Peoples Hopes And Fears

Hypnotherapy: A Brief History And How It Affects The Way I Work

Modern hypnosis that is currently practiced and understood has developed from “Mesmerism” which was founded by Franz Anton Mesmer in the 18th Century. Prior to this time various practices throughout history in Egyptian, Greek and Hindu cultures would indicate that forms of hypnosis were known about and used for healing. In Europe however the development of modern hypnotism is commonly understood as stemming from the initial works of Mesmer who was a medical graduate from the famed medical school of Vienna and after studying as a Jesuit priest became interested in magnetism. Mesmer became Europe’s foremost expert at magnetic healing, where magnets where passed over the body to effect a healing. Mesmer believed all living things contained a kind of magnetic ‘fluid’ and if a person had enough of this fluid, they would be healthy. This is where the term “animal magnetism” comes from. Mesmer forgot his magnets one day and so just made passes over the patient with his hands and was surprised to find that they got better.

One of Mesmer’s pupils Marquis de Puysegur (1751-1825) used “animal magnetism” on a young peasant. During the process he noticed that the patient could still communicate with him and respond to his suggestions. Puysegur thought that the will of the person and the operator’s actions were important factors in the success or failure of the magnetism and he believed that a “cosmic fluid” was not magnetic but electric.

James Braid coined the terms hypnotism and hypnosis in 1843. He was a Scottish surgeon working in Manchester. He found that some people could go into a trance if there eyes where fixated on a bright object like a pocket watch for instance. He believed that a neurological process was involved and that the process could be very useful when no organic origin could be found for a person’s disorder.

James Esdaile (1808-1859) another Scottish surgeon working in India would use eye fixation to prepare a patient for surgery and slow sweeping motions of his hands, putting them into a deep hypnotic sleep, causing full amnesia throughout the body.

James Braid and James Esdaile where among the first who could be called ‘scientific’ in their research and use of hypnosis. These pioneers removed hypnosis from the realms of mysticism, and started experimenting with what could really be done with it to help people with their disorders.

French neurologist, Jean Martin Charcot (1825-1893) used hypnosis to treat hysterics and categorized it as an abnormal neurological activity.

Auguste Ambroise Leibeault (1823-1904) and Hippolyte Bernheim (1837-1919) were the first who regarded hypnosis as a normal phenomenon.

Freud was also interested in hypnosis and read Bernheim’s book on hypnosis “De la Suggestion” to find a physiological explanation of suggestion in the nervous system. As he observed patients enter a hypnotic state, he began to recognise the existence of the unconscious. Freud however rejected hypnosis as the tool to unlock repressed memories and chose to use instead his techniques of free association and dream interpretation. With the rise of psychoanalysis in the first half of the 20-th century hypnosis declined in popularity.

In 1920, Emil Coué, a French pharmacist, wrote the first book on “auto-suggestion,” or self-hypnosis, titled ‘Self-Mastery Through Conscious Auto-suggestion’. He had long given his patients affirmations, or positive statements, to say in a daily ritual, in the belief that these suggestions would improve their lives and health. His most famous affirmation is, “Every day in every way, I am getting better and better.” In his book, he offered other instructions about self-hypnosis, including the warning, “Never the nots.” This is a warning to use only positive statements in self-hypnosis because the subconscious mind cannot recognize a negative statement. For instance, if you say, “I do not want to smoke,” your subconscious hears, “I want to smoke,” and you act accordingly.

The modern study of hypnosis is usually considered to have begun in the 1930s with Clark Leonard Hull at Yale University in the USA, although he was actually a pupil of Joseph Jastrow who had ran a long-running course at the University of Wisconsin on the medical uses of hypnosis. Hull’s work ‘Hypnosis and Suggestibility’ (1933) was a rigorous study of the phenomenon, using statistical and experimental analysis. Hull’s studies demonstrated that hypnosis had no connection with sleep stating “hypnosis is not sleep, … it has no special relationship to sleep, and the whole concept of sleep when applied to hypnosis obscures the situation“.

In the 1950s medicine started to use hypnosis for therapy. In 1955 the British Medical Association recognized hypnosis therapy and in 1958 the American Medical Association approved a report on the medical use of hypnosis and 2 years later the American Psychological Association endorsed hypnosis as a branch of psychology.

