January 2020
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What's the history behind modern hypnosis?
The history of hypnosis is a mystery to so many people. I’m here to tell you it’s all about understanding the people and methods that influenced its development. I’m going to show you what history tells us about the factors that affect how hypnosis, as we know it today, came to be.
The word “hypnosis” comes from the Greek word Hypnos, meaning sleep. James Braid is given credit for coining the phrase in 1843, due to his belief (at the time) that hypnosis was strongly related to sleep. Later, he revised his thinking and tried to rename it “monoideism” (fixation of attention), but the term hypnosis had already caught on and proved difficult to change.[2] Despite the phrase not existing as we know it until the 1840s, it is thought that elements of hypnotism go back to civilizations before 1AD.
It is difficult to know if what we now consider hypnosis existed in ancient times, primarily because records of ancient communications are rare and not very specific. There are mentions in early texts, however, that appear to indicate hypnosis-related behavior. The ancient Hindus, Egyptians, and American Indians talked about certain practices that appear to employ elements of modern hypnotism, including references to the use of fixed-attention, incantations, and trance-like states.
Most of the ancient use of hypnotism appears to have revolved around healing. Sleep temples were created by ancient Egyptians, Grecians, and Romans to help with medical remedies. They were dedicated to the physician-God Asclepiades, who treated pain by stroking with his hands and inducing trance-like states, possibly as a form of anesthesia.
While the ancient use of hypnosis is somewhat muddled, due to the lack of precise description, it is striking how aspects of what we now know as hypnosis seem to have been utilized by different cultures in early civilization.
Although Anton Mesmer and his “animal magnetism” gets much of the credit for introducing the principles of modern hypnotism to the world, it needs to be acknowledged that the theory he popularized was taken from a few sources. The use of magnets for medical healing goes back to Paracelsus, the 16th-century Swiss alchemist, and William Maxwell, his 17th-century Scottish follower.
