1683), “the great Irish stroaker,” hypnotized and suggested healing to masses of Irish folk. Greatrakes and Bagnone Valentine Greatrakes (b. He called hypnotism used harmfully, or for exploitation, black magic. He called hypnosis used with benevolent intentions for medical purposes, white magic. Paracelsus first distinguished ethical from unethical hypnosis. (The Catholic Church, ironically, persecuted him for his statement that the mind can both cause and cure some types of illness.) It was Paracelsus who first made it clear that hypnosis was a technology with striking moral implications. He called it magic, a word which then meant any mysterious science. 1541) was the next European to describe the phenomena of hypnotism.
1535), court physician to Franz I, first put hypnosis under scientific scru. The association of hypnosis with the word occult, meaning “secret,” comes from that title.Īgrippa von Nettesheim (b. He described trance, and hypnotic management of a person in trance, in a book, Occulta Philosophica. It was not until the beginning of Europe’s Renaissance that the why of hypnosis first became a serious issue.įaith Healing Versus Scientific Theories “If there be anything preternatural about this disease, I order in the name of Jesus that it manifest itself immediately.” - Father Gassnerįrom 1500 AD to 1950 AD, the history of hypnosis was embodied in a sequence of interesting personalities who publicly argued, experimented, treated patients, and then wrote about those experiments and treatments. Like other ancient peoples, they did not know why it worked, only that it did. The ancient Finnish classic, the Kalevala, describes hypnotic trance in detail. Hypnosis also found its way to the Northern peoples of Europe. Priests induced hypnosis in Aesculapian sleep temples by ceremonial inductions, then gave healing suggestions. In 400 BC, the Delphic and other ancient Greek oracles, began to compete, offering drug- and stress-induced trance experience. In 500 BC, sleep temples in Egypt offered a nineday cure by (drug-induced) sleep and by suggested “gods” appearing in dreams. Hypnosis is the management of a person in trance by an awake operator who seeks automatistic obedience using such conventions as a reinduction cue, posthypnotic suggestions, and suggested amnesia. Abyssinian fakirs made people into slaves using hypnotic techniques.ġ. Chaldean magicians skillfully manipulated trance subjects.
Buddhism and Hinduism used sophisticated induction methods. Technologies for systematic control of entranced subjects and for self-induction of deep trance were soon all over the map. Bas-relief on a tomb at Thebes shows a priest inducing hypnosis. Egyptian pharaohs used hypnoprogrammed couriers called “messen.
Papyri in the British Museum, dated 3766 BC, describe the Sorcerer Tchtcha-emankh doing hypnosis at King Khufu’s court. Hypnosis1 goes back at least as far as ancient Egypt. Aspects of them usually have appeared wherever there were people. Liebeault, Bernheim, and the “Nancy School”Īncient and Medieval Hypnosis Trance induction and brainwashing are both very ancient technologies. There is something weird, uncanny, unbelievable about the seance, and something ominous about the untruths the operator tells his victims.Most people are afraid of other people even under the conditions of routine contact.tempting is the opportunity for the hypnotist. A Brief History of Hypnosis 4000 BC to 1900 ADĪ Brief History of Hypnosis 4000 BC to 1900 AD Faith Healing Versus Scientific Theories