style="font-size:15px;"> Braid’s methods of inducing trance states were also original. Although he would occasionally use Mesmeric ‘passes’ simply to satisfy the expectations of his subjects, he also came to recognise that individuals could be placed in trance simply by being asked to focus their visual attention on a specific object for a period of time. He was also perhaps the first to realise the possibility of self-hypnosis by observing that fixation of visual attention could allow an individual to become entranced without the need for a hypnotic operator to be present. We now know that fixation of visual attention is not necessary to induce hypnosis, however many modern inductions still utilise eye fixation in their application and its use represented an important shift in attention away from the actions of the Mesmerist towards the experience of the subject.
Braid was also quite creative when it came to devising technical terminology. In 1843 he published a book on the subject entitled Neurypnology recounting many remarkable cures. He also coined the term ‘monoideism’ to reflect his view that hypnosis involved the restricting of thought processes to a single idea. Neither of these terms caught on, however, and it was Braid who eventually devised the term we are familiar with – hypnosis (devised from the Greek word ‘hypnos’, meaning sleep). Although his ideas were not recognised as a dramatic breakthrough at the time, his work has since come to be viewed as being of great importance in putting the study of hypnosis on a more scientific footing. Moreover, one of his final actions relating to his studies allowed the torch to effectively be passed back over the English Channel to France where it was accepted by figures who would also become important in the history of hypnosis. The action in question related to a paper that he wrote shortly before his death in 1860. His state of health prevented him delivering the paper himself and he asked that it be presented on his behalf to the French Academy of Sciences. In the audience at this presentation was a doctor by the name of Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault (1823-1904).
Liébeault was a country doctor from a village near Nancy and had descended from peasant stock. Simple though his background may have been, he was clearly of a perceptive and generous turn of mind and was intrigued by the possibilities suggested by Braid’s paper. Upon his return to his practice he experimented widely with hypnosis in the tranquil surroundings of his garden, where he would consult with his patients. Liébeault made many interesting observations including the fact that Braidian eye-fixation was not necessary and that suggestion was of great importance in the use of hypnosis. His success guaranteed him many patients from the local population, as did his policy of providing treatment free to those who could not afford it. After a number of years in practice Liébeault put his discoveries in writing, although, with sales of five copies in five years, the text could hardly be described as a runaway success (fingers crossed this book does a little better!). Nonetheless, word of Liébeault’s practice reached the attention of Hippolyte Bernheim, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Nancy. Bernheim (1837-1919) suspected that the simple country doctor was guilty of either gullibility or fraud and expected to have his suspicions confirmed. However, when Liébeault was successful in treating a sciatica patient that Bernheim had sent to him, the professor’s scepticism was dispelled. Thus began a professional collaboration between Bernheim and Liébeault that led to the development of the Nancy school of hypnosis, which emphasised suggestion as being of critical importance in the use of hypnosis. Also important in the historical context is that Bernheim experimented extensively on male subjects and this helped to dispel the notion that hypnosis was a feeble-minded, female susceptibility.
The Nancy school’s viewpoint was not the only perspective on offer, however, and heavyweight dissent to their views of hypnosis emerged from the medical establishment in Paris. This took the form of the distinguished neurologist, Jean Martin Charcot, head of the famous La Salpêtrière hospital in the French capital. Charcot (1825-93) had acquired remarkable status as perhaps the most esteemed medical scientist of his day and his work in neurology and nervous diseases was groundbreaking. It was Charcot who had coined the term Parkinson’s Disease, after reading the English physician, Parkinson’s, 1817 study of the affliction. He was also one of the first to study motor neurone disease, which is still referred to in many parts of Europe as Charcot’s Disease. To this day the term Charcot’s Foot is applied to a certain neurological condition in the lower limbs. It is little wonder that he acquired the nickname the ‘Napoleon of the Neuroses’, a moniker that he seems to have done little to disavow. La Salpêtrière was a vast, rambling hospital, crammed full of chronic cases of women suffering from all manner of psychological and neurological afflictions. It provided an ideal hunting ground for such a neurological pioneer; however Charcot’s personal standing and dominance within its walls may well have led to the erroneous conclusions he reached about hypnosis.
Charcot conducted regular demonstrations of hypnosis to professional and wealthy audiences using the inmates of La Salpêtrière as subjects. His views on the behaviours and hypnotic phenomena that could be expected were so well known that it is eminently possible that both the subjects, and Charcot’s assistants who prepared them, ensured that the expected phenomena were produced in order to satisfy their esteemed master. This would not necessarily have been an attempt at deliberate collusion or fraud. Rather, as has already been mentioned, ‘demand characteristics’ can be communicated in an extremely subtle way and enacted by subjects at an unconscious or scarcely conscious level. The result was that, instead of Charcot observing phenomena and drawing conclusions from them, his conclusions were already known and his subjects produced the phenomena to confirm them.
So what were the views that Charcot propagated? His main view that concerns us here is that hypnosis was closely linked to hysterical symptoms and that susceptibility to hypnosis was an indication of pathology – a sign of illness. This view is contrary to our modern understanding that hypnosis is a manifestation of a healthy mind and it inevitably brought Charcot into conflict with Bernheim, whose opinions were closer to our modern understandings. The friction between the Paris school, headed by Charcot, and Bernheim’s Nancy school simmered on for a number of years with the mounting evidence finally delivering the verdict in the favour of the Nancy theorists. In looking at the history of medicine we should be fair to Charcot. Although many of his conclusions about hypnosis were wide of the mark he was, nevertheless, a great pioneer of neurology who made significant contributions to the field. In terms of hypnosis, the very fact that he devoted time to its study helped it become more acceptable as a subject for scientific investigation.
This discussion of Charcot brings us neatly onto the next significant figure in the history of hypnosis, Sigmund Freud. Freud (1856-1939) is obviously extremely well known as the originator of psychoanalysis, which to many is still synonymous with the concept of psychotherapy. In his earlier career as a neurologist Freud won a grant to travel to Paris from Vienna to study with Charcot at La Salpêtrière. Charcot heavily influenced Freud’s subsequent work and he used hypnosis in some of the early investigations that evolved into psychoanalysis. Unfortunately for hypnosis, however, Freud discontinued its use in favour of the method of ‘free association’. There have been several reasons put forward to explain why this happened, some of them more plausible than others. At one end of the scale is the theory that Freud’s use of cocaine (of which he was a pioneering researcher) had damaged his gums to the extent that his false teeth did not fit properly. This, supposedly, prevented him speaking with sufficient fluency to induce trance (James, 2000, p.14). More probable, perhaps, are two other possible explanations.
The first of these is that a female patient made embarrassing advances towards Freud or a close colleague whilst she was in trance and that this unexpected event shocked and surprised him. The second, and perhaps most likely, is that Freud was hampered by the limited hypnotic induction methods available at the time. In Freud’s day inducing hypnosis was a long-winded process that occupied a considerable portion of a therapy session. Furthermore, there was a belief that hypnosis would only yield results if the subject was able to access a very deep level of trance, a level that is only reached by a certain percentage of any population. Nowadays we recognise that even light states of trance can facilitate powerful therapeutic work but ignorance of this fact led Freud to abandon hypnosis in favour of something he thought more reliable
