1	History of Hypnosis © Henriette Gezundhajt, 2007
2	Etymology The term “hypnosis” was introduced by James Braid in 1843. He coined the term hypnotism, formed from the Greek word meaning “sleep”, and designating “artificially produced sleep”. Realizing later on, that hypnotic states of catalepsy, analgesia, anaesthesia and amnesia could be induced without sleep, he tried to suppress his own term for monoideism but the word “hypnosis” remained in usage.
3	Evolution of the Practice of Trance States Four main historical phases: Focus on the relation between: human subject and spiritual world (Antiquity and middle age) Human subject and nature (Mesmer and his followers) Human subject and hypnotist (From Faria to Freud) Human subject and his/her own mental and physical self (after the First World War to our days)
4	A very ancient practice Egyptians used a form of it in their dream temples (a 3000 years old stele discovered by Charles Muses in 1972 depicting a trance induction scene during the reign of Ramses II ) In Greece, Socrates and his contemporaries also referred to the power to heal with words. Temples were dedicated to Æsculapius, the Greek God of Healing In the Bible, a number of situations could be identified as hypnotic experiences (Genesis 2:21, 1 Samuel 26:12, Job 4:13, 33:15, Acts 10:10). In the Talmud, for instance, Kavanah is a meditative practice that requires relaxation, concentration and focus Besides, in all parts of the world, rituals and customs, practiced by druids, gurus, shamans and priests of diverse cultures, have always incorporated the induction of trancelike states that can be compared to a form of hypnosis. Drums, chanting, dancing, fire and drugs are some of the techniques used to apply trance in ritualistic ways.
5	Online Museum
6	Medieval Times and Negative Superstitions: Negative beliefs: The Divine would never bypass the normal conscious mental mechanisms of the human mind. Trance states must be considered as satanic or demonic states driven by occult forces. These evil spirits had to be expelled through exorcism practiced by priests and ministers. The medieval period had a great influence on the practice of magnetism and hypnosis in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
7	Medieval figures Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576), a medieval Italian mathematician, in his work De Subtilitate Rerum, printed in 1551, described his peculiar trance or ecstatic states and his out of body experience in which he no longer felt the gout that made him constantly suffer. This could be considered as the first reported self-hypnosis practice. The physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) believed that the stars could influence humans through some kind of magnetic force that he called sympathetic magnetism. According to his beliefs, the less a person can resist astral influences, the more they are suggestible and may be made to act at a distance. He later had a big influence on F.A. Mesmer’s theory. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535), a German magician, occult writer, astrologer, and alchemist was another famous medieval figure, who traveled a lot around Europe. He is known for his occulta philosophia and his interest in the practice of magical and occult arts. The way he would arrange for his arrival and captivate his audience is very similar to the “pre-talk” used by modern stage hypnotists as well as hypnotherapists to convince and put their subjects at ease.
8	Mesmer’s Precursors and Mentors Father Johann Joseph Gassner (1729-1779), real precursor in the field of modern hypnotherapy who in the 1770’s would practice exorcism (exorcimus probativus) according to a rite that was widely criticized by the religious community of his time. He would deliberately provoke the symptoms and then cause them to disappear by instructing the patient on how to do so by an exorcism formula. He would then transfer to his subjects the knowledge on how to behave in their day-to-day life to prevent the symptoms to reoccur. This procedure is very close to the regression techniques used by modern hypnotherapists. Father Maximilian Hell (or Höll) (1720-1792), Hungarian-born Jesuit priest, court astronomer and head of the observatory in Vienna). His astrological theories inspired Mesmer’s thesis dissertation, De Planetarum Influxu, defended at the University of Vienna in 1766. He followed a medieval idea introduced by Paracelsus, using lodestones as magnets supposed to have a curative agent. He seemed to have had considerable success in relieving people with pain which pushed Mesmer, as a physician, to investigate further.
