Hypnosis research, uses of hypnosis :: Separating fact from fiction

In the 1840s and 1850s, Before the development of chemical anesthetics, Dr. James Esdaile (1805-1859), a University of Edinburgh trained medical doctor documented 345 major operations that he performed using “Mesmeric sleep” as the sole anesthetic in British India.

Esdaile did not follow the techniques that Mesmer used. Esdaile procedure was as follows:

“Esdaile’s method was to make the patient lie down in dark room, wearing only a loin cloth, and [Esdaile would] repeatedly pass the hands in the shape of claws, slowly over the [patient's] body, within one inch of the surface, from the back of the head to the pit of the stomach, breathing gently on the head and eyes all the time [and] he seems to have sat behind the patient, leaning over him almost head to head and to have laid his right hand for extended periods on the pit of the stomach.”

Esdaile hired native Indian boys that would spend 2-8 hours a day with each patient in a darkened room following his technique.  Esdaile gained a wide reputation among the European and indigenous communities for painless surgery, especially in cases of the scrotal tumors. 

According to James Braid, in a report on Esdaile and the use of Mesmerism in the Indian hospital in September 1846 only 30% of Esdaile’s clients actually exhibited “no signs of pain during their operations.”  In general, Braid’s report was favorable of Esdaile’s technique. However, Braid expressed reservations about Esdaile’s claims of supernatural powers. He stated:

“In theory I entirely differ from Dr. Esdaile. He is a Mesmerist – that is, he believes in the transmission of some peculiar occult influence from the operator to the patient, as the cause of the subsequent phenomena.”

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In the early 19th century, after his appointment as a professor of Philosophy at the University of France at Nîmes, a Goan Catholic monk called José Custódio de Faria brought “Animal Magnetism” back to the public attention in Paris when he introduced oriental hypnosis to Parisians. Abbé Faria was born in the state of Goa in Portuguese India; in 1813 realizing that Animal Magnetism was gaining importance returned to Paris and gave exhibitions in 1814 and 1815 without manipulations or the use of Mesmer’s techniques.

Unlike Mesmer, Abbé Faria claimed that hypnosis was generated from within the mind by the power of suggestion or expectancy and cooperation of the patient, not the operator.

Abbé Faria pioneered the scientific study of hypnotism. He was one of the first to depart from the theory of the “magnetic fluid” and emphasized suggestion and demonstrated the existence of “autosuggestion”. He changed the terminology of Mesmer and changed the focus from the magnetizer (i.e the operator or “the concentrator”) to the “concentration” of the patient. He said that nothing comes from the magnetizer; that everything comes from the subject and takes place in the subject’s imagination (i.e. generated from within the mind). This may be related to an Indian concept called Shambavopaya; The Indian method of hypnosis used by following commands and having expectancy. The theory of Abbe Faria is now known as Fariism.

Later, Abbé Faria’s approach and theory was significantly extended by the clinical and theoretical work of Hippolyte Bernheim and Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault (1864-1904), the founder of the Nancy School. It is worth mentioning that Faria’s approach and the Nancy School contributed significantly to the later development of “autosuggestion” by Émile Coué (1922) and “autogenic training” by Johannes Heinrich Schultz (1932).

Faria wrote and published Da Causa do Sono Lúcido no Estudo da Natureza do Homem which translates to “On the cause of Lucid Sleep in the Study of Nature of Man”, in 1819. He was then accused of being a charlatan.  He retired as chaplain to an obscure religious establishment and died of a stroke in Paris in 1819.

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Marquis de Puységur (1751–1825), a French aristocrat from one of the most illustrious families of the French nobility was another student of Mesmer. Puységur learned about Mesmerism from his brother Antoine-Hyacinthe, the Count of Chastenet. After hypnotising a 23-year-old peasant Victor Race. Race was easily hypnotized by Puységur who siplayed a sleeping trance not seen before within Mesmerism.

Puységur was able to identify the difference between this sleeping trance and natural sleep-walking (Somnambulism) he named it “artificial Somnambulism”. Nowadays this state of mind is what we call hypnosis.

Puységur is now remembered as one of the pre-scientific founders of hypnotism.  Followers of Puységur called themselves “Experimentalists” and believed in the Swiss physician Paracelsus’s and Mesmer’s magnetic fluidism theory.

Puységur became a very successful hypnotherapist, well known in France and other countries. In 1785, while teaching a course on Animal Magnetism Puységur concluded with these illuminating words:

I believe in the existence within myself of a power.
From this belief derives my will to exert it.
The entire doctrine of Animal Magnetism is contained in the two words: Believe and Want.
I believe that I have the power to set into action the vital principle of my fellow-men;
I want to make use of it; this is all my science and all my means.
Believe and want, Sirs, and you will do as much as I.

– Marquis de Puységu

The practice of “Animal Magnetism” was altered by Puységur when he focused his attention on what happened to people while in trance (Magnetic Somnambulism). He observed that when a subject was under trance his/her symptoms and behavior could be influenced by what the Magnetizer (operator) said. It was common to ask the subject to establish his/her own diagnosis, form his/her treatment, and predict the development of this treatment, even predict recovery. 

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