Learn about the history of hypnosis starting from the work of Mesmer, 19th Centruy, James Braid, and modern day hypnosis.

1. HISTORY OF HYPNOTHERAPY
DISCOVERING THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND

2. HISTORY OF HYPNOTHERAPY
 3000BC – ancient Egyptians
 Ancient Greeks
 Indian Sanskrits
 Hindu fakirs
 Celtic druids
 African witch doctors
 Jesus’s miracles?

3. HISTORY OF HYPNOTHERAPY
 1500 Paracelsus
 Swiss doctor discovered mercury as cure for syphilis
 Passed magnets over patient to effect cure
 1600 Valentine Greatrakes
 The ‘ great Irish Stroker’ – again stroked magnets to
cure

4. HISTORY OF HYPNOTHERAPY
 1725 Maximilian Hehl
 Jesuit priest – using magnets to heal
 Mesmer was his student

5. HISTORY OF HYPNOTHERAPY
 (1734-1815 )Franz
Anton Mesmer
 Father of hypnosis
 Found could stop
bleeding with a stick
and therefore
postulated ‘ animal
magnetism’

6. HISTORY OF HYPNOTHERAPY
 Franz Anton Mesmer(contd)
 ‘De Planatorium influxu’ – magnetic fields pervade
nature
 Cured patient of paralysis and temporary blindness
 Cured Maria Theresa Paradies – protégé of empress
of blindness. Angering parents
 Moved from Vienna to Paris
 Mozart was a fan

7. HISTORY OF HYPNOTHERAPY
 Franz Anton
Mesmer(cont)
 Developed the ‘baquet’
 Asked Louis XVI for a
board of enquiry in 1784
 Benjamin Franklin,
Guillotine, Lavoisier
 Found all due to the
imagination !

8. HISTORY OF HYPNOTHERAPY
 1727-1779 Father
Gassner
 Contempory of
Mesmer
 Suggestion as faith
healing
 1787 Marquis de
Puysegur
 Student of Mesmer
 Magnetised elm trees
 Somnambulism

9. HISTORY OF HYPNOTHERAPY
 1815 Abbe Jose Castodi de Faria
 Fixed gaze method first to coin word
‘sleep’

10. HISTORY OF HYPNOTHERAPY
 1791 John Elliotson
 Professor at University
London
 Became interested via
a student of Faria
 1837 Surgery under
hypnosis – angered
other doctors as pain ‘
needed for healing’
 Expelled from
university hospital

11. HISTORY OF HYPNOTHERAPY
 1795 – 1860 James Braid
 Scottish surgeon coined
term ‘ hypnosis’
 Developed suggestions
method
 Saw Mesmer and was
eventually convinced
 Changed term to ‘
monoidiesm’
 ‘Nervous sleep’ acting
on subject whose
suggestibility is
increased’

12. HISTORY OF HYPNOTHERAPY
 1808-1859 James Esdaile
 Scottish doctor
 Reports in 1846 300 major
operations
 Reduced post op mortality
from 505%

13. HISTORY OF HYPNOTHERAPY
 1864 Nancy school of Hypnosis
 Liebeault – ‘ de la suggestion’
 Bernheim
 Freud studied here
 Initially enthusiastic – eventually discounted
hypnosis

14. HISTORY OF HYPNOTHERAPY
 1878 Charcot –
school of Saltpierre
 Pathological theory
 Stages of hypnosis
 Lethargy
 Catalepsy
 Somnambulism

15. HISTORY OF HYPNOTHERAPY
 Dave Elman 1950’s
 Stage Hypnotist
 Studied Hypnosis for
years
 Taught doctors
exclusively
 Quick inductions
 Deepening techniques

16. HISTORY OF HYPNOTHERAPY
 1929-1980 Milton Erickson
 Indirect approach
 Metaphor
 Utilization

17. THEORIES OF TRANCE
 Suggestion Theory
 Bernheim 1886 – suggestions bypass concious mind
 Modified Sleep
 Abbe Faria – a type of sleep BUT thought would
always  amnesia
 Pathological Theory
 Charcot – BUT 90% hypnotisable NOT equivalent to
hysteria

18. THEORIES OF TRANCE
 Dissociation
 Janet ‘ splitting of consciousness into two’ BUT not
always amnesia – can remove amnesia by
suggestion
 Neo Dissociation
 Some cognition continuous throughout
 Psychoanlanalytic
 Freud – libidinal gratification
 Ferenczi – parent/child BUT mirrors metronomes may
hypnotise

19. THEORIES OF TRANCE
 Conditioned response
 Pavlov to word ‘ sleep’ BUT not sleep, metronomes,
quick awakening
 Role Playing
 R White – goal directed striving
 Atavistic Regression
 Ainslie Meares to a primitive level – primitive man
accepted ideas by suggestion

20. THEORIES OF TRANCE
 Neurophysiological
 Barry Wyke – voice blocks other sensory input [like
gate theory]
 Hemispheric Specificity
 L verbal/voluntary/language speech
 R nonverbal/emotional/submissive/art
music/imagination
 Meszaros – induction L brain  R brain