HISTORY OF HYPNOSIS10:00 Jun 14 2007
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A small romp through time ......
Since the beginning mankind has been captivated, fascinated, enthralled by the abilities of the mind and the world in which we live. And as evidence shows, is still today. Through history alot of that knowledge has been either destroyed or forgotten through ignorance or superstition. Only now as people look for more answers and are again becoming more and more aware, and inquistive about the abilitys of the mind, has interest has grown with hypnosis and hypnotherapy. The magical qualities which it once held, has now changed within society, and now science is the successor. Even today In modern society a minority of people still believe that it is the work of the devil or some form of magic. As we go back in time, we find that not much is known about hypnotherapy or hypnosis before the ancient Egyptians. But from knowledge we have, we are able to determine that people who held titals such as Wise one, Sage or Shaman were considered to have abilitys for their minds, to go into a trance like state. These would have been in relation to some form of worship, or for healing rituals.
Many people are aware that the ancient Egyptians used temples known as dream temples. People who would have used these Sleep temples would already have been primed by maybe an icantation or form of a religious ritual. They would also have been used for theraputic reasons as well. The sick or disturbed person would have been put into a trance like sleep, the priest or priestess would have then tried to interpret the persons dreams to aid them along there recovery. These temples are associated with the earlist recorded physcian. Imhotep(l-em-hotep) (he comes in peace). He was the physician Vizer, Architect and priest to Pharaoh Zoser. He is also known to have built the first pyramid. Imhoteps name has been used by Hollywood for the film The Mummy.
Many years later in Greece Sleep temples were known as great places for healing. Healing would happen when the person was in a trance like state. The Priests would aid the patient into a form of sleep which was known as inculation,which comes from latin and means "to lie down". Sometimes the patient would be kept in a trance like state for up to three days. They were also known through the God lesculapius to hold mysterious powers and many would look for mental and physical healing from him. The ancient hebrews used chanting, meditation and breathing exercises which would be similar to using auto-hypnonosis. Auto-hypnosis can give an altered state of conciousness use of suggestion and expectation. Even the Romans later on adopted the idea of trance from the Greeks and erected many Sleep temples throughout the enpire which were dedicated to the God Appollo. Personally, I beieve Jesus, who was recorded as being a real person by the Roman Empire, may have used a form of hypnotic suggestion for many of his alledged miracals.
Jumping forward by many centuries a man in the Seventeenth century named Father Gassner treated illnesses while his patients were lying down and appeared to be in a form of trance. He told his patients to die while he would then proceed to cast out their demons and restore them to a healthy life.
In 1773 Anton Mesmer tested his theroy of animal magnetism, as he found Father Gassner's idea that his patients were possessed by demons too far fetched. Mesmer felt that the crucifix which Gessner had used was some how magnitizing his patients. Sadly in 1784 Mesmer was to lose his reputation and be considered a fraud by the french government, after this Mesmer's popularity faded very quickly. In 1815 Marcus 0 Puysegur, who had been Mesmer's student, described three stages of hypnosis as (1) The concentration of the senses of the operator, (2) Acceptance of suggestion without question, and (3) Amnesia for events in trance. He was also able to put patients in a trance which he called somnambulism, where, unlike Mesmer, whose patients went into fit or crisis, Puysegur's patients went into a quiet state of relaxation.
It was said that nature only offered three anaesthetics- sleep, fainting and death. IN 1837 hypnosis had a breakthrough, John Elliotson performed over two hundred operations, using the mesmeric trance on his patients. His protege, James Esdaile, conducted over three hundred major operations, some of them amputations, using a similar technique. Esdaile knew that it was likely that he would be ridiculed for his claims, so he kept hard data that his death rate was just five percent, whereas surgical mortality was about forty percent. This, he believed, was because he had suceeded in the successful release of pain. Sadly though, as modern medicine moved on, hypnosis anaesthesia was to take a backward step again, and in 1846 ether was used by a Boston dentist for the first time. Within two years of ether being used nitrous oxide and chloroform were being widely used. This form of anaesthetic was said to be a complete, safe and inevitable. Mesmerism was to be cast aside and almost forgotten for many years.
Sigmund Freud studied hypnosis between 1883 and 1887 but struggled with his belief and technique. As the years went by he decided that it was ineffective. Freud moved on to psyhoanalysis, and died on September 23rd, 1939, after making a tremendous impact in the study of psychology. Though Freud sadly turned his back on hypnosis it is well known that Freud used many of the techniques in his later work.
As the years went by hypnosis was again to surface and be used for medical purposes in both world wars. It was used successfully for things such as post traumatic stress, anaesthetic and when modern medicine was unavailble for use due to shortages.
The in 1930's an American called Milton Erikson made a big contribution to the progress of hypnotherapy, and is still considered to be the father figure of NLP. There was a further breakthrough as the British and American Medical Associations accepted the fact that hypnosis was very used as a therapeutic tool. The worlds first accepted medical hypnotist was a man called Sydney van Pelt, who had been able to build up a reputation when the rest of the world had looked on with suspicion. He had become the first and lifetime president and editor of the British Society of Medical Hypnotism, and the British Journal of Medical Hypnotism, which is the oldest and most respected journal still in publication. He participated as a lecturer in the first international course in medical hypnotism ever given.
My personal opinion is that although hypnotherapy had been around since the dawn of time and has had many knocks throughout history, it is now here to stay, and the more people question the abilities of the mind the more the secrets of the ancients will become unlocked.
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