little doubt that hypnosis went into abeyance as psychoanalysis came to dominate the psychological landscape.
Even Freud’s best-known colleague and subsequent apostate discarded hypnosis due to a fundamental misunderstanding of its nature and potential. Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was regarded as the ‘Crown Prince’ of psychoanalysis and was expected to take the movement forward after Freud’s death. As Jung began to develop his own divergent views, however, the relationship crumbled and fell apart amidst much acrimony. Whereas Freud was rather aloof and standoffish in his dealings with clients, Jung’s greater warmth and empathy made him the more natural hypnotist. Unfortunately Jung also abandoned the use of hypnosis, erroneously believing that its only potential application was for directly implanting the hypnotist’s commands into the mind of the subject. Jung was interested in helping clients develop their own potential and resources, rather than imposing his will upon them and he mistakenly believed that hypnosis was incompatible with such an approach (Jung, 1964, p.45).
It is rather ironic that Dr Ernest Rossi, a hugely influential contemporary hypnotherapist who has pioneered client-centred applications of hypnotherapy, should originally have trained as a Jungian analyst before being drawn towards the use of hypnosis – a complete reversal of the path taken by Jung.
It is also interesting to note that, although both Freud and Jung believed they had abandoned hypnosis, this was not actually the case. Although they no longer used formal, overt hypnotic approaches, their preferred options (free-association and active-imagination, respectively) have all the features of hypnosis. As you will come to see the states of focused introspection facilitated by these approaches are clearly recognisable as covert, indirect forms of hypnosis. Despite what they believed they had done, Freud and Jung simply replaced one hypnotic approach with another. O’Connor and Seymour (2003, p.112) express this succinctly:
“Most of the work on trance and altered states has been done in a psychotherapy setting, for all therapies use trance to some extent. They all access unconscious resources in different ways. Anyone free-associating on an analyst’s couch is well into downtime [hypnotic trance], and so is someone who is role playing in Gestalt therapy. Hypnotherapy uses trance explicitly.”
Following the advent of psychoanalysis, hypnosis, under its own name and identity, faded into the background for a period of time, only really being resurrected during the First World War as a brief and effective treatment for war neuroses (also known as ‘shell-shock’ or by the more modern term Post-traumatic Stress Disorder). It was still studied and written about by individuals such as Clark Hull (1884-1952), a psychologist at Yale, but its resurrection into mainstream medical thought was largely brought about by the work of the American doctor and psychiatrist, Milton H. Erickson (1901-1980). Erickson’s contribution to hypnotherapy has been enormous and he was, almost without question, the most influential hypnotherapist of the 20th century. Erickson’s immense reputation was established both as a result of his pioneering work in hypnosis and psychotherapy and also because of his own colourful and dramatic life. Born on a farm in Wisconsin, colourful is perhaps not actually the most appropriate word to use in discussing Erickson, as he suffered from colour-blindness. He was also tone deaf, dyslexic and suffered from two different strains of polio during his life. The first, when he was in his teens, almost killed him and he struggled hard to recover from the paralysis it caused. The second polio affliction occurred during later life and confined him to a wheelchair. It is interesting to note that Erickson’s early exposure to the subject of hypnosis included his attendance of lectures by Clark Hull who, like Erickson, had been crippled by polio. Erickson often used self-hypnosis to deal with the pain with which that second attack left him.
Erickson’s legacy in terms of hypnotherapy was immense and has inspired further generations of therapists and researchers. Erickson believed that we all access trance on many occasions in our life without recognising it and it is an innate ability that we all have. He believed that it is the responsibility of the therapist to find a way to facilitate a client’s trance experience, rather than expecting the client to simply comply with the therapist’s demands. He developed many innovative ways of inducing trance, including many ‘indirect’ approaches where a client could be eased into hypnosis without the word even being mentioned.
Erickson’s view of the unconscious mind was also a shift away from Freudian, psychoanalytical perspectives, which viewed the unconscious as the repository of unruly, destructive and undesirable elements of the psyche. Erickson viewed the unconscious as being a storehouse of forgotten wisdom, resources and experiences that could be enormously beneficial to the client in leading his or her life. He also developed an approach to therapy called ‘Utilisation’ which viewed the client’s presenting symptoms as containing the potential for their own resolution. Whatever behaviour a client displayed could be re-directed in a positive and beneficial way and, since the client’s experience was accepted and valued rather than opposed, the potential for resistance or power-struggles between therapist and client were greatly reduced. Erickson’s reputation as a therapeutic wizard (and also his personal longevity) attracted and influenced many contemporaries. Amongst the therapists profoundly influenced by Erickson’s work were Jay Haley, Stephen Gilligan, Jeffrey Zeig, Richard Bandler and John Grinder of NLP fame, Paul Watzlawick and the staff of the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, Gregory Bateson, William O’Hanlon, Michael Yapko, Steve and Carol Lankton and David Calof. Perhaps his best-known associate was Ernest Rossi who I have already mentioned. Rossi collaborated with Erickson over many years and worked together on many books elaborating and developing Erickson’s approach. Rossi was also appointed as Erickson’s literary executor.
Whilst it is important not to deify Erickson, it is probably true to say that the fields of hypnosis and psychotherapy would not be what they are today without his contribution.
Just as Charcot’s interest in hypnosis had rescued it from the status of sideshow quackery, so Erickson’s influence helped draw hypnosis back into the arena of serious scientific scrutiny. Apart from his work in hypnosis, Erickson was highly respected in conventional psychiatric circles and his championing of hypnosis helped give the subject scientific credibility. We should not assume from this, of course, that all was plain sailing. Erickson experienced a great deal of hostility from professional peers and medical bodies due to his work with hypnosis and attempts were even made to remove his licence to practice medicine. Nonetheless, the growing acceptance of hypnosis led to its investigation by official medical bodies and in 1955 the British Medical Association endorsed hypnosis as being a powerful therapeutic tool. The BMA was followed in 1958 by a similar verdict from the American Medical Association. It should be noted, however, that this was not the first time that hypnosis had been investigated by official medical bodies. In 1891 the BMA had set up a committee to investigate hypnosis. The committee had concluded that hypnosis was an authentic phenomenon with particular potential in the area of pain relief and somatic problems. When these comparatively positive findings were presented, the BMA merely ‘received’ their report rather than formally endorsing it. By 1955 it seems that things had moved on to the extent that the BMA were prepared to formally recognise the therapeutic use of hypnosis. Nowadays hypnosis is quite extensively used to augment or potentiate other therapeutic approaches across a wide range of medical disciplines.
The field of hypnosis and hypnotherapy research is not static, of course, and ongoing research is being conducted in a variety of academic and clinical settings worldwide. Many of these research programmes have developed from the work of individuals such as André Weitzenhoffer and Ernest Hilgard who established a hypnosis research laboratory at Stanford University in the United States. Although the laboratory has been closed for many years now, the research that emerged from it was pioneering and provocative. Perhaps their most famous offering was the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scales, which purported to rank hypnotic phenomena according to the depth of trance at which they would be expected to manifest. Although such scales (of which there are a number) are of limited use to the practicing therapist, they are still made use of in formal hypnosis research and are interesting to study.
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