What is hypnosis?
Not the Hollywood kind. No swinging watch, no one losing control. Hypnosis is older than its name. In 1779 Franz Anton Mesmer, the man the word “mesmerize” comes from, called it animal magnetism and credited an invisible fluid. In 1784 a French royal commission that included Benjamin Franklin tested his claims and found the effects came from imagination, not magnetism. In 1819 Abbé Faria placed the power where it belongs: in the person receiving it, not the one giving it.
In 1843 the Scottish surgeon James Braid gave it the name we still use and tied it to focused attention. Bernheim and the school at Nancy made suggestion its engine; Émile Coué turned it inward as autosuggestion. In the twentieth century Clark Hull brought it into the laboratory, Dave Elman taught it to physicians and dentists, and Milton Erickson made it conversational: a story told so well the listener goes somewhere. Today it is studied at Stanford and defined by the American Psychological Association.
What never changed is the mechanism: focused attention, and a mind willing to accept an idea.
A responsive influence exists between the heavenly bodies, the earth, and animated bodies.Franz Anton Mesmer, the source of “mesmerize,” Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal, 1779
Believe and will.Marquis de Puységur, 1784 (“Croyez & voulez”)
A peculiar condition of the nervous system, induced by a fixed and abstracted attention of the mental and visual eye, on one object, not of an exciting nature.James Braid, Neurypnology, 1843
I define hypnotism as the induction of a peculiar psychical condition which increases the susceptibility to suggestion.Hippolyte Bernheim, Suggestive Therapeutics, 1886
The implanting of an idea in oneself by oneself.Émile Coué, on autosuggestion, Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion, 1922
The essence of hypnosis lies in the fact of change in suggestibility.Clark L. Hull, Hypnosis and Suggestibility, 1933
A state of mind in which the critical faculty of the human is bypassed, and selective thinking established.Dave Elman, Hypnotherapy, 1964
A state of increased awareness and responsiveness to ideas.Milton H. Erickson, Collected Papers, Vol. IV
A focused experience of attentional absorption that invites people to respond experientially on multiple levels in order to amplify and utilize their personal resources in a goal‑directed fashion.Michael Yapko, Trancework
A natural state of mind with special identifying characteristics.Gil Boyne, Transforming Therapy, 1985
All hypnosis is self‑hypnosis.Charles Tebbetts, quoted in C. Roy Hunter, The Art of Hypnosis
A state of highly focused attention.David Spiegel, MD, Stanford Medicine
A state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness characterized by an enhanced capacity for response to suggestion.American Psychological Association, Division 30, 2014
Different words, one agreement:
focused attention, and a mind ready to accept a new idea.
The Right Voice
Language + timing + technique = art.
Hypnosis runs on language: the words chosen, the pace they arrive at, what is said and when, and what is left unsaid. A word too soon breaks the moment; the right word at the right time opens the door. That is why the voice you go into trance with matters, and why finding the right hypnotist matters as much as finding a good one.
So the first conversation is me listening. Not selling, not scripting. Listening, to learn whether we are the right fit. If we are, you’ll know without either of us saying it. If we aren’t, I’ll tell you, and point you to someone who is.
A private practice · by appointment · doors open January 1, 2027