9	Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815)
10	Mesmer And The Scientific Era Franz Anton Mesmer (1734 -1815) was raised in a Swiss-German family with a very strong Catholic tradition, but interested in physics, mathematics and astronomy, he gave up the Church in favour of medicine. In 1766, he graduated as a Doctor of Medicine at the University of Vienna. Can be considered as the first “psychotherapist” even though his approach had very little in common with the current practice of hypnosis. Strongly influenced by Father Maximillian Hell, he would credit magnetism (mineral, then animal) with the power of healing, and tended to overlook the intersubjective nature of the cures. His ideas were very inspired by esoteric Masonic doctrines. Like Hell, he was a spiritual disciple of Paracelsus, but he soon distanced himself from the religious tradition that had prevailed in the practice of trancelike inductions until then. Mesmer was a man of his time (the Enlightenment). The Scientific Revolution had occurred with Newton and Lavoisie. This period was called the Enlightenment. Reason and science were the primary basis of authority as opposed to medieval and Renaissance periods driven by religion and loyalty to some central organization, namely the Emperor or the King supposed to be a representation of the Divine on earth. Mesmer arrived in France at the end of the Enlightenment. His contemporaries were surrounded by invisible forces (hydrogen, hot air balloons, electricity) and the theory of animal magnetism seemed to fit perfectly in this scientific context. He was typically in the steps of philosophical writers like Voltaire who believed in civil liberties and freedom of religion. He was also widely inspired by Diderot and especially Rousseau’s social contract by which he attacks the institution of private property and promotes nature and “universal harmony”. For the intellectual elite of the time, the Mesmerian practices were seen as a mirror at the physical level of the social revolution. It was about creating a “crisis” to remove obstacles and restore natural harmony.
11	Animal Magnetism Theory In 1774, Mesmer first discovered animal magnetism when he watched Father Hell apply magnets to the bodies of persons with various symptoms. Mesmer also used magnets made for him by Hell to treat patients with hysterical symptoms, but his success was credited to Hell. 1775, Mesmer claimed that magnets were not the only elements channelling energy and that the same effects of magnetization could be produced on stones, wood, paper, various metals, material, glass, vegetal substances and even living creatures. 1775, before the Munich Academy of Sciences, Mesmer refuted the religious beliefs behind the exorcisms carried out by Johann Joseph Gassner. Contrarily to the latter, Mesmer did not believe that disease was a form of demonic possession. According to him Gassner’s cures were due to the fact that he possessed a high degree of animal magnetism. For him the phenomena was entirely grounded in nature. 1777, he definitely discarded the sole power of magnets when he met with Gassner in Switzerland in, and observed that the priest effected cures without the use of magnets, by manipulation alone. For him, a universal fluid is present in everything in the universe and more especially affects the nervous systems of humans. This fluid emits magnetic vibrations. According to his theory, ailments are caused by an uneven distribution of this fluid. This would be later known as Mesmer’s electro-magnetic theory of “animal magnetism”. (hence the term “mesmerism.”); “animal” meaning animate as opposed to “mineral” (not to “human”). He would cure people by inducing convulsive attacks, curative crises aimed to redistribute the fluids harmoniously.
12	Mesmer in Austria In 1768, he married a well-off aristocratic widow whose connections helped him to build a prosperous practice. However, In 1777, he was banned from the Medical Faculty of Vienna, accused of charlatanism, after having temporarily improved the condition of Maria Theresa von Paradis, a young woman with congenital blindness. He left for Paris to avoid a scandal once the lady had been removed from his care by force and her blindness had come back for good. Maria Theresa’s family had no interest in seeing too much improvement in her condition. Had she been completely cured, she might have lost the financial support that she was receiving from the Austrian Empress, who happened to be the mother of Marie-Antoinette, the Queen of France.
13	Mesmer in France In 1778, Mesmer arrived in Paris. Pretty soon Mesmer’s reputation and charisma made him a hero among the French Aristocratic circles and his office was flooded with people of diverse social backgrounds. For a while, he tried to attract the attention of the Société Royale de Médecine de Paris, seeing his magnetic cure as an alternative to electric shocks. Eventually, most of the Society’s members rejected the technique, feeling that Mesmer’s demonstrations were not scientifically convincing. In 1782, after seeing his methods widely attacked, and receiving the continuing opposition of the medical profession, he promoted his ideas by setting up an organisation - the Société de l'Harmonie Universelle - a clinic as well as a teaching establishment and a register of qualified members who had received his training, and who paid for the privilege. In time, there arose a division in this organisation also, when other members disagreed with Mesmer.
