Modern hypnosis started with the Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), who believed that the phenomenon known as mesmerism, or animal magnetism, or fluidum was related to an invisible substance - a fluid that runs within the subject or between the subject and the therapist, that is, the hypnotist, or the "magnetizer". The term hypnosis was introduced in the 1840s by a Scottish surgeon James Braid (1795-1860), who believed the subject to be in a particular state of sleep - a trance. In the late 19th century, a French neurologist Jean Martin Charcot (1825-1893) thought hypnotism to be a special physiological state, and his contemporary Hyppotite-Marie Bernheim (1840-1919) believed it to be a psychological state of heightened suggestibility. Sigmund Freud, who studied with Charcot, used hypnosis early in his career to help patients recover repressed memories. He noted that patients would relive traumatic events while under hypnosis, a process know as abreaction. Freud later replaced hypnosis with the technique of free associations. Today, hypnosis is used as a form of therapy (hypnotherapy), a method of investigation to recover lost memories, and research tool. According to Caplan & Sadock, F.A. Mesmer is generally thought of as the fons et origo of modern psychotherapy; and from the early techniques of mesmerism, it is said, have evolved the more elaborate and sophisticated therapeutic measures of the analyst and his colleagues. Although Mesmer was certainly dealing with individuals suffering from a variety of neurotic disorders, and though the clinical successes he achieved were the result of psychological processes that his procedures induced in his patients, Mesmer's theoretical formulations, his understanding of the nature of the treatment he developed, and his specific procedures were all totally different from those of the 20th - century analyst. He was one of the corne stones in the development of psychoanalysis through hypnosis mainly of hysterical patients.

Acta Med Hist Adriat. 2009 Spring;7(1):49-60. Radovancevic L. Neuropsychiatric Polyclinic A.B.R., Petrova 158, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia.

by Paul G. Durbin, PhD

THE FOUR PHASES OF ADLERIAN COUNSELING ARE:
(1) the relationship,
(2) the investigation of dynamics,
(3) interpretation of the client,
(4) reoinentation.

Adler departed from Freud's method of having the client recline on a couch while the therapist sits behind. Adler preferred to face the client so he could see the client's responses and body movement. He wanted to engage in free discussion with the client. The relationship with the client which the Adlerian seeks to establish is one of friendliness and cooperation.

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by Paul G. Durbin, PhD

In 1870, Alfred Adler was born in a suburb of Vienna. In his youth, Adler suffered from rickets and could not walk until he was four. Soon after he was able to walk, he developed pneumonia. These early experiences with illnesses probably accounts for his theory of organ inferiority and finally of the inferiority feelings.

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Hysteria and hypnotism became a favorite topic of studies in the fin de siècle neurology that emerged from the school organized at La Salpêtrière by Jean-Martin Charcot, where he had arrived in 1861. Georges Gilles de la Tourette started working with Charcot in 1884 and probably remained his most faithful student, even after his mentor's death in 1893. This collaboration was particularly intense on 'criminal hypnotism', an issue on which Hippolyte Bernheim and his colleagues from the Nancy School challenged the positions taken by the Salpêtrière School. Bernheim claimed that hypnotism was not a diagnostic feature of hysteria and that there were real-life examples of murders suggested under hypnosis, while hypnosis susceptibility was identified with hysteria by Charcot and Gilles de la Tourette, who saw rape as the only crime associated with hypnotism. The quarrel was particularly virulent during a series of famous criminal cases which took place between 1888 and 1890. At the time, it was considered that La Salpêtrière had succeeded over Nancy, since the role of hypnotism was discarded during these famous trials. However, the theories of Charcot and Gilles de la Tourette were also damaged by the fight, which probably triggered the conceptual evolution leading to Joseph Babinski's revision of hysteria in 1901. Gilles de la Tourette's strong and public interest in hypnotism nearly cost him his life, when a young woman who claimed to have been hypnotized against her will shot him in the head at his own home in 1893. It was subsequently shown that hypnotism had nothing to do with it. The delusional woman was interned at Sainte-Anne for mental disturbance, thus escaping trial. Ironically, Gilles de la Tourette may have been partly responsible, since he had been one of the strongest proponents of placing mentally-ill criminals in asylums instead of prisons. Copyright © 2009 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Eur Neurol. 2009 Jul 11;62(4):193-199. Bogousslavsky J, Walusinski O, Veyrunes D. Department of Neurology and Neurorehabilitation, Clinique Valmont, Genolier Swiss Medical Network, Glion/Montreux, Switzerland.

