History of hypnosis: a research chronicle

This section is a chronicle, not an outcome table. The pages below describe how “hypnosis” became a medical and laboratory word. They are Grade M (methods / history). For trial grades, start at how we evaluate evidence. Clinical hypnotherapy is described on the hypnotherapy pages.

Key evidence

A usable spine:

1. Mesmer and animal magnetism: the 1784 Franklin commission tested a physical-fluid claim and attributed effects to imagination and imitation.
2. James Braid: 1843 Neurypnology broke with animal magnetism and named a nervous-sleep procedure.
3. Charcot and the Salpêtrière: hypnosis entered late-nineteenth-century neurology, with a theatre of hysteria that later generations had to unwind.
4. The Nancy school: Liébeault’s 1866 Du sommeil and Bernheim’s suggestion doctrine against Charcot’s grand hypnotisme.
5. Freud and hypnosis: used, then largely abandoned, as psychoanalysis formed.
6. Milton Erickson: twentieth-century clinical style; case-rich, not a modern RCT programme.
7. Hypnosis in WWII medicine: wartime use is part of the story; it is not the modern trial base.
8. Ernest Hilgard: Stanford scales and laboratory hypnosis.
9. Modern clinical hypnosis: from stage reputation to trial literature.
10. Hypnosis in Australia: a thinner documentary trail; Norwest is not a regulator.

Limitations

Chronicle pages compress debates. Primary texts (Braid, the 1784 report) beat later retellings.

What we don't know yet

Much popular “history of hypnosis” is lineage marketing. We do not treat Norwest, or any living clinic, as the heir of Mesmer or Braid.

This page is informational only.