14	Mesmer’s baquet His famous “baquet”, was a device consisting of a large drum filled with bottles of water which he had previously magnetized. The baquet was: an oaken tub specially designed to store and transmit magnetic fluid. four or five feet in diameter and one foot in depth, A lid constructed in two pieces. At the bottom of the tub, arranged in concentric circles and in several layers, were bottles, some empty and pointing toward the center, some containing magnetized water and pointing out to the circumference. The tub was filled with water to which iron filings and powdered glass were added. Iron rods emerging through holes in the tub's lid were bent at right angles so that the ends of the rods could be placed against the afflicted areas of the patient's body. A number of patients could use the baquet at one time and would augment the magnetic fluid by holding hands, thus creating a circuit. The session was performed in a very theatrical and impressive manner: Mesmer would appear wearing a cloak decorated with alchemical symbols He would play the glass harmonica (an instrument that produced an eerie, ethereal sound). There were large mirrors in his magnetic salon to reflect invisible fluid He used assistants to catch his convulsing patients.
15	Mesmer’s baquet
16	Mesmer’s style His style was rather authoritarian or dominating. there was no talking during the treatment, so there were no direct verbal injunctions. He would establish “rapport” through physical contact more than affective, even if he admitted that feelings were important. There was no real place for affective relationship. No verbal dialogue or initiative from the patient was involved.
17	The French Investigating Commissions in 1784 a secret report to the king written by Jean Sylvain Bailly explained that women could easily be under the influence of the magnetizer and compared the observed women’s convulsions to orgasmic reactions In that same year of 1784 , Louis XVI, the King of France commanded that mesmerism should be the subject of two official investigations. The first commission was undertaken conjointly by the Académie des Sciences and the Académie de Médecine, with people like the chemists Jean d'Arcet and Antoine Lavoisier, the physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly and the American ambassador Benjamin Franklin. The second commission was undertaken by the Société Royale, including personalities like the botanist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu. Mesmer refused to open his parlours for this investigation. Therefore, the commissioners observed the practice of d’Eslon , one of Mesmer’s trainees, to draw their conclusions on animal magnetism. Both commissions denied the existence of any fluid and attributed the curative effects to touch, imagination and imitation. However, the commission did not deny the affective bound existing between magnetist and patient or the cure itself. The conclusions were only on the topic of the existence of an animal magnetism. This report woke up the anger of pure mesmerists, and revolutionary thinkers like lawyer Nicolas Bergasse (1750-1832), who perceived it as a “cabal of self-interested academicians” The condemnation of the medical world coupled with the premises of the French revolution put the discredit on mesmerism and marked the end of its golden age. At the age of 54, Mesmer left Paris, retired near Lake Constance and never returned.
18	Mesmer ‘s Followers (From Physics to Spiritual Psychology) Charles Nicholas d'Eslon (1750-1786), physician to the Count d’Artois. He came to Mesmer with pain and admired his charismatic personality. However, he soon separated from him to practise independently after being condemned by the faculty for supporting a “charlatan” in his theories.
19	Mesmer ‘s Followers (From Physics to Spiritual Psychology) Armand-Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, Marquis de Puységur (1751-1825) French aristocrat who had been introduced to animal magnetism by his brother, Antoine-Hyacinthe, a naval officer, who, through his travels, had been in contact with native populations and voodoo practices. He trained with Mesmer in Paris, started his own practice of animal magnetism in his estate of Buzancy, near Soissons. Like Mesmer, he strongly believed in the existence of a universal fluid that could be passed to all kinds of elements and granted them with healing powers. The first thing he did was magnetize a tree that, according to the legend, retained its virtues long after he left his property for Strasbourg. For years, hundred of people would come to touch it, expecting to be cured.
20	Puységur’s discovery of somnambulism In 1784, at the age of 33 years, the Marquis de Puységur accidentally discovered a phenomenon that he called “magnetic sleep” or “magnetic somnambulism” by leading into trance Victor Race, a young peasant of his estate who entered a deep state of relaxation, calm crises that resemble the spontaneous somnambulism of certain sleepers. Puységur compared this state to natural sleep-walking, with the difference that in this case it had been induced by suggestion, using relaxation and calming techniques For Puységur, violent convulsions were not necessary; words were sufficient. Even touch, that was one of the main premises of mesmerism, was not really required. The most important component was for the subject to be “subordinated” to the magnetist. He could hear no voice but that of the operator and obey no suggestion but his. He would be totally under his influence. Puységur emphasized the importance of “rapport” between the subject and the healer. Intention and attention from the part of the magnetist was a main component of the success of the cure. The magnetist had to be neutral and patient. While in somnambulist state, different fantasy situations could be suggested to the subject (a technique close to today’s guided meditation). The subject could also experience lack of memory and a sort of divided consciousness that could be related to paranormal phenomena like clairvoyance, a form of extra-sensory perception. The magnetized patient also directed the treatment.
