A Brief History of Hypnotherapy
A Brief History of Hypnotherapy North London.
The earliest references to hypnosis date back over 4000 years to ancient Egypt and Greece where the story of Hypnotherapy begins In fact, Hypnos is the Greek word for sleep, although the actual state of hypnosis is very different from that of sleep. The Egyptians used healing sanctuaries called 'Sleep Temples.' Hypnosis was used to induce dreams, which were then interpreted by priests and priestesses in order to solve the presenting problem. The tradition of temple sleep dates from the time of Imhotep (I-em-hotep, 'he comes in peace') one of the earliest known physicians. He was the physician to the pharaoh Zoser (2650 - 2590 B.C.).
In Greece, Sleep Temples were renowned as places of great healing and were dedicated to the healing god Esculapius. Esculapius took over the role of Imhotep. This sleep therapy, the pre-cursor to hypnotherapy, survived in the temples of Esculapius, which were constructed by the Greeks in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. The temples in his honour were temples of healing dreams. His daughters were Hygea and Panacea. A 'Kline' was a sacred place or a sacred skin set out around the temple, where the sick person reclined to enter the dream state. From these names we have derived the words, Panacea, Hygiene and Clinic.
At the height of the cult's power, there were 420 temples, spread across the ancient Greek Empire. If you would like further information about Hypnotherapy North London, or to have a consultation without charge or obligation; please contact Paul Levrant who will be happy to explain in greater detail how Hypnotherapy North London may be able to assist with various behavioural and emotional difficulties. Sessions for Hypnotherapy are available in his practice in Highgate.
Sleep Temples eventually spread as far as Britain. Even now in the UK, you can visit a Roman archaeological site at Lydney Park, Lydney, Gloucestershire, where you can see the remains of a Sleep Temple. Sir Mortimer Wheeler excavated the Lydney Temple complex in 1928. One of Sir Mortimer's assistants was the young Professor J.R.R.Tolkein, who went on to write 'Lord of the Rings'; it has been suggested that he based Middle Earth on the landscape surrounding the Temple.
There are many other references to trance and hypnosis in early writings. In 2600 BC the father of Chinese medicine, Wong Tai, wrote about techniques that involved incantations and passes of the hands. The Hindu Vedas written around 1500 BC mentions hypnotic procedures. Trance-like states occur in many shamanistic, druidic, voodoo, yogic and religious practices. If you would like further information about Hypnotherapy North London, or to have a consultation without charge or obligation; please contact Paul Levrant who will be happy to explain in greater detail how Hypnotherapy North London may be able to assist with various behavioural and emotional difficulties. Sessions for Hypnotherapy are available in his practice in Highgate.
Swiss physician Paracelsus (1493-1541 experimented with magnetic fields, believing they influenced all living beings. This convinced a Flemish chemist, Jan Baptista van Helmont (1579-1644) that all human beings emit a form of magnetism he called animal magnetism. Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), an Austrian physician, is widely acknowledged as the 'Father of Hypnosis'. Though much maligned by the medical world of his day, Mesmer was nevertheless a brilliant man. He believed that there was a quasi-magnetic fluid in the very air we breathe and that the body's' nerves somehow absorbed this fluid. As a doctor, his main concern was how to effectively treat his patients, and he considered disease to be caused via a blockage of the circulation of this magnetic fluid in the blood and the nervous system. Curing disease would, in his view, involve correcting the circulation of this liquid. He developed the theory of animal magnetism - the idea that diseases are the result of blockages in the flow of magnetic forces in the body. He believed he could store his animal magnetism in baths of iron filings and transfer it to patients with rods or by mesmeric passes.
Mesmer would ask his subjects to be still while he swept his arms across their body. Mesmer himself was very much a showman, conveying by his manner that something was going to happen to the patient. In itself this form of indirect suggestion was very powerful. Mesmer was also responsible for the popular image of the hypnotist as a man with magnetic eyes. His success fuelled jealousy among many of his colleagues and this eventually led to his public humiliation.
John Elliotson (1791 - 1868) was a professor at London University, who is famous for introducing the stethoscope into England. He also tried to champion the use of mesmerism, but was forced to resign. He continued to give demonstrations of mesmerism in his own home to any interested parties, and this led to a steady increase in literature on the subject.
The next real pioneer of hypnosis in Britain appeared in the mid- nineteenth century with James Braid (1795 - 1860).
Primarily a Scottish eye doctor, he developed an interest in mesmerism quite by chance. One day, when he was late for an appointment, he found his patient in the waiting room staring into an old lamp, his eyes glazed. Fascinated, Braid gave the patient some commands, telling him to close his eyes and go to sleep. The patient complied and Braids interest grew. He discovered that getting a patient to fixate upon something was one of the most important components of putting them into a trance. The swinging watch, which many people associate with hypnosis, was popular in the early days as an object of fixation. If you would like further information about Hypnotherapy North London, or to have a consultation without charge or obligation; please contact Paul Levrant who will be happy to explain in greater detail how Hypnotherapy North London may be able to assist with various behavioural and emotional difficulties. Sessions for Hypnotherapy are available in his practice in Highgate. Following his discovery that it was not necessary to go through all the nonsense of mesmeric passes, Braid published a book in which he proposed that the phenomenon now be called hypnotism.
Braid's findings attracted the attention of the respected French neurologists Bernheim (1837-1919) and Charcot (1825-1893). Although, they differed theoretically, both treated hundreds of people with hypnosis. Bernheim is credited with the invention of ideodynamic processes (e.g., thinking of an embarrassing moment causes the subject to blush), and Charcot demonstrated its safety in the treatment of what then was called hysteria, (which we might now refer to as conversion disorder, a physical enactment of a psychological dysfunction). Meanwhile, a British surgeon in India, James Esdaile (1808 - 59), recognised the enormous benefits of hypnotism for pain relief and performed hundreds of major operations using hypnotism as his only anaesthetic. When he returned to England he tried to convince the medical establishment of his findings, but they laughed at him and declared that pain was character building (although they were biased in favour of the new chemical anaesthetics, which they could control and, of course, charge more money for). So hypnosis became, and remains to this day, an alternative form of medicine.
If you would like further information about Hypnotherapy North London, or to have a consultation without charge or obligation; please contact Paul Levrant who will be happy to explain in greater detail how Hypnotherapy North London may be able to assist with various behavioural and emotional difficulties. Sessions for Hypnotherapy are available in his practice in Highgate.
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