A History of Hypnosis

Franz Anton Mesma (1734-1815) is credited as accidentally becoming one of the most promonent influnces in the reasent history of hypnosis.

Mesmer published his Doctorial dissertation in 1776 on the subject of the planets effect on human health. The document entitled "De planetarum influxu in corpus humanum" was duly submitted to his faculty at the University of Vienna and resulted in him earning his Doctorate.

He also made many claims about the efficacy of his healing methods by which he would heal patients of various ailments By using weak magnetic sources passed over the bodies of his patients. He also had an array of other props including an apparatus which he named the bacquet.

The bacquet made up of an oaken tub filled with iron filings and broken glass. There were many bottles containing iron rods suspended in water pointing from the top of the barrel in the direction of the patients who would stand around the barrel holding hands in a ring formation, according to Mesmer these rods would radiate magnetic force toward the patients, which would pass through each person in turn creating some kind of magnetic circuit.

Mesmer claimed that the magnetic flux radiated by the magnets corrected anomalies in the magnetic fields of his subjects.

There was no shortage of evidence for the corrective influence of this technique. There was an abundance of patients willing to extole the virtues of this remedy.

Even with all of these testimonials to his credit Mesmer was ejected from Vienna in 1777 due to failure to cure a blind musician.

After being expelled from Vienna Mr Mesmer headed for Paris where the intellectual climate was more liberal. Mesmerism was to become very popular amongst the French Aristocracy, and made Mesmer a rich man.

During his experimentation with his techniques Mesmer discovered that the magnetic fields were not actually necessary to carry out the changes in his audience. However he found that using the "props" lent far more drama to his healing performances, and therefore continued to use these outlandish methods.

As we can see from the above the miraculous healing benefits shown in Mesmer's results were more the result of the placebo effect than any magnetic realignment. He was in fact inducing a hypnotic influence over his subjects. Even though Mesmer may have been seen by many in his own time as a charlatan his work was an important precursor to work establishing the mind body connection.

The above is true in so much so that in 1841 James Braid, an English medical Doctor was to examine a patient Mesemer had treated with his controversial methods. Braid recognized that the root of the patients illness was in fact of a psychological nature an came up with the name Hypnosis derived from the Greek word for sleep "hupnos". Dr. Braid was to establish the first scientific study into this new field.

Josef Breuer (1842-1925), and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), both of Austrian decent were to make use of the principals of hypnosis in the early development of psychoanalysis, but the pair had too many differences to work together for long and parted company quickly. Freud continued to use Hypnosis in his work connected with psychoanalysis, but was to abandon the hypnotic side of his work due to (it is said) becoming less and less able to attain the required hypnotic tone and register in his voice due cancer of the jaw contracted in 1923.

Now let us turn our attention to the farther of modern permissive hypnosis and the birth of NLP. Milton Erickson (1902-1980) Erickson was born in rural America in 1902 and suffered from Polio at an early age. In the summer of 1919, at the age of seventeen, he suffered an extreme attack of the disease and was not expected to survive the night. This attack resulted in Milton being in a coma for three days, only to awaken totally paralyzed only able to move his eyes and manage a little speech.
Erickson was not expected to make any significant level of recovery, but he was made of sterner stuff. Milton had a highly developed mind and kept his cognitive faculties active by playing mental games. Even though he could not move he still went through the mental processes he believed would lead him back to mobility. He also had a lot of time to observe family members actions whilst trapped in his chair.
The observations made during this period were to highlight some of the incongruities between what people said and expressions on the face indicating that they were thinking the opposite.

Milton never gave up on his determination to regain his independence and as he sat strapped into his chair longing to be outside in the sunshine he concentrated on moving his legs and the chair rocked forward. This was the start of his recovery.

Milton went on to regain full control over his body and develop his own style of permissive hypnotherapy. This style of hypnosis was to move away from the old model of a man swinging a pendulum, and demanding absolute concentration from the subject.
Milton Erickson's method incorporated a far less rigid style whereby he would lull the person into trance by talking rhythmically and incorporate any sounds in the general environment into the therapy.
One account of such a session conducted by Erickson tells of how he was taking a subject into deep trance, when he noticed the Grand Father clock was about to strike twelve. Rather than panic over this disturbing his patient he simply used the chimes to deepen the trance, by saying;
"%u2026%u2026in a moment you will hear the chiming of a clock with each chime you hear you will go deeper into trance, the more the clock chimes the deeper you will go into a relaxing trance like state"
This is but one example of the way Erickson was to depart from the then recognized traditional method of hypnosis. He would often practice a form of waking hypnosis by just relating a story designed to convey a message that bypassed the conscious mind.

As is apparent from the above this model of permissive hypnosis became the precursor to Richard Bandler and John Grinder advent of modern Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP).

NLP employs the permissive structure to the enth degree using as it does "embedded commands" and other cleaver use of what on the surface can appear to be every day language Unfortunately due to the need for brevity we do not have time to explore these technique here, However I have outlined links to some very good material later in this lense.
Bandler's back ground up until the 1970's was in the field of gestalt therapy Grinder was an expert in linguistics. They were to observe the work of Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir. Satir 1916-188) was a family therapist who employed certain linguistic patterns in the course of her therapy. Perls was the farther of modern gestalt therapy made similar use of the English language as that used by Satir.

Ginder and bandler were to study Satir, Perls, and Erickson among others and refine their theory of NLP.

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