21	Puységur versus Mesmer While Mesmer, who liked astronomy and research of magnetic and electric properties of the matter, had a rather physicalist approach, Puységur’s, for his part, was more psychological and more subject oriented, closer to the point of view of modern psychotherapy. From a socio-historical perspective Mesmer was a republican oriented city man who would organize collective sessions in a bath, while Puységur was an aristocrat from the country, who would hypnotise his subjects under a tree in his estate. Most of his subjects being peasants who had served his family for generations, it was probably easier to create a climate of dependence and subordination. Mesmer was a product of the Enlightenment society and Culture. He was widely inspired by Diderot, Voltaire and especially Rousseau’s focus on nature and “universal harmony”. In this pre-revolutionary times, Mesmer’s freemasonic atheists and libertarians ideas were very attuned with the view of man as a creature of science and reason in contract with the belief in hostile supernatural forces maintained by the despotic institutions of the old order of the Ancien Régime. He had been initiated in the same freemasonic lodge as Mozart. Actually, Mesmer’ Société de l'Harmonie Universelle was first incorporated under French Law with the Masonic sounding title of the Lodge of Associates of Universal Harmony. On the other hand, Puységur was a member of the aristocracy. During the Revolutionist reign of Terror he was arrested as a noble and a product of the Ancient Régime. Delègue (1999) claims that Puységur preferred direct suggestion rather than convulsive crises by the fact it is only through its submissiveness to the master that the subject can recover the bottom of his/her part of omniscience, his/her divine part. Puységur, unlike Mesmer, did not seek the recognition of the scientific world. He was certainly influenced by Mesmer’s freemasonic ideas, but he was also interested in the pre-romantic ideas of the time than would move away from rationalist philosophers to return to some medieval concepts. The “me” and the “self” would be more emphasized, in a philosophy principally based on feelings and personal emotions against reason. This might explain the fact that a lot of Puységur’s followers became spiritualists rather than purely Mesmerian fluidists.
22	Mesmer’s and Puységur’s legacy The fluidist current comes directly from Mesmer, with a rather materialistic and physical view on magnetism as a force anchored in nature. Puységur’s somnambulistic current ended up dividing itself in two movements. The first, the psychofluidist, therapeutic, pursued in the exploration of the “patient's knowledge” and “lucidity”, and the quality of the relationship between practitioner and patient. The second, the spiritualist, kept on a more esoteric path and would attribute supernatural reasons to demonstrations of vision of future or acquirement of self healing techniques by patients in somnambulistic state. the psychofluidist movement which continues with Fournel, Tardy de Montravel, Chardel, Deleuze, Charpignon, Teste, and Rouxel. For them, the trance state constitutes a sort of sixth sense. They are in phase with the spiritualist doctrine. On the other hand, the spiritualists separate in several branches. Some, like the Chevalier de Barberin, believed that the operator acts directly on the patient soul through intention and prayer while others, the animists, are convinced that somnambulism is the consequence of a contact with angels and entities. In Lyon, groups of magnetizers formed a harmonic society called La Concorde associated with Barberin and his friends in a group called Les frères de la Bienfaisance. In the long run, these groups have played a rather marginal role in the history of hypnotism.
23	Joseph Philippe Francois Deleuze (1753-1835) In spite of positive results, magnetism was neglected or forgotten during the French Revolution and the Empire. In 1813, Joseph Philippe Francois Deleuze (1753-1835), a well known naturalist inspired by Mesmer, published his "Histoire Critique du Magnétisme Animal (Practical Instruction in Animal Magnetism. )“ He explained the magnetizing process step-by-step, what could be expected and the precautions that needed to be taken. He first introduced what is now called the “method of suggestion” in producing magnetism by which, for the process to be effective, the subject had to forget everything he knew physically and metaphysically, remove all objections from his mind and have a firm belief and confidence in the power of magnetism. He also was the first to implement post-somnambulic (post-hypnotic) suggestion, that is, implanted suggestions during trance state that would unconsciously be put into action during the waking state. He would put considerable emphasis on the relation between the magnetizer and his subject He was aware that a “tender attachment” might occur between the magnetizer and the subject and he would make sure that there was always a witness during his sessions.
