Cognitive Hypnotherapy

Abstract

Hypnosis has been known for centuries although not always by that name. Ancient as well as more modern quasi - hypnotic phenomena include royal or priestly “laying on of hands”, astral healing, bodily stroking, demonic possession and exorcism, and hysterical conversion reactions. In the 17^tn century, Franz Anton Mesmer (who developed what was then called “Mesmerism”), argued that these effects were caused by “animal magnetism,” which he thought was analogous to physical magnetism. It took an investigation by a French commission in 1784 to conclude that Mesmer’s cures were obtained by the power of unconscious suggestion rather than by animal magnetism. Later, Sigmund Freud used hypnosis but eventually gave it up because he thought it interfered with the transference reaction, was not effective with all patients, and the posthypnotic suggestions he used often had only temporary effects. He discovered early on what modern investigators now know; that there are individual differences in the way or the extent to which people experience and respond to a hypnotic trance.