Hypnosis - The Real Story

Apparently Franz Anton Mesmer “invented” hypnosis In the 18th century a very charismatic healer named Franz Anton Mesmer used what he called magnetism to cure his patients from various illnesses.

He made a big number out of how he used his magnets on people, and told them that he used powerful energies from the stars, or as he is supposed to have said, the heavenly bodies.
He truly believed that he were invoking the heavenly bodies, Mesmer were very theatrical in his approach, and made a whole stage performance out of his healing or magnetism sessions. He claimed that he used gravity and magnetism combined to influence the fluids in the body, and his patients often reacted with spasms and even dramatic collapses. He gained many fans and followers, and Mesmerism was used in a great variety of ways, and even as a form of entertainment, what we today will call the early forms of stage hypnosis.

The word “Hypnosis” was later brought forward instead of mesmerism by an English surgeon named James Braid. That was because at the time mesmerism had developed into a more useful and studied approach and were mostly involving an apparent sleep like condition. Hypnosis as a term is taken from the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos.

Not long after this several people began to believe that they were working with human imagination itself, and not as Mesmer proclaimed that he himself were the cause of these phenomenon's. Two groupings soon began to develop, one group believed in hypnosis as a scientific method that could be developed into a serious and useful way of curing several diseases of the mind, and another group that held on to the more spiritual and esoteric nature of the treatments. The latter group believed that they were using the magnets to influence peoples imagination by the use of metaphors and had a more magic like approach to the whole thing.

Braid who began more comprehensive scientific studies at first thought that induction of hypnosis followed by suggestion would be sufficient to uncover and cure unique nervous system conditions. Later he turned away from this and put his emphasis on the purely mental factors of hypnosis. Not until the early 20th century the real foundation for hypnosis were uncovered at what was called the “Nancy School” of hypnosis, and by then there were developed theories based on hypnotic suggestions and ideomotor responses by the body. . The ideomotor theory says that ideas suggested by the hypnotist automatically leads to actions, which are then experienced by the subject as unwilling actions. Ideomotor action is another example of a useful but incomplete model of hypnotic responding. The Nancy school was perhaps most notable in their de-emphasis of hypnotic ritual and their strong emphasis on suggestion as a mundane though useful psychological process.

Sigmund Freud even studied hypnosis for much of his life, and even he leaned towards the suggestion and ideomotor theory. He also believed that he did not get anything useful out of hypnotic induction, and later in his career began a more dominant Doctor – patient domineering behaviour, where he would simply put his hand over the patients forehead in order to establish what he believed was the proper social relationship of doctor in dominance over patient.

Hypnosis actually were accepted as a means of healing in modern medicine in the 1930’s and 30’s by the studies of Clark Hull, and his student Milton Erickson, and Clark Hull’s paper on the subject “Hypnosis and Suggestibility” is to this day considered a classic in the workings of hypnosis. Milton Erickson further developed Hull’s theories and is today considered as one of the best Hypnotists that have ever lived. Milton Erickson developed a more indirect approach to hypnosis, today known in NLP as creating rapport and leading patients where he wanted them to go. All the way up till his death in 1980 Erickson was one of the best in his field, and today there are no hypnotists that are not using his methods.

If you would like to learn more about hypnosis, you should start out by getting a few books on the subject, and then consider going into NLP, because also NLP uses a lot of Erickson’s theories. And lastly if you get really fired up on learning about hypnosis, go and study it in the real world, take a few courses, or perhaps a serious education. But remember you are working with a very powerful and influential method, and even if you get educated, there is still a lot to learn, so treat it with care and consideration, and keep learning more as you go along.

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