There is a common misconception that hypnosis is a form of mind control. And since no sane person wants to give anyone control of his mind, first-time hypnosis clients usually feel a bit anxious at the start of the session. Thus, the typical question, “Are you going to make me cluck like a chicken?” is not entirely a joke. Accordingly, a proper pre-talk, in which the client’s specific fears and concerns are addressed, is essential for a successful outcome.
But confusion about the true nature of hypnosis is nothing new. Some say that it goes back to Mesmer himself, whose theory of “animal magnetism”—an antecedent of modern hypnosis—catapulted him into the upper echelon of 18th Century European society and fomented a controversy that persists to this day.
Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) was a successful Austrian physician—a kind of genius with a penchant for self-promotion. Known for his compassion and intellectual curiosity, he proposed that there was a natural energetic transfer within human beings. He surmised that the body must have two poles, like a magnet, and must, like a magnet, be emitting an invisible magnetic “fluid.” According to Mesmer, disease was due to some interruption or maladjustment in the flow of this fluid, and it therefore could be cured by correcting the flow.
Mesmer successfully treated many patients, most famously a young female pianist, Maria Theresa von Paradis, who suffered from hysterical blindness. Nevertheless, dogged by critics in his native Vienna, he later moved to Paris and soon attracted numerous wealthy and influential patients, as well as a group of other physicians eager to learn his technique.
It has been said that Mesmer’s concept of a magnetic fluid may refer to the same energy flow that is the basis of acupuncture, reiki and qigong. But Mesmer’s preferred approach to utilizing this energy was novel: He held that it could be redirected into bent iron rods projecting out of a huge wooden tub, called a baquet, which was filled with bottles of water he had “magnetized” with energy from his own body.
Tying his patients loosely together with a rope around their waists, Mesmer had them encircle the tub and grasp the rods. Then, bedecked in a silken, lavender-colored suit decorated with symbols of the moon, stars and planets, he would move back and forth among the group, making passes over each person with an iron wand held in his hand. Oftentimes, patients swooned or fell into ecstatic convulsions as magnetic energy supposedly surged through them Meanwhile, an accompanist played soothing music on a glass harmonica, a peculiar instrument about the size of a small piano which produced ethereal tones perfectly in keeping with the circumstances.
The glass harmonica, or bowl organ, was based on the same idea as musical wine glasses. It consists of a series of exposed spinning glass bowls laying sideways and arranged on a common shaft that is suspended on the surface of a water bath. To play it, the operator lightly touches the rims of the spinning bowls.
It was an invention that sprang from the fertile mind of the brilliant and charismatic American ambassador to France, Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin, a person of wide-ranging knowledge and a popular figure on the French social scene, was appointed, in 1784, the head of a royal commission established for the purpose of investigating animal magnetism. Unable to find evidence for the existence of a magnetic fluid, the commissioners—all of whom including Franklin were notable scientists of the day—concluded that any reputed cures were simply due to ‘imagination’. This was tantamount to saying that Mesmer was a charlatan. Whether or not that assessment is accurate, and to what degree, is still a matter of scholarly debate. In any case, Mesmer ultimately returned to his native Austria and spent the remainder of his life in relative obscurity.
Some years later James Braid (1795-1860), a Scots surgeon living in Manchester, introduced the term hypnosis—actually neuro-hypnotism—as a designation for what he believed was the psychophysiological (i.e., mind-body) phenomenon that Mesmer had called animal magnetism. But Hypnos is the Greek god of sleep while hypnosis is a state of mental alertness. And so was added another layer of confusion. (When Braid realized that hypnosis was a misnomer, he tried to replace it with a more accurate coinage, monoideism, but the term failed to gain any traction.)
Even now, there is no universally accepted definition of hypnosis. Some psychologists have gone so far as to insist that hypnosis doesn’t actually exist—it’s merely role playing, they say. Or a return to childlike dependence. Or a variety of meditation. Others, either from a lack of knowledge or as a way to avoid negative connotations of the word “hypnosis”, employ euphemisms such as guided fantasy, visualization, selective awareness, the relaxation response, dynamic imaging, progressive relaxation, autogenic training, etc.
That’s okay: Like the man in Moliere’s social satire “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme” who was surprised and delighted to learn that that he’d been speaking prose all his life, it’s still hypnosis no matter what you call it!