24	Jacques François Bertrand (1795 - 1831) Alexandre Jacques François Bertrand (1795 - 1831), was another prolific author of the time on the subjects of animal magnetism and somnambulis. His main books are Traité du somnambulisme, 1823 ; Du Magnétisme en France, 1826 ; de l'Extase, 1829. At first, Bertrand firmly believed in the existence a magnetic fluid and in thought transferring when people are in a somnambular state, but then his scientific mind took over and pushed him to form his own opinion, recognizing equally the share of the magnetic fluid and that of the imagination. By so doing, he became closer to the ideas of the Abbé Faria who had trained his friend François Noizet.
25	The Power of Suggestion Revealed Faria and The Imaginationist Movement The Abbé Faria, or Abbé (Abbot) José Custódio de Faria, (1746-1819) was a colourful Indo-Portuguese monk who introduced oriental hypnosis to Paris. He is also well-known for taking part in revolutionary movements in France in 1795 He inspired Alexandre Dumas, the novelist, who used him as a character - the mad monk - in his novel, The Count of Monte Cristo. He was also mentioned by Francois-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand in his Mémoires d’Outre-tombe. In 1811, during, the Restauration period dominated in France by a Romanticist wave, Faria was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the University de Nîmes in France, and was elected member of the Société Médicale de Marseille. In 1813, at the end of the reign of Napoleon, after moving to Paris to study Mesmer and Puységur bettter, the Abbé Faria offered a paying course in magnetism that was open to the public at large. He did not believe that trance is mediated by some sort of animal magnetism and he was the first to affect a breach in the theory of the “magnetic fluid”. For him the baquet, the transfer of energy, the crises, the fluid, all was an illusion and he was surprised that people would look for external means to attain a state that tends to occur naturally in the human species. The magnetizer’s will does not intervene and does not act on the patient, with or without a special fluid; For him, trance is the product of two factors: the fascination felt by the subject towards the operator and the degree of persuasion that had been previously established. He applied what has since been known as “conditioning”. He emphasized the power of suggestion and demonstrated the existence of autosuggestion. He also established that nervous sleep can be explained as a natural phenomenon. In 1819, he published his famous book De la cause du sommeil lucide in which introduced the notion of “lucid sleep”, induced by eye fixation. Faria remains as the founder of what is known as the imaginationist movement with Baron d’Hénin de Cuvillers, Alexandre Bertrand, and Général François Noizet. The latter would explain the phenomena of trance on psychological grounds and attributed it to applied suggestion. In that, the imaginationists would place themselves in opposition to both the psychofluidists and the spiritualists. Furthermore, Faria can be considered as the precursor of the stage hypnotists who continue to use his techniques nowadays. Indeed, magnetism having been banned by the Medical academies, the only way to promote it was through public performances.
26	Charles Lafontaine (1803-1892), Charles Lafontaine (1803-1892), a Swiss magnetizer, who was touring Europe giving exhibitions, was forbidden by the church in Italy to practice cures that were considered as “blasphemous imitations of the miracles of Christ”. He was famous for giving three performances of magnetizing a lion at the London Zoological Gardens. He then brought his stage demonstrations in other cities. On November 13, 1841 he performed in Manchester. Among the audience was a Scottish surgeon named James Braid.
27	The third and the fourth French Commissions: Revival and Decline of Magnetism In 1825, Dr. Pierre Foissac, an active magnetizer who was experimenting at the Hospice de la Charité, felt that the 1784 commissions appointed by Louis XVI had been unfair to mesmerism. He persuaded the Academy of Medicine to appoint a new commission to investigate the subject. In December 1825, a committee with Henri Marie Husson, head physician at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital of Paris, as a reporter, made a recommendation to undertake an inquiry on somnambulic trance. The commissioners commenced their investigation at once but did not present their report before five years after their appointment, in 1831. Despite a very positive report by Husson, the Commission concluded that effects of magnetism were due to boredom, monotony and imagination. However, it was agreed that magnetism had a right to be considered as a therapeutic agent as long as it was used by physicians only. The controversy among the Academy continued to grow and in 1837, a new commission, called by Dr. Berna under the supervision of Commissioner Frédéric Dubois d'Amiens, reported that magnetism did not exist, insensitivity to pain was not proven, that the magnetizer had no control over his subject and that clairvoyance was an illusion. In 1842, the Academy of Medicine decided that they would not deal with animal magnetism.
