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Doctor David Waxman wrote:
"From the beginnings of the human race, man has endeavored to impose his
will and strength upon his fellow for good or for evil. From the
dawn of history, with the use of witchcraft or of wizardry, of
revelation through supernatural agencies, with the power of the word or
the use of suggestion, he has sought to influence the destiny of others.
From the accidental discovery of a natural phenomenon, through magical
powers and magnetic fluids have emerged the refined techniques of the
twentieth century, which produce the state known as hypnosis."
The earliest written records can be found in texts like the Ebers
Papyrus; an Egyptian medical text dating around 1550BC. The Ebers
papyrus is written in hieratic script and preserves for us the most
voluminous record of ancient Egyptian medicine known. The 110-page
scroll contains some 700 magical formulas and remedies. Although it
contains many incantations meant to turn away disease-causing demons and
other superstition, there is also evidence of a long tradition of
empirical practice and observation.
Hypnosis has been around for many years. The Ancient Egyptians had
their Temples of Sleep and the Greeks their Shrines of Healing,.
Sleep temples were hospitals of sorts, healing a variety of ailments,
perhaps many of them psychological in nature. Treatment involved
chanting, placing the patient into a trancelike or hypnotic state, and
analyzing their dreams in order to determine treatment. In Greece, they
were built in honor of Asclepius, the Greek God of Medicine.
 YPNOS (The
Greek God of Sleeping )
Ceremonies and mysticism were used to provide even more reason for the
participants to believe in the temples or healers ability to heal. You
could also ascribe to hypnosis the many healings and miracles of relics,
holy men and shrines. According to a Greek legend the gods were
looking for a place to hide the greatest power that they held. They
thought about placing it on the highest mountain top but they figure we
would look there eventually. This discussion went on with different gods
suggesting different places but none of them would be safe from humans
looking. Eventually it was YPNOS that suggested that the greatest gift
be hidden in each of us because we would never think to look inside
ourselves for it.
 Hippocrates
(460-377 BC) Greek Physician
He maintained that the brain not only controlled the entire body, but also
our feelings and emotions, as well as being the seat of disease. The
Hippocratic oath named after Hippocrates was created long after his
death.
,
 Franz Anton
Mesmer (1734-1815) German Physician
is referred to by most as the
founder of hypnotism as it is today. He studied the effects of magnetism
under Father Hell, a Viennese Jesuit (1720-1792). He later believed that
he possessed the ability to heal using a theory called animal magnetism.
He was later discredited by a Royal Commission of 9 members in April of
1784. Four members were from the Medical Faculty including one Dr.
Joseph Ignance Guillotin who invented the guillotine. Five members were
from the Academy of Science including one Benjamin Franklin the envoy of
the United States to France who was noted for his practical research
into science. The commission was to prove or disprove the
theory of Animal Magnetism. One report that I read on the reason for the
study was because of his success working with a blind girl that played
the piano. This young girl started to get her vision back. Until this
time the parents have been living off from what their daughter was
making and they started to fear her success. They complained about
Mesmer and forbid him to see her anymore so her vision left her again.
This is a prime example of secondary gain to an illness.
The commission dismissed animal magnetism and regarded the healing as
merely the imaginations of the patients. This led to the belief that it
was not animal magnetism but the power of suggestion that healed
patrons. Most of us are familiar with the term mesmerize. Mesmer
financed a concert for Mozart at one time in which Mozart was very
appreciative. There are a lot of different variations to what happened
to Mesmer but one thing is for sure he did gain great results in some
famous people using his theory of Animal Magnetism.
 A student of Mesmer,
Marquis de Puységur (1751-1825)
a wealthy landowner experimented with magnetic healing and first
described and coined the term somnambulism. In his work with Victor
Race, a young peasant, the Marquis discovered that patients carried out
the commands of the magnetizer and when they awoken they did not
remember the events. The Marquis later came to the conclusion that the
force of the magnetizers belief, will to cure and rapport with the
client determined the success of the therapy. It is also important to
note that amnesia is not a common event in hypnosis today. Most people
will remember everything that happens during the hypnosis session.
 John
Elliotson(1791-1868), English physician
He studied medicine first at Edinburgh and then at
Cambridge, in both places he took the degree of MD, and
subsequently in London at St Thomas' and Guy's hospitals. In
1831 he was elected professor of the principles and practice
of physic in London University, and in 1834 he became
physician to University College Hospital. He advocated the
use of hypnosis in therapy and in 1849 founded a mesmeric
hospital. He was one of the first teachers in London to
emphasize clinical lecturing and invented the stethoscope.