Dave Elman (1900-1967) was one of the pioneers of the medical use of hypnosis. Elman’s definition of hypnosis is still widely used among many professional hypnotists. He is known for having trained the most physicians and psychotherapists in America in the use of hypnotism. He is also known for introducing rapid inductions to the field of hypnotism. His method of induction now named The Elman Induction which he introduced is still one of the favoured inductions used by many current hypnotherapist’s.

Probably the most important contributor to the acceptance of hypnotherapy as both an art and a science was Dr Milton Erickson. Erickson was a psychiatrist and hypnotherapist who worked from from the 1930s through to the 1980s who had outstanding professional credentials and because of his solid medical background also had credibility within the medical profession. His form of hypnotherapy is client centred and flexible.

He adapted his approach to each individual client. Sometimes he would be direct, authoritarian, and even aggressive. At other times he would be permissive, indirect and soothing. Sometimes he would choose not to use hypnosis at all, in any recognisable sense.

Erickson believed in working with symptoms to bring about a change. He saw problems as a process, an unhelpful way of going about things that the client had developed, and symptoms were part of that. He believed that by changing the symptom, either its intensity, frequency or location, it was possible to change the entire pattern of the problem. e.g somebody with a compulsive urge to wash their hands fifty times a day, for instance, would be instructed to wash them one hundred times. This changes the behaviour from an internal compulsion to an externally imposed chore, which suddenly becomes much less compelling.

Erickson also believed in engaging the unconscious mind by any means which was available. He firmly believed that the individual’s unconscious contained all of the resources necessary to bring about a cure for that individual in the present moment. He had no time for the Freudian notion that the roots of problems have to be excavated from the distant past.

Erickson knew that the language of the unconscious is imagination and metaphor, and therapeutic stories, anecdotes, jokes, puns and riddles are a crucial element of his work. These act like coded messages for the unconscious, which is able to make the connection and see the point of the story, even if the conscious mind doesn’t or even more especially if the conscious mind doesn’t in fact.

This “smuggling in” of messages to the unconscious is hypnosis, of course, and Erickson fully recognised the importance of hypnosis as a therapeutic tool. True to form, he developed his own idiosyncratic style of hypnosis, often referred to as “indirect” or “conversational” hypnosis. This is because it moved away from direct instructions to go into trance, which had been the accepted method up to that point, to a more subtle approach, based on rapport, trust and language patterns.

In Ericksonian hypnosis, language is used to direct the attention inwards on a search for meaning or to verify what is being said. Once that has happened, therapeutic or trance-inducing suggestions can be made. To take just one example, Erickson often tacked suggestions onto the end of a series of undeniable truths, to give the appearance of logical and natural progression e.g. “as you sit there listening to me here, your arms are resting on the arms of the chair and your feet are on the floor and your eyelids are starting to feel pleasantly heavy and drowsy.”

Erickson also believed in allowing the client maximum freedom to interpret what is being said in their own way – for example, “you may begin to find new ways of feeling at ease at parties”, instead of “you are now more confident in talking to complete strangers at parties.” This is another example of his concern for the client above all other considerations. He went to great lengths to see the world from the client’s point of view, helping them reach their own goals and solutions, rather than imposing his own idea of happiness on them.

From this current point in time, it is easy to look back and see Erickson as a defining moment in the history of hypnosis, and a definitive break from the past. This is because his brand of hypnosis is the type of hypnosis most often encountered today. At the time it wasn’t so obvious and Erickson was often regarded as an unorthodox maverick and even an untrustworthy figure. Erickson’s great achievement was to bring hypnosis back to the service of the individual, by doing whatever is necessary to make it truly client-focused.

Hypnotherapy since the influence of Erickson has developed differing styles of application such as Bill O’Hanlon’s “Solution Oriented Hypnosis”, which uses what he describes himself as an ‘Ericksonian Approach’ and fundamentally has a class of problems/class of solutions intervention proceedure which in essence is using some fundamental aspect of the problem to stimulate the appropriate intervention to create a solution within the clients world.

Neuro Linguistic Programming is also based upon the works of Erickson and it’s co-founders Bandler and Grinder attest that the modelling process they undertook with Erickson as being the most influential ‘model’ on the development of their work which places great emphasis on transformational grammar amongst other elements as a means of influence.