28	From Surgery to Modern Hypnosis The First Analgesic Uses of Magnetism Since mesmerism and somnambulism lost standing in France, it was in other countries like in the Victorian England that it started regaining some consideration. John Elliotson (1791 – 1868), a Professor of Medicine at University College Hospital in London, was one of the first physician to advocate the employment of the stethoscope. in 1829 he also studied mesmerism with Richard Chenevix, a pupil of the Abbé Faria. In 1837, he met in London, with visiting Baron Jean du Potet de Sennevoy who had witnessed successful cases of mesmeric surgery in France at the Hôtel-Dieu of Paris, seventeen years before. He experimented with the use of “magnetic sleep” as a powerful analgesic during major surgery on many patients. He aroused hostility among the innovators of chloroform and was forbidden to practice at the University Hospital. He would hold séances of magnetism in his home and edited a magazine, The Zoist in which the subject was widely discussed. In 1849 he founded a Mesmeric hospital. Despite numerous detractors, he continued to give lectures on clairvoyance, phrenology and odylic force until his death in 1868. James Esdaile (1808-1859), a Scottish surgeon and an important advocate of mesmerism was a friend and a correspondent of Elliotson’s and one of the regular contributors to the Zoist. In 1845, in charge of the Native Hospital at Hooghly, in India, he was a pioneer in surgical anaesthesia just before James Young Simpson discovered chloroform. in 1846, after a Government Committee reported favourably on his successful use of Mesmeric analgesia, Esdaile was given command of a small hospital in Calcutta where he carried out thousands of painless operations and gained the appreciation of the native population. Despite of his success, the hospital was closed down by his detractors. In 1848, A second hospital applying the same methods was established. In 1851, Esdaile left India and one year later he published his pamphlet entitled “The Introduction of Mesmerism as an Anaesthetic and Curative Agent into the Hospitals of India” but, with the expansion of the use of chloroform, he received the same kind of opposition as his predecessors by the medical community as well as by the Church.
29	Braid: The End of Mesmerism and the Birth Of Modern Hypnosis It was James Braid (1775-1860), a Scottish surgeon, who put a definite end to the era of mesmerism and magnetism by renaming it and reinventing its procedure. In 1841, Braid witnessed mesmerism twice when it was demonstrated by Lafontaine. At first he was incredulous but the second performance convinced him. In 1843, appeared James Braid's classic Neurypnology, or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep, greatly inspired by Abbé Faria’s work. He coined the term hypnotism, formed from the Greek word meaning “sleep”, and designating “artificially produced sleep” even though he refuted this theory by 1847. Through hypnotism, he would produce what he, at first, labelled as “nervous sleep” which differs from natural sleep. For him, the condition underlying hypnotism was the over-exercising of the eye muscles through the straining of attention. This state can be induced by the fixation of an object. His also experimented with phreno-hypnosis by claiming that he could arouse diverse passions in his subjects by pressing on different zones of their skulls. He also noted that during the hypnotic phase, known as catalepsy, the arms, limbs, etc., might be placed in any position and would remain there. He totally rejected the Mesmeric concept of magnetic fluid. With hypnosis, there is no direct action of the hypnotist on the hypnotized subject. His new science was also known as Braidism as opposed to Mesmerism. He believed that hypnosis should strictly be limited to the medical and dental professions as a powerful adjunct than could cure all kinds of ailments. In 1850, Braid’s ideas were introduced into France by Dr. Etienne Eugène Azam (1822-1899), a Professor of Medicine in Bordeaux, who published them in the “Archives de Medicine.” Among the people who widely studied the phenomena was Paul Broca (1824-1880), the pioneer brain specialist and anthropologist, who experimented with Braid’s method, as reported in 1959, in front of the Academy of Sciences.
