Hypnosis

Hypnosis (derived from ancient Greek ὕπνος hýpnos, German 'sleep') is (summarizing the physiological and psychological theory of hypnosis) a "state of artificially produced partial sleep associated with an altered state of consciousness."

Hypnosis is defined as:

• the procedure for achieving a hypnotic trance (this form of trance is characterized by a deeply relaxed state of wakefulness, the special feature of which is an extremely limited attention focused on a few contents). One also speaks of "hypnotic induction" or "hypnosis in the narrower sense".
• the state of hypnotic trance.

Medical hypnosis is also known as hypnosedation or hypnosis.

Hypnosis was originally assumed to be a sleep-like state. The hypnotist is the person who hypnotizes, the hypnotisand (also: subject, in hypnotherapy patient or client) the hypnotized person. A person can also take on both roles, in which case this is called autohypnosis or self-hypnosis; in all other cases it is called foreign or heterohypnosis. A hypnotic trance is induced by means of hypnosis (induction), the subject is in hypnosis or in a hypnotic trance. To terminate, the trance is dissolved or exduced (exduction), the hypnotized person wakes up. If the subject is brought out of the trance (for example, for the purpose of deepening the trance) and shortly thereafter put back into trance, this is called fractionation. During hypnosis, the subject may be given verbal instructions, so-called suggestions, which are intended to have a direct effect on the unconscious.

Suggestions that are supposed to be effective even after the hypnosis has been dissolved are called posthypnotic suggestions. Under posthypnotic suggestion, measurable changes in information processing occur in the brain. Neuropsychological studies with imaging techniques have shown that the activity of certain brain areas is selectively reduced.

Terms

The terms "hypnosis" and "trance" are often used synonymously. The Austrian trance researcher Giselher Guttmann, however, pleads for a clear differentiation, because in contrast to other trance states, under hypnosis there is no significantly altered electrical activity in the cerebral cortex than in the normal waking state.

History

Around 1770, modern science perceived hypnosis, which had been known since antiquity, as a phenomenon detached from a magical-religious background. Franz Anton Mesmer experimented with magnets which he placed on patients. He called the effect magnetism animalis, but attributed the effective forces to the magnets. Because of Mesmer's popularity, the process of hypnotizing was long called "mesmerizing," an expression that still exists in contemporary English (to mesmerize 'to hypnotize'). Alfred Russel Wallace thought he could prove Gall's skull map with the help of mesmerization. In a text unpublished during his lifetime, Friedrich Engels criticized mesmerism (in its late phase often synonymous with "somnambulism") and Wallace's theories as erroneous beliefs and self-deception. According to his own account, Engels put a twelve-year-old boy without magnets into a hypnotic state by "gently rubbing or brushing against him" and then had the boy re-experience the effects of self-discovered Gallic cranial areas. He concludes that effects only ever occurred when the "patient [was] made to understand what was expected of him." The hypnotist's belief in the skull map allowed the desired effects to occur unconsciously in the hypnotized person, just as effective forces were attributed to the magnets, which came about through other causes.

Around the middle of the 19th century, a conceptual and conceptual transformation from "animal magnetism" to "hypnotism" took place. Devices such as the hypnoscope emerged.

In Britain, relatively many people were critical of the process of "mesmerizing". Nevertheless, the English ophthalmic surgeon James Braid attended a performance by the magnetizer LaFontaine, the grandson of the fabulist, and found that the fluttering of the eyelids could not be induced voluntarily. He then experimented with subjects, asking them to fixate on shiny objects in order to induce them into a trance state. In time, he rejected the ideas of Magnetic Animalism and theorized brain physiological changes to take place during a trance. Braid performed numerous eye surgeries under hypnosis, opening the debate for further applications and treatments.

In the 19th century, France was a leader in the study of hypnosis, with schools in Nancy (Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault, Hippolyte Bernheim) and Paris (Jean-Martin Charcot). Sigmund Freud became aware of Mesmer's experiments in 1885 at Jean-Martin Charcot in Paris and tried this method himself to treat patients. This became the starting point of his studies on hysteria. Later, however, he dropped this method and devoted himself to his technique of free association.

In the 1930s, Ferenc Völgyesi and Erik Jan Hanussen, among others, performed as hypnotists.

Hypnosis was developed further in the 20th century in the German-speaking area, first by Oskar Vogt (1870-1959), then by his student Johannes Heinrich Schultz (1884-1970), who developed autogenic training from it, and later by Klaus Thomas.

In the American-speaking world, hypnosis was significantly developed by Milton H. Erickson (indirect hypnosis), Kroger and Dave Elman (authoritarian hypnosis). In England, John Hartland is considered one of the most famous hypnotists. His book Dictionary of Medical and Dental Hypnosis is part of the official training textbook for British hypnotists. Erickson founded a new form of hypnotherapy, which is considered the most modern form today and from which other psychological methods, such as neuro-linguistic programming, developed.