Other forms of Hypnotherapy which have come to the fore during the latter part of the 20^th Century include Analytical Hypnotherapy which is used to discover and remove the originating cause of a problem, symptom or anxiety. This type of hypnotherapy is based on the doctrine of ’cause and effect’ i.e. that every effect, every symptom, must have a cause. Analytical Hypnotherapy will find and release the cause of the problem and hence the symptoms disappear. The object of Analytical Hypnotherapy is to bring the client to a ‘moment of surprising and liberating enlightenment’, in line with Freudian ‘cathartic release’.

Cognitive-behavioural hypnotherapy (CBH) which can be increasingly regarded as one the modern core models of hypnotic psychotherapy is a combination of hypnotherapy with techniques and concepts from cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). Cognitive-Behavioural Hypnotherapy is a therapy which is continuing to develop with advancements such as Aladdin’s “Cognitive Hypnotherapy” which uses a mixture of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and Client orientated hypnotherapy in a manner which enables empirical validation of the technique.

Regression Therapy will examine the past if the client cannot fully remember an experience using regression techniques in which the patient returns to an earlier stage of life in order to explore a memory or to get in touch with some difficult-to-access aspect of their personality.Age regression may be undertaken as an associated or disassociated process dependent on the client and the nature of the event which is being looked at. There are a number of different types of regression with the three most common being Age Regression, Diagnostic Regression and Past Life Regression. It may also be noted that Age Progression is sometimes employed in hypnotherapy as well, allowing the patient to project themselves forward to see a desired outcome or the consequences of their current destructive behaviour

It has also become increasingly popular with some sections of the general public for individuals to access the benefits and learning available through various self-help hypnosis and NLP techniques available in book, video or audio form. This access to information, which is to be seen beyond the field of just hypnotherapy, has allowed individuals to self educate on a much faster and vaster scale than has previously been available to such a large section of society. This explosion of possibility for skills and knowledge acquisition has subsequently expanded the numbers of people benefiting from the resources which hypnosis and hypnosis related techniques can offer. These benefits are not on a one to one or client centred basis but can provide a springboard for individuals to access hypnotherapy where previously they may have felt excluded.

The field of hypnosis/hypnotherapy is now at the stage where it is broadly divided into traditional trance suggestion approaches, Ericksonian (and NLP) approaches, psychodynamic (or “regression” approaches), and cognitive-behavioural approaches. It continues to develop as a therapy particularly due to it’s intrinsic eclectic nature of accepting techniques that work to absorb them under the umbrella term of hypnotherapy.

The eclectic nature of hypnotherapy is something which I find personally stimulating as it allows for the understanding that each individual has a unique perspective of life and their own experiences. I therefore feel that the more appropriate model of hypnotherapy is that of a client orientated content free approach such as Solution Oriented Hypnotherapy which has a fundamentally Ericksonian style of intervention. The element of eclecticism within Hypnotherapy however does allow for other useful techniques to be used as and when necessary such as Direct Suggestion techniques with clients who respond better to that type of approach. In essence it is imperative to match all interventions to be as client centred as possible and to be able to do this the therapist needs to remove their own bias from the situation so that the focus can be solely on the client.

In contrast to this type of Ericksonian content free client centred approach is the Analytical Hypnotherapy approach which utilises the Freudian concept of bringing the client through analysis and recall of their past to to a cathartic release. This approach to me suggests that the therapy is ‘being done’ to the client which I feel is rarely the most beneficial for the client and if it is unsuccessful would also suggest to the client consciously and unconsciously that they have such a significant problem that they have failed to be cured by hypnotherapy.

The difference between these two methods is that the Analytical approach is focused on the problem in a far greater way than I believe is required for the majority of people, its focusing in to such a degree on the issue which the client finds ‘disturbing’ re-focuses and re-empowers that memory for the majority of people on a conscious level which in turn will impact on a subconscious level. The Ericksonian or NLP, content free approach allows for the opportunity and has faith in the clients ability to activate their own resources to rejuvenate their own well-being. This course of intervention creates a feeling of wellness within the client through the feeling of personal achievement and successful resolution through the utilisation of their own resources that the impact upon the individuals life can be far more effective, enduring and holistic.