30	The French Schools: The Nancy School of Hypnotism In France, since the advent of the Second Empire, the Romantic Literary movement had totally died to be replaced by sceptical philosophers and entertaining literature. Scientists and physicians were in line with this tendency. As a matter of fact, it was only with Liébeault and Bernheim that the history of suggestion came to a new level of notoriety and recognition in the medical field. Auguste Ambroise Liébeault (1823-1904) was a simple country doctor who had heard of Husson’s report in 1831 and of Broca’s hypnotic anesthesia. Liébeault’s interest in hypnosis started when he was a Medical Intern in 1848, but he was temporally diverted from it by his professors. In 1860, as a country physician he decided to use it widely on his patients. He would mainly treat the poor and heal the sick by using regular medicines but also hypnosis. He believed that the hypnotic state is not provoked by any physical action or a magnetic fluid, but only by verbal suggestion, a concept very close to Faria’s theory. Liébeault estimated that 95% of people are hypnotizable. First he was vigorously criticized by the established scientific community. In 1866, he published Du sommeil et des états analogues considérés surtout du point de vue de l'action du moral sur le physique, book that became one of the main reference in the field of hypnosis twenty years later thanks to Bernheim’s writings. Hippolyte Bernheim (1840-1919), unlike Liébeault, was a fashionable doctor at the Faculty of Nancy who became interested in the latter’s work,after having been one of his detractors, and who was not afraid to change his mind and recognize his action. In 1882, he asked Liébeault to collaborate with him in the school of Nancy. He published the first part of his book, De la Suggestion, in 1884. The second part, La Therapeutique Suggestive, followed in 1886. For him, hypnosis can be explained by the power of suggestion alone. In that, Bernheim diverged somewhat from Liébeault’s perspective, who believed indeed in suggestion but for whom “hypnotic sleep” was still a real psychophysical state that could be induced, a deep level of hypnosis in which the subject became like an automaton in the hand of the hypnotist. The years 1880-1890 will constitute the Golden Age of hypnosis in France. The school of Nancy, in particular, will attract numerous followers. For instance, Émile Coué (1857-1926), the father of applied conditioning and positive thinking, who developed the theory of autosuggestion as a therapeutic tool, was a graduate from the School of Nancy. Among others, the work of Liébeault and Bernheim also attracted the curiosity of a certain Sigmund Freud.
31	The French Schools: Charcot and The Salpêtrière At about the same time, Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893), from the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris presented his findings on hypnotism to the French Academy of Sciences. For him hypnosis was an alternate state of consciousness, a pathological state linked to hysteria and could not be considered as a cure. His use of it was mainly experimental and only descriptive. He recognized three distinct stages in hypnosis: lethargy, catalepsy somnambulism. Despite his great fame in the medical field, his experimental protocol was scientifically questionable. Instead of inducing light hypnosis through verbal suggestion as it was common since Faria’s discoveries, he would physically provoke amnesia and convulsion using rubbing of the head, magnets and metal plates, in a very Braidian or even Mesmerian way. Most of his conclusions were based on a restricted sample of three unbalanced patients. A lot of witnesses of Charcot’s public demonstrations were very critical of their spectacular style and of the fact that the few subject studied seemed to have been especially chosen to act according to an expected scenario. The Nancy school opposed Charcot's conclusion of hysteria, and won acceptance of hypnosis as a consequence of suggestion: a natural state rather than a pathological one. Charcot’s findings on hypnosis would have probably sunk into oblivion if it had not been for his renowned pupils Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud who later used hypnosis as a tool to treat hysteria.
32	The subconscious mind: Pierre Janet (1859-1947) Charcot, as well as Bernheim, had many students. Among them was Pierre Janet (1859-1947) who focused his work on automatism and dissociation in hysteric patients. However he kept his distance from his first teachers in hypnotism. He also pioneered the study of the subconscious mind. For him hysterical symptoms were the result of subconscious beliefs. He listed fours kinds of unconscious acts: “ (1) Those deriving from post-hypnotic suggestion, (2) those produces by anaesthesia, (3) those that occur during distraction, and (4) spontaneous unconscious acts. In the last category are acts performed by individuals suffering from hysteria. He was particularly interested in the split personality phenomena that he called “simultaneous psychological existences”. He believed that hysterical symptoms had been dissociated from consciousness and often forgotten to be converted to fixed ideas. He would use somnambulism as a treatment to replace the hysterical personality with a healthy second one.