Published first journal dealing with hypnosis - 'Zoist'.
James Braid (1795–1860) English Physician
He coined
the term and invented the procedure known as hypnotism. A
surgeon, born in Fife, Scotland and educated at the
University of Edinburgh. Braid practiced in Scotland for a
short time, then moved to Manchester, England, where he
lived for the rest of his life.
Braid became interested in mesmerism in November 1841, when
he observed demonstrations given by a traveling mesmerist
named Charles Lafontaine. Convinced that he had discovered
the key to understanding these phenomena, Braid began giving
lectures the following month.
In 1843 he published Neurypnology: or the Rationale of
Nervous Sleep, his first and only book-length exposition
of his views. In this book he coined the words hypnotism,
hypnotize, and hypnotist, which remain in use.
Braid thought of hypnotism as producing a "nervous sleep"
which differed from ordinary sleep. The most efficient way
to produce it was through visual fixation on a small bright
object held eighteen inches above and in front of the eyes.
Braid regarded the physiological condition underlying
hypnotism to be the over-exercising of the eye muscles
through the straining of attention.
He completely rejected Franz Mesmer's idea that a magnetic
fluid caused hypnotic phenomena, because anyone could
produce them in "himself by attending strictly to the simple
rules" that Braid laid down. Braidism is a synonym
for hypnotism, though it is used infrequently.
James Esdaile(1808-1859) British Surgeon
He studied medicine at
Edinburgh and graduated in 1830, obtaining a position with the British
East India Company. He acquired the Indian skill of drugless traditional
trance therapy from a Bengali country magician. In the early 1800's
working in a prison in India he reported on 345 major operations using
nothing but hypnosis for anesthesia, for this reason he is considered
the father of hypno-anesthesia. During this time the mortality rate
dropped from 25-50% to 5%. They stated that the reason for this
was because the sub-conscious mind must have developed a better
resistance to infection in the body.
Charcot, Jean Martin
(1825–1893) French Neurologist.
He developed at the
Salpêtrière in Paris the greatest clinic of his time for diseases of the
nervous system. He made many important observations on these diseases,
described the characteristics of tabes dorsalis, differentiated multiple
sclerosis and paralysis agitans, and wrote on many neurological
subjects.
Charcot's insight into the nature of hysteria is credited by Sigmund
Freud, his pupil, as having contributed to the early psychoanalytic
formulations on the subject. But Charcot's most enduring work is that on
hypnosis and hysteria. Charcot believed that hysteria was a neurological
disorder caused by hereditary problems in the nervous system. He used
hypnosis to induce a state of hysteria in patients and study the
results, and was single-handedly responsible for changing the French
medical community's opinion about the validity of hypnosis (it was
previously rejected as Mesmerism).
Doctor Josef Breuer (1842-1925) Viennese Physician
He found a vital
clue in order to extend the use of hypnosis into a more valuable and
wider field. He found that one of his patients "Anna O" spoke of her
issues when under hypnosis in an emotional manner. When she
returned to a fully conscious state her symptoms were gone. For
example, on recalling her disgust at seeing a dog drink from
a lady companion's glass of water a year before, she was
suddenly able to drink once more, having for some time been
able to quench her thirst
only by eating fruit such as melons.
Breuer reported,
Anna fell prey, during her father's final illness and in the
months after his death, to the most appalling symptoms of
hysterical paralysis and anesthesia in three out of her four
limbs, together
with a succession of other distressing psychiatric symptoms.
At different times these included weakness, inability to turn
her head, diplopia, a nervous cough, loss of appetite, hallucinations,
agitation, mood swings, abusive and destructive behaviour, amnesia,
somnolence, tunnel vision and partial aphasia.
His young friend Sigmund Freud continued to work with Breuer and studied
these effects.
Their paper, On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena
(1893, tr. 1909), more fully developed in Studien über Hysterie
(1895), marked the beginnings of psychoanalysis in the discovery that
the symptoms of hysterical patients—directly traceable to psychic trauma
in earlier life—represent undischarged emotional energy. The therapy,
called the cathartic method, consisted of having the patient recall and
reproduce the forgotten scenes while under hypnosis. The work was poorly
received by the medical profession, and the two men soon separated over
Freud's growing conviction that the undefined energy causing conversion
was sexual in nature. Freud then rejected hypnosis and devised a
technique called free association, which would allow emotionally charged
material that the individual had repressed in the unconscious to emerge
to conscious recognition. My personal opinion is that Freud enjoyed his
addiction to cocaine and later developed cancer in the jaw that made it
difficult for him to be effective as a hypnotist.
