state (although it is now known that hypnosis is different from sleep) with the holy person officiating delivering suggestions for healing.
Avicenna (980-1037), a Persian psychologist and physician, was the earliest to make a distinction between sleep and hypnosis.
Paracelsus (1493-1541) was the first physician to use magnets in his work. Many people claimed to have been healed after he had passed magnets (lodestones) over their bodies.
Western scientists first became involved in hypnosis in the 1770’s, when Dr. Franz Mesmer (1734-1815), a physician from Austria, started investigating an effect he called “animal magnetism” or “mesmerism” (the latter name still remaining a popular name for hypnosis today).
An Indo-Portuguese priest, Abbé Faria (1746-1819) introduced oriental hypnosis to Paris in the early 19th century. Faria claimed that it was ‘generated from within the mind’ by the power of expectancy and the cooperation of the client. Faria’s approach was extended by the clinical and theoretical work of Hippolyte Bernheim (1840-1919) and Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault (1823-1904) of the Nancy School. Faria’s theoretical position, and the subsequent experiences of those in the Nancy School made significant contributions to the autosuggestion techniques of Émile Coué (1857-1926) and the autogenic training techniques of Johannes Heinrich Schultz (1884-1970).
Joseph-Claude-Anthelme Récamier (1774-1852), in 1821, was the first physician known to have used hypnoanaesthesia as a means of anaesthesia during operations.
The words “hypnosis” and “hypnotism” both derive from the term “neuro-hypnotism” (nervous sleep), all of which were coined by Étienne Félix d’Henin de Cuvillers, a follower of Mesmer, in 1820.
These words were popularized in English by the Scottish surgeon James Braid (to whom they are sometimes wrongly attributed) around 1841.
The Scottish neurosurgeon James Braid (1795-1860) expanded on Mesmer’s ideas and in 1842 and popularised the term “hypnosis.” Referred to as the “Father of Modern Hypnotism,” Braid rejected Mesmer’s idea that hypnosis was induced by magnetism, and ascribed the “mesmeric trance” to a physiological process resulting from prolonged attention to moving object or similar object of fixation. Braid is credited with writing the first book on hypnosis, Neurypnology (1843).
In 1834, Dr. John Elliotson (1791-1868), an English surgeon, reported numerous painless surgical operations that had been performed using mesmerism.
Dr. James Esdaile (1805-1859) reported on 345 major operations performed using mesmeric sleep as the sole anaesthetic in British India.
The neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) endorsed hypnotism for the treatment of hysteria. The process of post-hypnotic suggestion was first described in this period. Also, Charcot is accredited as being the founder of what came to be known as the Salpetriere school in Paris, one of two rival institutions researching hypnosis in France, the other being the Nancy School founded by Ambroise-Auguste Liebeault and Hippolyte Bernheim.
Hypnosis was crucial in the invention of psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), a student of Charcot. Freud developed abreaction therapy using hypnosis with Josef Breuer (1842-1925).
Pierre Janet (1859-1947), another pupil of Charcot, was the first to describe the theory of dissociation, the splitting of mental aspects under hypnosis. Janet also provoked interest in the subconscious and laid the framework for reintegration therapy for dissociated personalities.
Hypnosis was used by field doctors in the American Civil War and was the first extensive medical application of hypnosis.
The First International Congress for Experimental and Therapeutic Hypnotism was held in Paris, France, on August 8-12, 1889. Attendees included Jean-Martin Charcot, Hippolyte Bernheim, Sigmund Freud and Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault.
In 1892, the annual Meeting of the British Medical Association (BMA) unanimously endorsed the therapeutic use of hypnosis.
Russian medicine has had extensive experience with obstetric hypnosis. In the 1920s Konstantin Ivanovich Platanov (1877-?) became well known for his hypno-obstetric successes. Ferdinand Lamaze (1891-1957), having visited Russia, brought back to France childbirth without pain through the use of hypnosis.
The use of hypnosis in the treatment of neuroses flourished in World War I, World War II and the Korean War. Hypnosis techniques were merged with psychiatry and were especially useful in the treatment of what is now recognised as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
On April 23, 1955, the British Medical Association (BMA) approved the use of hypnosis in the areas of psychoneuroses and hypnoanaesthesia in pain management in childbirth and surgery. At this time, the BMA also advised all physicians and medical students to receive fundamental training in hypnosis.
In 1958, the American Medical Association (AMA) approved a report on the medical uses of hypnosis.
Two years after AMA approval, the American Psychological Association (APA) endorsed hypnosis as a branch of psychology.
In 1961, Ernest Hilgard (1904-2001) and André Weitzenhoffer (1926-2005) created the Stanford scales, a standardized scale for susceptibility to hypnosis, and properly examined susceptibility across age-groups and sex.
Milton Erickson (1901-1980) developed many ideas and techniques in hypnosis that were very different from what was commonly practiced. His style, commonly referred to as Ericksonian Hypnosis, has greatly influenced many modern schools of hypnosis.
Dave Elman (1900-1967) was one of the pioneers of the medical use of hypnosis. Elman’s definition of hypnosis is still widely used today among many professional hypnotherapists. Although Elman had no medical training, he is known for having trained the most physicians and psychotherapists in America, in the use of hypnotism.
Tan Sri Dato’ Sri Dr Mahadevan learned hypnosis in the UK and America during the sixties and seventies. known as the father of Malaysian psychiatry, he brought hypnotherapy to SE Asia.
Michael Joseph, a Hungarian immigrant to the UK, was at the centre of a movement to legitimise hypnotherapy in the eyes of the public and medical profession during the eighties and nineties.
In 2002 the BMA suggested that clinical hypnosis become reclassified as integrative medicine.
In 2003 the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare approved the use of hypnotherapy within the medical profession.
And in 2006 the Academy of Family Physicians of Malaysia accredits hypnotherapy training.
Today, globally, it’s being widely integrated into all areas of medicine, business and personal development, with thousands of research projects considering the neurological and physiological basis of how it works.
From its humble beginnings at the dawn of history, to its current ascendency at the forefront of science, hypnotherapy has come a long way. And excitingly, it has so much more potential, potential that can be realised as more and more people like you take our profession into the future.