Hypnosis - A Brief History

[Blake Hill]

The word hypnosis is derived from the Greek 'ypnos' which translated
means sleep. Hypnosis though is a trance like state and not sleep
because the subject can talk and stays alert. Ancient civilizations
used a type of hypnosis for many group rituals such as chanting to a
steady drum beat which was used in many religious ceremonies. Back in
the 1600s people experimented with animals. Chickens were calmed
hypnotically by various methods such as balancing wood shavings on
their beaks. Farmers learned to hypnotize hens to make them sit on
eggs which were not their own.
Volgyesi, a Hungarian hypnotist, hypnotized all the animals in the
Budapest Zoo back in the late 1800s. Nobel Peace Prize winner Ivan
Petrovitch Pavlov noticed , in 1904,that dogs given a signal before
food would, after a time, salivate when given the signal with no food.
This was due to conditioning and reconditioning. Because of this
Pavlov became interested in hypnosis which he believed ran parallel to
his experiments. Hypnosis gained a measure of respectability during
the war where it was used to put soldiers back into action.
Although not an accepted practice many psychiatrists used the
technique to help many soldiers whose illnesses were caused by wartime
trauma to function again. The American Medical Association, in 1958,
approved a report on the medical uses of hypnosis. Research on
hypnosis was encouraged as some aspects of hypnosis are unknown and
controversial. Shortly after this the British Medical Association
expressed similar views and not long after that the Italian Medical
Association For The Study of Hypnosis was founded.
The FBI use hypnosis in law to aid the memory and to rehabilitate
criminals. Under hypnosis a school bus driver in California was able
to recall a license number that led police to the kidnappers of a
school bus full of school children. Today hypnosis has become very
popular and even some medical doctors are referring their patients for
hypnosis for habit control - weight loss, stop smoking, stress
reduction etc. Hypnosis has been discussed on radio, popular TV chat
shows and has been written up in many major selling magazines and is
becoming more and more popular as an alternative to mainstream
medicine.