33	The uncounscious mind: Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) considered Charcot as his mentor and, following his footsteps, became interested in the psychopathology of hysteria. in 1885, as a 29-year old Viennese physician, he arrived on a fellowship at the Salpêtrière. In 1889, he also traveled to Nancy and studied with Liébeault and Bernheim, He even came to translate Bernheim's De la Suggestion into German. Returning to Vienna, he started to practice hypnosis. At the beginning, Freud believed that hypnosis was ‘‘nothing other than ordinary sleep,’’ i.e., a physiological process. However, later on, he changed his mind on the nature of hypnosis. In 1881, he collaborated with Josef Breuer (1842-1925) on the use of hypnosis in the treatment of hysteria, notably with his famous case Anna O. They published a famous common paper, On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena (1893), more fully developed in Studien über Hysterie (1895). Freud used hypnosis to help neurotics recall repressed disturbing events, but in fact, he would perform the cathartic method used by Breuer. to treat his own patients. The cathartic method is not considered very effective by most current hypnotherapists. He would put his hand on his patient’s forehead and, in a very leading way, urge them to remember childhood trauma or abuse. Soon he became frustrated by his own difficulty in inducing hypnotic trance and the fact that he could not hypnotize everybody. He also felt that hypnosis failed in penetrating the repression. On the contrary, he believed that repressed memories tended to be masked by the process of induced catharsis, and that such cures were unreliable and of short duration. For him, hypnosis only treated the symptoms of hysteria for a while, without curing the disease. Besides, he suspected an emotional dependence by the patient on the therapist that stripped him from his defences. In 1924, he explained in his Autobiographical Study, that he completely gave up hypnosis when he discovered the principle of “positive transference” with one of his female patients who, awakening from hypnosis, threw her arms around his neck. In 1905, he definitely abandoned suggestion for his own “free association” method that he developed in his psychoanalysis theory.
34	Conclusion: Post-Freudian Era and Hypnosis The beginning of the 20th century was marked by two major World Conflicts that created a lot of physical and mental trauma. In this socio-historical context, the focus was put on reconstruction and well-being. This period gave birth to prominent figures in the world of hypnotism. In the 1920’s, Johannes Heinrich Schultz (1884-1970), a German psychiatrist and psychotherapist, inspired by the work of the Abbé Faria and Emile Coué, developed a muscle relaxation method based on self-hypnosis that his called Autogenic training. This method was primarily tested by traumatized veterans of the First Word War. However, the person who had the largest influence on the practice of hypnosis in the last sixty years is arguably Milton Erickson (1932 -1974). He added a new dimension to modern hypnotherapy by stating that you do not need to be unconscious to be hypnotized. For him hypnosis is a normal state in which we fall naturally several times a day. You can bypass the conscious mind through both verbal and non verbal pacing techniques like metaphor or confusion. Largely influenced by the Palo Alto school and Gestalt thinking, he set the basis for John Bandler and Richard Grinder’s Neurolinguistic Programming method known as NLP. It is interesting to note that there has been a huge historical evolution in the way trance states have been approached: In ancient times, it was seen as a good or sometimes a bad way to connect with the spiritual world. The human aspect of the individual was insignificant, almost erased within the process. Then, with Mesmer’s animal magnetism, it was all about harmoniously reconnecting Man with nature. From Faria’s concept of suggestion to Freud’s transference theory, the stress was put on the on the hypnotist / subject relation. Finally the study of the subconscious mind led directly to the twentieth century where the focus was mainly put on the notion of Self: how to behave, how to belong, how to feel happy, safe and healthy; a much more individualistic approach of hypnosis, in which practitioners, all over the world, from Coué to Erickson have been reminding their clients that any type of hypnosis is in fact “self-hypnosis” and that the hypnotist is just a facilitator in the process.
35	Conclusion: The Practice of Hypnosis Today Today, hypnotherapy is widely recognized by therapists as a clinical or a behavioural tool, all around the world, to treat psychological problems as depression, fears and phobias as well as behavioural issues as addictions or procrastination. Besides, it is used by physicians and dentists as a pain reduction tool. It is also applied in sport and all kinds of coaching. In 1952 the Hypnotism Act regulated the public demonstrations of stage hypnotism for entertainment purposes. On April 23, 1955, the British Medical Association approved the use of hypnosis in the areas of psychoneuroses and hypno-anaesthesia in pain management in childbirth and surgery. In 1958, the American Medical Association In 1960 the American Psychological Association also validated the use of hypnosis.. In Canada, the Ontario Hypnosis Act was voted in 1961 and was updated in 1990. Since the early 1990s, two UK universities, Sheffield University and University College London, have sanctioned degree programs in medical, dental and psychological hypnosis. Some Canadian Universities and Colleges have also been offering courses about hypnosis. We seem to have finally come to a point beyond all the controversies and mistrust that have marked the history of hypnosis.
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