The Amazing History of Hypnosis
The history of hypnotism (though not by the name “hypnosis”) has both its scientific and artistic aspects. It has its experimenters and pioneers, its lucky guessers, its unwitting victims and martyrs, and today’s hypnotherapists and stage hypnotists—and they all leave their marks on the evolving history of hypnotism.
The use of hypnosis was common in many primitive civilizations. Evidence suggests that hypnotism goes back to pre-historic times, handed down by word-of-mouth through rituals.In fact, hieroglyphics found on tombs as early as 3,000 B.C., suggest that the Egyptians were using hypnotism in “sleep temples” linked with healing or religion or both. The ancient Greeks, Mayas of South America, Hindu fakirs, the Chinese religious teachers, Persian magi, Celtic druids, and African witch doctors also understood and practiced hypnotism medicinally and in rituals.
Wong Tai, the Father of Chinese Medicine (2,600 B.C.) left details of trance-producing incantations and healing activities. The Jewish Scriptures, the Talmud, and the Hindu Vedas gave detailed accounts of procedures we might consider today to be hypnotism. Hippocrates, the Father of Western Medicine, wrote about hypnotic incidents.
For far too long until modern times, knowledge of the art and science of hypnotism, the unique and real benefits of therapeutic hypnosis, and an understanding of the unconscious or subconscious human mind have been restricted to an elite few. No longer. In all likelihood, the first hypnotists were the first shamans, seers and sages, wise men, witch doctors, high priests and so on… or maybe the other way around. Nonetheless, their knowledge was guarded jealously, which shrouded it in mystery, magic, mysticism, “animal magnetisms,” divine power, spiritualism, religion and even modern-day faith healing.
Suffice it to say that since the dawn of civilization and recorded time, the knowledge and secrets of hypnotism and self-hypnosis, have been kept from the average person. And that might just be because self-hypnosis teaches one how to avoid being mastered by your own mind, and the minds of others, and instead when learned and practiced, one learns how to be a mastermind.
From great military leaders like Genghis Kahn and Julius Caesar to the madman Adolph Hitler, where an entire nation fell under the influence of a strong but depraved leader who understood and manipulated mob psychology, leaders have used the inherent powers of oratory, mob psychology, and group suggestion to motivate people to amazing heights and unspeakable lows, and create hallucinations of victory in the minds of countless armies down through time to do all things bad and good.
There are actually thousands of people—from the unscientific to the scientific—who have contributed, and continue doing so today, to the study, refinement and collective advancement of hypnotism and therapeutic hypnosis.
Other notables who studied hypnotism include, Roger Bacon, Emile Coué, Charcot, Janet, Bramwell, Sidis, Breuer, Esdaile, Burcq, Liébeault, Bernheim, and the infamous Sigmund Freud, the latter of whom was a most nervous and decidedly lousy hypnotist and is, in my humble opinion, single-handedly responsible for the 50-year dark age pall over hypnotism in the first half of the 20th Century, that is still perpetuated to this day by the clinical psychology establishment. Lastly, there are also many, including myself, who believe that perhaps Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples cured illnesses with their own powerful version of the essentials of the hypnotic formula—specially —with many whom He healed, and that has been described basically by some scholars as hypnotherapy.
Arguably the most famous early practitioner was 18th century pioneer of trance, physician and bon vivant, Austrian Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), whom most people call the “Father of Hypnosis.” And from whose surname the word “mesmerism” is derived. Mozart was a fan of Mesmer. He urged Mesmer to buy a hotel in Paris, France, on the Rue Montmarte, and become a showman demonstrating his “cures” as an art form and enterprise. And Mesmer did exactly that! Mesmer’s theatrical shows used music, wild lighting and scores of highly suggestible volunteers grasping magnetized iron rods protruding from his legendary revolving “bacquet,” were reputed to be over-the-top productions that might warm even the most flamboyant Hollywood producer’s egomaniacal and greedy heart. Gathered around a large oaken tub filled with magnetized water, iron filings and glass, Mesmer’s patients grasped iron rods, held hands and waited for healing to take effect. Mesmer and his dramatic, live “cures” created quite a storm of adulation and outrage across France. So much so that King Louis XVI, before later losing his throne and head, appointed a “commission” to investigate Mesmer’s cures. The skeptical, scientific-minded American Minister to France, Benjamin Franklin, headed Le Commission. Franklin’s commissioners concluded that Mesmer and “magnetism” were frauds. He stated rightly so that all Mesmer’s cures and outrageous claims and miraculous, but unexplainable results, based on magnetism were actually caused by the “imagination” of the tranced out people. In other words as is widely accepted by practitioners today, ‘all hypnotism is really guided self-hypnotism.’ The hypnotist is a guide or facilitator, nothing more or magical.
One can also conclude from Franklin’s scathing, damning report, the affects produced where caused by the combined ingredients of the modern-day hypnotic formula—and neither by the power of magnets nor Mesmer’s considerable charismatic presence. The “hypnotic formula” takes places within the mind of the person entering hypnosis, not within the mind of the hypnotist. Sadly and unfortunately for both hypnotism and Mesmer personally, he neither knew nor understood that his “cures” were due solely to his linguistic artistry of inducing guided self-hypnosis, which helped his patients use the power of their own subconscious minds. As he was driven out of Vienna, Austria, so too, was he forced to depart Paris for Switzerland, where he retired and lived out his life quietly and very modestly until his death in 1815.
In the 1780s, the Marquis Chastenet de Puységur, a student and follower of Mesmer lived and experimented with hypnosis. Like Mesmer, he too mistakenly believed that hypnotic phenomena depended upon the special powers or supernatural skills of the “magnetizer.” Puységur is generally credited with discovering and naming the sleep-like trance state of “somnambulism,” which remains in use to this day