History of Hypnosis
Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), an Austrian physician, is widely acknowledged as the founder of hypnosis. As a doctor, his main concern was how to effectively treat his patients, and he considered disease to be caused via a blockage of the circulation of a magnetic fluid in the blood and the nervous system.
Curing disease would, in his view, involve correcting the circulation of this liquid. Initially, he used a magnet, and later his hand, which was passed over the diseased body in an attempt to unblock the magnetic flow. The hands (and later the eyes) were believed to unblock the fluid by increasing its amount and flow as his hand passed over the affected area. To this day some stage hypnotists still use this 'passing of hands' to theatrical effect. The term 'animal magnetism' was born, and the procedure referred to as Mesmerism.
John Elliotson (1791-1868), an English physician holding a chair at University College London was disbarred from the medical profession as a direct result of his demonstrations of animal magnetism, while in the 1840s, James Esdaile, a surgeon, was operating on his patients using hypnosis as his preferred anesthetic. The medical profession was therefore divided on its opinion of the usefulness of mesmerism.
It wasn't until 1843 that the terms 'hypnotism' and 'hypnosis' were coined by James Braid (1795-1860), a Scottish surgeon working in Manchester. He found that some experimental subjects could go into a trance if they simply fixated their eyes on a bright object, like a silver watch.
Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893), a leading neurologist of his day and head of the neurological clinic at the famous Saltpetiere in Paris.
Hippolyte Bernheim (1837-1919), a professor of medicine at the University of Nancy regarded hypnosis as a special form of sleeping where the subject's attention is focused upon the suggestions made by the hypnotist. He therefore emphasized the psychological nature of the process of hypnosis.
By the 1920s, hypnosis became the focus of experimental investigation by psychologists like Clark L. Hull (1884-1952), who demystified hypnosis saying that it was essentially a normal part of human nature (1933). The important factor was the subject's imagination - some people were more responsive or suggestible' than others to hypnosis.
Support for the teaching of the therapeutic use of hypnosis in medicine finally came in 1955 from the British Medical Association, closely followed in 1958 by the American Medical Association. Today, an International Society of Hypnosis coordinates and assesses standards and practices of professional hypnotists across the world. Hypnosis is currently used in dentistry, medicine and psychology and has proved helpful if used alongside more conventional treatments and therapies.