The history of hypnosis is a story of charlatans and scientists, of public spectacle and quiet clinical work, and of an idea that has been dismissed and rediscovered several times over.
Mesmer and “animal magnetism”
The modern story begins with Franz Anton Mesmer, a German physician working in Vienna and then Paris in the 1770s and 80s. Mesmer believed an invisible fluid flowed through all living things and that illness came from blockages in it. He treated patients by passing magnets, and later just his hands, over their bodies. Many fell into convulsions or trances and declared themselves cured.
Mesmer was a sensation. He was also controversial. In 1784, King Louis XVI appointed a royal commission, whose members included Benjamin Franklin and the chemist Antoine Lavoisier, to investigate. In what are often described as some of the first placebo-controlled experiments, they showed that patients responded only when they believed they were being magnetised. The commission concluded that the effects were real but were due to imagination, not a magnetic fluid.
They meant it as a debunking. In hindsight, they had identified the power of suggestion. Mesmer’s name survives in the word “mesmerise.”
Braid gives it a name
In the 1840s, the Scottish surgeon James Braid watched a demonstration of mesmerism and set out to explain it. He rejected magnetic fluid and argued that the state was produced by fixed attention on a single idea. He called it “hypnotism,” after the Greek for sleep — a label he later regretted, as he realised it was not sleep at all.
Around the same time, another Scottish surgeon, James Esdaile, working in India, reported hundreds of operations carried out using mesmeric trance as the only pain control. The arrival of chemical anaesthesia soon overshadowed his work.
The French schools and Freud
In the late 19th century, two French schools argued over what hypnosis was. In Paris, the neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot saw it as a sign of nervous disease. In Nancy, Hippolyte Bernheim argued it was a normal product of suggestion that anyone could experience. Bernheim’s view won.
A young Sigmund Freud studied with both. He used hypnosis early in his career and then abandoned it in favour of free association. With psychoanalysis in the ascendant, hypnosis fell out of fashion.
The 20th century: into the laboratory
- 1933: American psychologist Clark Hull published the first major experimental study of hypnosis.
- The World Wars: Hypnosis was used to treat what was then called shell shock.
- 1950s: The British and American medical associations each formally recognised hypnosis as having legitimate medical uses.
- 1950s–60s: Researchers at Stanford developed standardised scales to measure hypnotizability, making rigorous research possible.
- Milton Erickson, an American psychiatrist, developed an indirect, conversational style that shaped much of modern hypnotherapy.
Today
Since the 1990s, brain imaging has allowed researchers to see what changes during hypnosis, and clinical trials have established its value for pain, IBS and procedural anxiety. Hypnosis is still shaking off its stage-show image, but it has a firmer scientific footing than at any time in its history.
The lesson
More than two centuries on, the royal commission’s verdict still stands: there is no magnetic fluid, and the imagination is powerful. We have simply learned to take the second half seriously.
Next in the series: Stage Hypnosis vs Clinical Hypnosis: Same Word, Different Worlds
This article is for general information and is not medical advice.