Emile Coue 1857-1926 a French
psychotherapist according to one resource and a pharmacist according to
another, is one of the pioneers of self-hypnosis. He is remembered for
his formula for curing by optimistic autosuggestion "Day by Day, in
every way, I am getting better and better." One of the articles state
that Coue as a pharmacist had a client that came to him demanding a new
improved medication because nothing worked. Coue mixed a new improved
formula made of sugar and gave it to the client. In a week the client
came back and reported that the medicine worked and that he was cured.
Coue also realized that suggestions offered by a hypnotist have no
effect unless the client is in agreement with them, and further
recognized that all hypnosis is in effect self-hypnosis.
According to Coue:
-
In the conflict between the
will and the imagination, the force of the imagination is in direct
ratio to the square of the will. (This means that imagination wins
over will 100% X 4)
-
When the will and imagination
are in agreement, one does not add to the other, but one is
multiplied by the other.
-
The imagination can be
directed.
Later, in 1956, Pope Pius XII gave
his approval of hypnosis. He stated that the use of
hypnosis by health care professionals for diagnosis and
treatment is permitted. In an address from the Vatican
on hypnosis in childbirth, the Pope gave these
guidelines:
- Hypnotism is a serious
matter, and not something to be dabbled in.
- In its scientific use, the
precautions dictated by both science and morality
are to be followed.
- Under the aspect of
anaesthesia, it is governed by the same principles
as other forms of anaesthesia.
Dave Elman(1900-1967)
He perfected a more direct approach to
hypnotize his clients which he taught to the medical field without
having any medical training. A good book on his approach to hypnosis is
"Hypnotherapy" by Dave Elman. It is a great record of case
studies of different issues and one I highly recommend for Hypnotists of
all levels. Elman has a strong following and several schools have been
opened up that specialize in the Elman techniques. I consider Elman more
of a authoritarian hypnotist which would also explain his success in
teaching the medical field this approach.
  
Milton H. Erickson (1901-1980)
He developed new strategies of
hypnotism by combining clinical and research techniques. He was the
master of indirect hypnosis; he was able to take someone into a trance
without mentioning the word hypnosis or using traditional methods. Mr.
Erickson also wrote the entry for the Encyclopedia Britannica 14th
Edition, Volume 12 in 1954 for Hypnotism. There are a few good books
that discuss the Milton speech patterns like "My Voice Will Go With You"
the teaching tales of Milton H. Erickson by Sidney Rosen. Anyone wishing
to know more about conversational hypnosis should research Mr. Erickson
to better understand hypnotic language patterns.
Ormand McGill 1913-2005 "The Dean of American Hypnosist" (My Friend)
Ormand was born in Palto Alto CA and started as a magician taking the
Tarbell Magic Course at a young age. He became a hypnotist as a result
of watching a Danish stage hypnotist by the name of DeWaldoza. Ormand
started performing in 1927 at the age of 14, and continued to perform
his whole life. I personally trained with Ormand on a number of
occasions and I consider him to have been a mentor and friend.
There have been a lot of developments in the use of hypnotic language
and one development is by Richard Bandler and John Grindler which is
referred to as Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP. NLP is more of how
to create change in the mind without the use of trance and by rewiring
the way ideas are formed and stored in the mind. Frogs to Princes
is a great book for more information.
In 1955 the British Medical Association recommended that a description
of hypnosis and of its psychotherapeutic possibilities, limitations and
dangers be given to the medical undergraduate trainees.
The American Medical Association in 1958 recognized Hypnosis as a
healing modality.
We continue to find more uses for hypnosis than we ever imagined. We
have found that suggestions given under surgery can have a direct impact
on patients even when they were not intended. The mind is an extremely
powerful tool and when used correctly it can possess incredible healing
powers. There are several organizations that have been formed to provide
guidance to the practice of hypnosis when there is no state or
government regulation. Members of these organizations adhere to
continuing education as well as certification standards.
We belong to several of these organizations in order to make sure that
clients receive the best service possible and we stay on top of new
techniques and discoveries. A valuable network of professionals from
several countries talk and discuss ideas as well as share real case
histories in order to learn and grow in the field. Michael is a proud
member of this network of professionals and participates in several of
the discussions. We have just begun to explore the science of the mind
and hypnosis will play even more of a valuable tool to unlock the powers
that we were born with. |
