The Origin And History Of Hypnosis
To understand the history of hypnosis, we must first understand what it is. Hypnotism is the practice of inducing a trance-like state, characterized by deep relaxation and reduced or absent awareness of one’s surroundings. This state can make people unusually responsive to suggestions, either from oneself or someone else.
There are many different types of hypnotic induction methods that have been used since ancient times. The earliest records comes from ancient Egypt around 1070 BC, when various texts discuss how to draw out pain using basic hypnotic techniques such as counting or focusing on a swinging object like a pendulum. This may have been one form of what we would today call "hypnotic pain relief."
Kircher's 'Artificial Magick' (1660) is the earliest written work on a scientific approach to hypnosis. The book describes a method for inducing a deep trance called "immobilaization," and it was based on some of the same principles that are still used in modern hypnosis today.
A far more famous image of hypnotism from 1757, in this case by Charles Bell, an English surgeon and scientist who also contributed to the study of colour vision and neuroanatomy. A German book of 1782, by a man called Rudolph Koenig, is the earliest known work on hypnosis from a non-ancient Greek source.
In 1784, James Esdaile published his Hypnotism: Its Theory and Practice in which he claimed that it was possible to use hypnotism to induce court witnesses to say anything they were told. This is one of the earliest examples of a claim that strong hypnotic trance states could be used for criminal purposes. It was also a subject of some controversy in its time – it was republished in 1830 with a new preface explaining that Esdaile's teachings were not intended as an instruction manual on how to commit crimes.
In 1843, John Elliotson went further than any of his predecessors in developing an elaborate system for curing mental and physical disorders using psychological principles. His approach was based on the notion that symptoms of mental illness were caused by “nerve-force” (much like a muscle). It was this aspect of Elliotson's work that seems to have inspired some of the early claims about the use of hypnosis as a crime-based tool.
Elliotson’s ideas were heavily influenced by a book published in 1841 called The Philosophy of Animal Magnetism, written by one Sir Charles Bell. In it, Bell describes an elaborate process of hypnotic induction that would later become the model for most hypnotism techniques.
The first attempt to use hypnosis as a criminal tool was made when a thief called Grimes was tried in 1841. Grimes had committed several robberies and tricked his victims into handing over their money while they were asleep. This case received some press coverage at the time and Grimes was defended by an American lawyer called William Duncan - he claimed that the hypnotised state was producing a “false memory” in the victim's mind. The jury were unconvinced and Grimes was sentenced to six years in prison.
The next case of a similar nature involved Charles Lafontaine, who was tried in Paris in 1851. Lafontaine told his victim that he had rendered her unconscious using a special powder, then robbed her while she slept. The judge was unconvinced by Lafontaine's claim that this was due to hypnotism, and he received the death penalty for his crime - the only known occasion on which hypnosis was used as an argument for reducing an otherwise standard murder charge.
Meanwhile, other researchers were investigating the origins of hypnosis. In 1787, a man called Franz Anton Mesmer published a book called "A New Science". In it, he outlined a method for inducing a trance-like state using magnets, which he believed to be "animal magnetism". In 1819, Sir Charles Bell gave his opinion of animal magnetism that he had witnessed in 1784 when Elliotson was attempting to cure the sufferers of mental illness. He believed that at the time, the process required too much effort on the patient’s part, and that it was too difficult to control in order to create a trance state.
Hypnosis was also investigated by Jean-Martin Charcot - an influential figure in neurology and psychiatry. Charcot re-introduced hypnosis in France as an accepted medical practice around 1882. In 1886, however, he co-authored what is now considered the first book on hypnosis - "Neurology in its relation to psychology and psychopathology: with a study of the hypnotic state." Charcot believed it worked by suggestion - although he did believe that this was confirmed by an actual physical action within the brain.
One of Charcot’s students, Hippolyte Bernheim discovered a technique for “suggestion of absolute impossibility”. He used hypnosis to stop what were thought to be "hysterical" seizures, and also created many “experimental” subjects who would go into a trance state at his command. (While studying under Charcot, Bernheim had also met the famous hypnotist Ambroise-Auguste Liebeault). In 1889, he called the method of directly inducing a trance using suggestion "the most powerful weapon in clinical hypnotism".
Bernheim's colleague and fellow pupil, Emile Coue, was responsible for creating the first self-help book on hypnosis in 1897. It was called Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion and it was designed to accompany a lecture course he gave at Nancy University. Coué went on to write several other books on self-hypnosis and healing that remain popular among many hypnotherapists today.
Soon after, a series of lectures by the eminent psychiatrist, William James, was given at the University of Berlin. He described a technique called “sleep-specula” that was based on the principle that hypnosis could be used to reduce epileptic seizures in children. This use of hypnosis to treat epilepsy is now endorsed by most hypnotherapists - James’s lectures are credited with popularising its use for children.
This process became known as hypnotic suggestion - it was claimed that the suggestions from an expert could be consciously transmitted to a patient’s subconscious mind, which would then act upon the physical body and cause the symptoms of illness to disappear. Similarly, a person could be restored to health using hypnosis.
In many cases, the “suggestions” were said to come from "truthful" people who had been hypnotised and cured of their physical problems. In other cases, however, the symptoms caused by suggestion often seemed to be more bizarre than those actually found in physical illness.
The most famous example of this was the case that took place at Bournemouth General Hospital in 1910. Two doctors experimenting with hypnosis on mental patients - Dr Edward Maudsley and Dr Leon Farr - hypnotised a patient called James Atherton.
Conclusion:
The patient was a 28-year-old man who had been admitted to the hospital suffering from stuttering and a nervous tic. Maudsley and Farr claimed he was also suffering from "hypnoid hysteria" - that a spell of bad weather caused his condition and other patients' unwanted symptoms. They then hypnotised the patient with the intention of curing him.
The doctors attributed Atherton's stuttering to an over-excited state, caused by his mental failure to persuade his parents that he'd had enough schooling.