HISTORY BUFFS
Hypnosis: A Brief History – Judith Pintar and Steven Jay Lynn
I’ve raved to many people about Alison Winter’s wonderful book, Mesmerized, on the history of mesmerism. But I appreciate it’s a bit of a tome for most. So if you’re going to read one book on the history of hypnosis, make it this one – Hypnosis: A Brief History by Judith Pintar and Steven Jay Lynn.
If you follow the academic content on this website then you’ll recognise Lynn’s name – he’s a leading clinical psychologist and hypnosis expert, and has co-authored several of the academic books and papers Kev’s reflected on. Pintar, meanwhile – a fellow academic – is a historical sociologist whose work focuses on trauma and mental illness.
Together, they’ve produced a credible, concise, and engaging romp through hypnotism’s birth and colourful heyday, up to it’s at-the-time-of-publishing’s present (2008).
The book is organised by key threads rather than strictly chronologically, which makes for a clearer and more compelling build of stories. For instance, Pintar and Lynn begin with the ‘Trilbania’ that swept Britain and beyond in the late 1800s following the success of George du Maurier’s novel, Trilby. This opening chapter contextualises the myths that the rest of the book will explore, from power dynamics to false memories.
From there, we dive into animal magnetism and magnetic sleep. This is a short and superb summary of Mesmer’s, Gassner’s, and Puységur’s important roles in ‘mesmerism’ and its enduring legacy. Next up, we take in Faria, Elliotson, Esdaile, and Braid as magnetism became hypnotism – another excellent summary.
Chapter four on mesmerism and hypnotism in 1800s America is a particular favourite of mine. In the US, mesmerism and, later, hypnotism bubbled alongside Spiritualism, religion, phrenomagnetism, and electrobiology in a ‘soup’ stirred predominately by showmen and idealogues. As the authors put it: “mesmerism as medical research trailed a distant third.” We meet characters such as Charles Poyen St Sauveur, whose hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, became “the Mecca of American magnetism’, and who toured the country with a troupe of professional somnambulists to demonstrate his art and science.
This blog is starting to build a picture of how American authors of this period influenced hypnotism being drawn into religion and the paranormal. Pintar and Lynn list James Stanley Grimes (1807-1903), John Boves Dods (1795-1872), and La Roy Sunderland (1803-1885) as key figures in this movement. “It has been argued that American mesmerists were engaged in a collaborative effort to construct a popular psychology that could explain religious and paranormal phenomena.” The book goes on to consider Swedenborgianism, New Thought, and Christian Science, and explains that the few US medical practitioners drawn to mesmerism/hypnotism were mostly interested in phrenology – thus highlighting the fork in the hypno-road between America and Europe.
Chapters on Salpêtrière and Nancy, and Freud’s blow to hypnosis in favour of psychoanalysis; and the birth of clinical psychology and academia, from William James to Clark L Hull, and how World Wars I and II led to the rise of clinical hypnosis follow.
Finally, we move into the more recent history of hypnosis, starting with the ‘state vs trait’ argument. And then into the false memory controversies of the late 20th Century, where hypnosis was increasingly being used to ‘recover’ traumatic memories – particularly those of childhood abuse – and all mostly fallaciously. A final chapter summarises the present and future of hypnosis, with valuable overviews of the key questions researchers were wrangling with in 2008.
I must admit I found these final chapters somewhat subjective and more in-depth vs the objective ‘current history’ I was anticipating. But that’s by no means a criticism of what is a stellar book and, IMO, an essential read for anyone interested in hypnosis.
Here are my favourite titbits:
- I knew that ‘Trilbania’ inspired an array of Trilby-themed products, including spoons and soaps. But the book details a much more impressive range: “Its publication set off a marketing frenzy during which the heroine’s name was bestowed upon a hat, several shoe designs, candy, toothpaste, soap, a brand of sausage, and even a town in Florida. Trilby’s face appeared on dolls, fans, writing paper, puzzles, and there were ice cream bars made in the shape of her feet.” My kind of bizarre branding!
- There are some great insights into Clark L Hull’s and his student Milton Erickson’s fraught relationship. Hull was working towards standardised techniques and measurements (which ultimately won the science war), while Erickson defended his idiosyncratic, case-by-case approach. If you remain Team Erickson, then it’s worth reading the account of a young Erickson’s experiments on his own “Miss O”, messing with her psyche and personality, much to Hull’s disapproval and disgust.
- Our favourite hypno-self-publicist Melvin Powers pops up as among late 1940s to 1950s stage hypnotists “who drew substantial media attention and gained celebrity status.” Other names we’ll be looking out for in this respect include Franz Polgar, Walter Gibson (mostly a magician), and John Garrett. (The latter of whom I can’t find any easy links for because apparently there is a Marvel Universe comic character of the same name who is tangled up in hypnosis, too. Because: of course.)
- I was waiting for Richard Bandler and John Grinder to get a mention in terms of Erickson’s legacy. But, to put NLP firmly in its place, all the authors say is: “other students of Erickson of therapists whose clinical publications were directly influenced by him included independent practitioners Stephen Gilligan, Richard Bandler, Robert Dilts, John Grinder, Stephen Lankton, Michael Yapko, and William Matthews”. Ooh, the shaaade for NLP!
