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Before we come to the main purpose of this book, it may help your understanding of hypnosis to know just a little of its history and background. Important dates include:

 1775: Franz Mesmer developed healing by ‘animal magnetism’, which was later renamed hypnosis.

 1784: Count Maxime de Puysegut discovered a form of deep trance he called somnambulism.

 1821: First reports of painless surgery in France using magnetism.

 1841: A Scottish doctor, James Braid, changed the name from magnetism to hypnosis. He established it as a psychological phenomenon.

 1845-53: A surgeon, James Esdaile, performed 2,000 operations—even amputations—with the patients under hypno-anaesthesia and feeling no pain.

 1883-1887: Sigmund Freud became interested in hypnosis and began to practise it.

 1894: Freud abandoned hypnosis to concentrate on developing psychoanalysis.

 1947: Hypnosis was being used by dentists in the US.

 1950: Societies and associations for hypnosis started to sprout up.

 1958: The American Medical Association approved the therapeutic use of hypnosis by physicians.

In short, it took nearly two centuries for hypnosis to be recognized as a therapy by the medical associations; after another 30 years-plus it still has not been fully accepted by the medical profession or the public in general.

It is true that there have been many casualties of hypnosis. However, these were not the clients but the practitioners, the brilliant men and women throughout history who have succeeded in hypnotherapy but who failed miserably in marketing the controversial phenomenon of hypnosis. Clouded in mystery, the dangers of the trance state have been propagated by the ignorant. Every time hypnosis obtains a foothold as a form of cure, those using it, whether medical professionals or lay people, are exposed to ridicule.

The vulnerability of hypnosis is that it does not have a 100 per cent success rate, therefore it is very easy to claim to disprove it scientifically. In Western society we demand proof for everything. Homoeopathy cannot be ‘proved’. The fact that it works does not seem to interest the sceptics, however, who demand proof according to their rules. Since you cannot prove the existence of the subconscious—let alone what its function is—according to some people’s criteria of proof, hypnotherapy is nothing less than quackery. However, we must bear in mind that science itself is not infallible. At one time it was ‘scientifically proven’ that the bumble bee could not fly—and, indeed, that the earth was flat.

Because of the lack of finance for research, hypnosis is still fighting to gain the recognition it deserves. Only as recently as mid-1992 has there been acceptable scientific proof that hypnosis does work, published in the New Scientist (June 1993). Having undertaken one of the largest surveys ever recorded of stopping smoking methods, spanning several continents, the New Scientist came out with the verdict: ‘Hypnosis is proven to work.’ Indeed, hypnosis was found to be streets ahead of anything else on the market when it came to helping people to stop smoking. Hypnosis is as natural as time itself and a gift to us all, once we know of its existence.

Although hypnosis has been practised, albeit under different names virtually since the beginning of human existence, it came to the attention of Western civilization with Maximilian Hell, a monk who introduced it to Franz Mesmer, the Austrian physician, in the 1700s. Mesmer treated patients with what he regarded as an ‘animal magnetism’ that pervaded the whole universe. His name and methods passed into everyday usage in the words mesmerize and mesmerism. Many years later, James Braid renamed this magnetism hypnosis, after the Greek word for sleep. This was actually a very unfortunate choice which has caused major misunderstandings of hypnotism ever since. For, although the hypnotized are not asleep, they give the impression that they are, which is very misleading.

The history of hypnosis is as chequered as that of some of its practitioners, and trying to outlaw it is as difficult as trying to stop video piracy. Some hypnotists have not exactly been the best advertisements themselves for the profession. When therapists put enough energy into promoting themselves and then revel in the publicity gained from evaluations of their supposedly ‘miraculous’ treatments, the result usually is that they find their egos expanding out of all proportion to their skills. Success can be its own worst enemy! Forgotten is the main rule: that they are only the experts guiding their clients to make the change. It is the clients who actually make the change in themselves, not the therapist.

Real hypnosis has many celebrated professionals. Of the many fascinating workshops I attended in the US, the one that most took my attention for its historical grounding was a session at which the speaker was Morgan Eaglebear, great-great grandson of the legendary Native American chief, Geronimo. Eaglebear is a practising hypnotherapist and healer. He explained how this form of natural healing had been used for generations among Native American tribes. They did not call it hypnosis but it was the same thing. A young tribal member would be chosen to learn the history of the tribe, which was never written down but just passed on by word of mouth. To ensure that the history was sound and the memory of the initiate was not impaired, the chosen one had to go through tests of bravery to prove his fitness. He was then strung up by his skin, while in a trance state. In this trance form, he felt no pain and each elder of the tribe would visit him and relay a part of the history. This went on for many days.

One test to tell if you are in a deep form of hypnosis is to check for anaesthesia. If you feel no pain, then you are in a deep trance. I suppose these Native Americans were unwilling, given that the passing on of tribal knowledge was so important, to take the chance that the chosen initiate was merely feigning a trancelike state. By hanging him up by his skin they could be sure he was definitely in a deep hypnotic trance. The famous film that depicts this particular practice, A Man Called Horse (1969), starred Richard Harris and showed this test of bravery using the most sophisticated cinema effects of the day. Of course, there was no mention of the trance state in the film.

To get back to the workshop, there in front of me was Eaglebear, this marvellously built and very charismatic man who wore his hair long and dressed as a brave, a living embodiment of Native American history. He lifted his shirt to show me the scars proving he had undergone the great test of bravery. I spoke to him after the lecture and he told me that the old Native American tribes used hypnosis on the newborn. Facing the danger of the campsite being attacked in the middle of the night, the tribal members had to ensure that no baby would cry and give the campsite’s location away. Mothers would therefore train their babies to go into a trance, talking soothingly to them and gently brushing the flat of their hands past their babies’ eyes, gently closing them. This was a practice that was passed from generation to generation. Whenever the mother’s hand passed over her child’s eyes in this fashion, the child would become silent. He also explained that the women, when giving birth, did not know it was supposed to be painful and so, not expecting pain, did not experience any. It seemed to me that there was so much that we of the so-called technologically advanced societies could learn from these ancient wisdoms.