More on Hypnosis
A Brief History
Hypnotic or suggestive therapy is one of the oldest of all healing techniques.
In ancient Egypt, there were 'sleep' temples, and some form of hypnosis was
used in ancient Greek and Roman cultures.
In the 18th century, Anton Mesmer, a Viennese physician, was achieving
therapeutic effects by a process he termed 'animal magnetism'. He believed
there was a kind of fluid which permeated the universe to which the human
nervous system was attuned. He thought much illness resulted from an
imbalance between this force within the patient and that found in the
rest of the universe, and that this imbalance could be redressed by human intervention.
Mesmer was subsequently discredited, and it wasn't until the 19th century that
his work was re-examined by the physician and surgeon James Braid. He realised
that Mesmer had in fact been inducing altered states of consciousness in his
subjects and that Mesmer had been achieving results because of the subsequently
increased suggestibility of his patients.
Braid experimented extensively, developing his own methods. He named the
techniques Hypnosis, and used them widely in his medical practice.
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