The modern day image of the hypnotist is largely influenced by an 18th century Austrian physicist by the name of Franz Anton Mesmer (1734 – 1815). He developed his own brand of healing by ‘animal magnetism’ or ‘mesmerism’. The word ‘mesmerism’ directly descends from Franz Anton Mesmer. He applied magnets to patient’s bodies and in an effort to heal them of various kinds of illness. He would store his animal magnetism in baths of iron filings and transfer it to patients with rods or by ‘mesmeric passes’. Mesmer soon began to believe that it was not physical forces via magnets but he himself that was generating the cures he produced. Mesmer was very much a charismatic showman who used his ‘mesmerism’ in theatrical shows, which we now recognise as stage hypnosis.

In 1843 a Manchester eye doctor and physician, James Braid, renamed ‘magnetism/mesmerism’ as ‘hypnosis’. The term refers to Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep. Braid came across hypnosis by chance when one day he found a patient transfixed by the light in his waiting room. Braid directed the patient, telling him to close his eyes and sleep. The patient complied and like many other scientists Braid recognised certain justifiable psychological phenomena of interest in hypnosis. However, much more logical investigation was necessary to help understand it. In the early scientific study, Braid at first thought that under hypnosis the nervous system was somehow linked to certain cures by suggestion. He later dismissed this theory and instead called attention to mental factors.

A Frenchman, Emile Coué (1857 – 1926), moved away from traditional approaches and initiated the use of autosuggestion. His most famous phrase was, ‘Day by day in every way I am getting better and better.’ He also understood the significance of the subject’s participation in hypnosis, and was an early forerunner of practitioners who now claim, ‘There is no such thing as hypnosis, only self-hypnosis.’

The modern day acceptance of hypnosis in medicine that we now have owes a great debt to research starting in the 1920′s and 30′s by pioneer Clark Hull and his then student, Milton H. Erickson. Erickson went on to become the recognised leading authority on clinical hypnosis, and a master of indirect hypnosis, who was able to put a person into a trance without even mentioning the word hypnosis. Erickson’s approach and its derivatives are widely accepted as the most effective techniques. Milton Erickson died in 1980, but left many followers of his work.