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2009 Apr;57(2):133-61. Robertson D. HypnoSynthesisUK@aol.com

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2009 Apr;57(2):127-32. Robertson D. HypnoSynthesisUK@aol.com

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2009 Apr;57(2):127-32. Comment on: Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2009 Apr;57(2):133-61. Robertson D. HypnoSynthesisUK@aol.com

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2008 Oct;56(4):361-72. Sala J, Cardeña E, Holgado MC, Añez C, Pérez P, Periñan R, Capafons A. Joan XXIII University Hospital, Tarragona, Spain.

Am J Clin Hypn. 2008 Jul;51(1):69-75. Ewin DM. Tulane Medical School, USA. dabneyewin@aol.com

Theiss-Abendroth P. Psychiatr Prax. 2008 Jul 21.

Luzif Amor. 2007;20(40):122-41. Fichtner G.

Institut für Ethik und Geschichte der Medizin, Goethestr. 6, D-72076 Tübingen. gerhard.fichtner@uni-tuebingen.de

Hist Psychol. 2007 Aug;10(3):231-48. Quinn SO. Department of Psychology, Salve Regina University, Newport, RI 02804, USA. sheila.quinn@salve.edu

J Hist Neurosci. 2007 Oct-Dec;16(4):351-61. Stefanidou M, Solà C, Kouvelas E, Cerro MD, Triarhou LC. Economo-Koskinas Wing for Integrative and Evolutionary Neuroscience, Department of Educational and Social Policy, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece.

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2007 Oct;55(4):486-96. Comment in: Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2007 Oct;55(4):497-8. McKeown JM. Moravian College, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 18018, USA. mejmd01@moravian.edu

by Paul G. Durbin, Ph.D.
A few years ago, I read an article in Family Weekly titled, "Boom Days For Devil Hypnosis" Hearing that title: what ideas, images, thoughts come to you? Thought the article had what I considered a very negative title, it was a very positive article on hypnosis in the health care field. The only reference to the devil was in the last paragraph, "Some conservative religious groups consider hypnosis to be the work of the devil."

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Stanford University School of Medicine, California 94305-5718, USA. dspiegel@leland.stanford.edu

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2002 Oct;50(4):397-406

Department of Anesthesiology, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, Florida 32610-0254, USA. awobst@anest.ufl.edu

Anesth Analg. 2007 May;104(5):1199-208

Kirsch I, Mazzoni G, Montgomery GH. Department of Psychology, University of Hull, Hull, HU6 7RX, United Kingdom. i.kirsch@hull.ac.uk

orocue@earthlink.net

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Universidad Complutense, Madrid.

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State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY, USA.

The story of a fatal hypnotic seance in a castle in provincial Hungary in 1894 was sensationalised by the media and propelled across national and social boundaries within a few days. It stirred public feelings and compelled prestigious medical mandarins, legal professionals and social commentators of the day to express wide-ranging views concerning hypnotic practice. The case intensified social and professional anxieties surrounding hypnosis in late 19th century culture and illustrates the complex relationship between medical hypnotic research, lay hypnosis and widely reported and sensationalised forensic cases.

Department of Psychology, University of Washington, USA. sfinger@wustl.edu

Department of Psychology, University of Toronto at Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.