Hypnowebs - Basis and History of Hypnosis

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The Basis & History of Hypnosis

'''Hypnosis''' is a psychological state whose existence and effects are strongly debated. Some believe that it is a state under which the subject's mind becomes so suggestible that the ''hypnotist'', the one who induces the state, can command behaviour that the subject would not choose to perform in a conscious state (even behaviour to be performed after the subject has left the hypnotic state, through ''post-hypnotic suggestion'',) or even behaviour the subject would be incapable of in a conscious state, such as not feeling pain, manifesting skin blisters as if the subject had been burned, or recalling things the subject's conscious memory does not retain. However, there is strong dispute and scepticism about what behaviour and effects hypnosis can induce; some believe that the state does not actually exist, and that all effects of 'hypnotism' that have been observed are in actuality a combination of subjects' expectations (based on ''their'' beliefs of hypnotism's effects) and their desire to please the hypnotist.

Not surprisingly, given the disagreements described above, there is also wide disagreement about whether it has uses in fields such as mental health, medicine and law enforcement. Some promote hypnotism as a powerful tool for therapists to treat patients, claiming that it can bring up to consciousness painful repressed memory. Some even claim that it can retrieve repressed memories of alien abductions, satanic ritual abuse, or memories from past lives. Others point to this very fact, that subjects under hypnosis can develop and come to wholly believe in "memories" that are implausible (or even proven false memory, false by existing evidence), as proof that hypnosis is, if it even exists, a tool proved too unreliable to be safely used in any important undertaking.

History

Early efforts

Scientists first became involved in hypnosis around 1770, when Dr. Franz Mesmer started investigating an effect he called "animal magnetism" or "mesmerism" (the latter name still remaining popular today).

In the early 19th century, Abbé Faria continued the scientific study of hypnosis.

Unlike Mesmer, who claimed that hypnosis was mediated by "animal magnetism", Faria claimed that it worked purely by the power of suggestion.

In the 1840s and 1850s, Carl Reichenbach began experiments to find any scientific validity to "mesmeric" energy, which he termed Odic force. Although his conclusions were quickly rejected in the scientific community, they did undermine Mesmer's claims of mind control.

James Braid

The evolution of Mesmer's ideas and practices led James Braid (1795–1860) to coin the term and develop the procedure known as ''hypnosis'' in 1842. He rejected Mesmer's misleading idea of magnetism inducing hypnosis, and ascribed the creation of the 'mesmeric trance' to a physiological process; the prolonged attention on a bright moving object or similar object of fixation. He postulated that "protracted ocular fixation" fatigued certain parts of the brain and caused the trance, "nervous sleep." At first he called the procedure ''neurhypnotism'' but the current word soon emerged. Braid developed his ideas over time, down-playing his early idea of nervous sleep and increasing the role of psychological factors rather than fatigue. He came to recognize the role of intense, focused concentration by the participant on the hypnotist, a condition he called ''monoideism''.

Braid attempted to use hypnotism to treat various psychological and physical conditions. He had little success, notably in his attempts to treat organic conditions. Other doctors had better results, especially in the use of hypnosis in pain control; a report in 1842 described an amputation performed on a hypnotized participant without pain. The report was widely dismissed and there was strong resistance in the medical profession to hypnotism, but other successful reports followed. Dr. James Esdaile (1805–1859) performed over 300 operations using hypnosis as pain control. The development of chemical anesthetics soon saw the replacement of hypnotism in this role.

The deaths of Braid and Esdaile curbed the interest in hypnotism. Experimentation was revived into the 1880s, mainly in continental Europe where new translations of Braid's work were circulated. The neurologist Jean Martin Charcot endorsed hypnotism for the treatment of hysteria. ''La méthode numérique'', still more popular on the continent than in England, led to a number of systematic experimental examinations of hypnosis in France, Germany, and Switzerland. The process of post-hypnotic suggestion was first described in this period. Exaggerated claims were still made, extraordinary improvements in sensory acuity and memory were reported under hypnosis.

1880s and later

From the 1880s the examination of hypnosis passed from medical doctors to psychologists. Charcot had led the way and his study was continued by his pupil, Pierre Janet. Janet described the theory of ''dissociation'', the splitting of mental aspects under hypnosis (or hysteria) so skills and memory could be made inaccessible or recovered. Janet provoked interest in the subconscious and laid the framework for reintegration therapy for dissociated personalities.

Also in this period Ambroise-Auguste Liébault (founder of the Nancy School) first wrote of the necessity for cooperation between the hypnotizer and the participant, for ''rapport''. He also emphasized, with Bernheim, the importance of suggestibility.

Sigmund Freud met with Charcot, and with Liébault and Bernheim. Back in Vienna he developed abreaction therapy using hypnosis with Josef Breuer.

Modern studies

After this spate of interest the study again fell into abeyance. The modern study of hypnotism is usually considered to have begun in the 1930s with Clark Leonard Hull at Yale University. An experimental psychologist, his work ''Hypnosis and Suggestibility'' (1933) was a rigorous study of the phenomenon, using statistical and experimental analysis. Hull's studies emphatically demonstrated once and for all that hypnosis had no connection with sleep ("hypnosis is not sleep, it has no special relationship to sleep, and the whole concept of sleep when applied to hypnosis obscures the situation"). The main result of Hull's study was to rein in the extravagant claims of hypnotists, especially regarding extraordinary improvements in cognition or the senses under hypnosis. Hull's experiments did show the reality of some classical phenomena such as hypnotic anaesthesia and post-hypnotic amnesia. Hypnosis could also induce moderate increases in certain physical capacities and change the threshold of sensory stimulation; attenuation effects could be especially dramatic.

In 1940s Andrew Salter (1914-1996) introduced to American therapy the Pavlovian method of contradicting, opposing, and attacking beliefs. In the conditioned reflex, he has seen the essence of hypnosis. He gave a rebirth to hypnotism by combining it with classical conditioning.

Studies continued after the Second World War. Barber, Hilgard, Orne and Sarbin also produced substantial studies. Ernest Hilgard and André Weitzenhoffer created the Stanford scales in 1961, a standardized scale for susceptibility to hypnosis, and properly examined susceptibility across age-groups and sex. Hilgard went on to study sensory deception (1965) and induced anaesthesia and analgesia (1975).

Extracts are taken from Wikipedia