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What Is Hypnosis?

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WHAT IS HYPNOSIS?

I intend this essay to cover the subject matter, ranging from the generally acknowledged Father of Hypnotherapy through to the founder of the Progressive Muscle Relaxation method, describing on the way the scientific advances that help us have a better understanding of Hypnosis, and why relaxation is an important tool in our arsenal.

“And…You’re a Chicken...! ” Unfortunately, due to the popularity of the modern Stage hypnotist, this is the General Public’s opinion of Hypnotism. To better understand today’s modern approach to Hypnosis as a tool used for therapy, we have to go back in time, to a point in the late eighteenth century, when a Viennese Doctor named Franz Mesmer (1734-1815) decided enough was enough with regard to the then contemporary cures for various maladies, some of which caused the patient more pain and distress than the ailment for which they were being treated.

The devotion he showed towards his patients was unusual, most notably in the case of Franzl Oesterline, considered by many to be his “Breakthrough” case. After moving her into his home to provide twenty-four hour attention, he elected to affect a cure for her ill health using theories that he had put forward in his youth, that of “Animal Magnetism” in which he postulated that gravity and tidal influences act upon the human body.

Using a magnet, he “disrupted” the fields of gravity that he believed were causing his patient’s problems, whilst explaining to her that she would feel a sensation such as liquid flooding out of her, taking the illness with it. This was so successful, her recuperation was absolute and, to all intents and purposes, immediate.

Today, we know of course, that the explanation was the true cause of her recovery, being as it was, in essence, a hypnotic suggestion, and it was that which caused the “illness to flood out of her.”

Mesmer

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