Research
History
Figures, eras, and how the word hypnosis entered medicine. Not treatment pages.
- Charcot, the Salpêtrière, and hypnosis in late-nineteenth-century medicineMethods / mechanismJean-Martin Charcot used hypnosis in the study of hysteria at the Salpêtrière. The Nancy school disputed his account. The episode shaped medicine, and later scepticism.Last reviewed 27 August 2026
- Ernest Hilgard and laboratory hypnosisMethods / mechanismErnest R. Hilgard’s Stanford laboratory made hypnotisability a measurable trait and argued for neodissociation. That is the modern lab story.Last reviewed 27 August 2026
- Freud’s use and abandonment of hypnosisMethods / mechanismSigmund Freud used hypnosis early, then moved to free association. That career turn is often misread as a scientific refutation of all hypnosis.Last reviewed 27 August 2026
- History of hypnosis: a research chronicleMethods / mechanismFrom Mesmer’s animal magnetism through Braid’s naming of hypnosis to laboratory scales and clinical research. This is a history library, not a booking page.Last reviewed 27 August 2026
- Hypnosis in Australia: a thinner documentary trailMethods / mechanismAustralia has practising clinicians and no AHPRA ‘hypnotherapy board.’ This page refuses a fake national lineage.Last reviewed 27 August 2026
- Hypnosis in Second World War medicineMethods / mechanismHypnosis was used in some Second World War medical and psychiatric settings. That is part of the chronicle, not the modern trial base.Last reviewed 27 August 2026
- James Braid and the birth of the word hypnosisMethods / mechanismJames Braid’s 1843 Neurypnology broke with animal magnetism and introduced a nervous-sleep account that gave English its word hypnosis.Last reviewed 27 August 2026
- Mesmer and animal magnetism: what the 1784 commission actually testedMethods / mechanismFranz Anton Mesmer claimed an animal-magnetic fluid. The 1784 commission around Franklin concluded that reported effects were not proof of that fluid.Last reviewed 27 August 2026
- Milton Erickson: clinical style, cases, and limits of the legendMethods / mechanismMilton H. Erickson shaped twentieth-century clinical hypnosis through cases and indirect suggestion. That is a historical influence, not a Grade A protocol.Last reviewed 27 August 2026
- Modern clinical hypnosis: from reputation to trial literatureMethods / mechanismAfter stage reputation and hospital theatre, hypnosis gained laboratory scales and, later, condition-specific trials. Those trials are graded elsewhere.Last reviewed 27 August 2026
- The Nancy school: Liébeault, Bernheim, and suggestionMethods / mechanismLiébeault and Bernheim treated hypnosis as suggestion, not a hysterical neurosis. That is the Nancy side of the Salpêtrière dispute; history, not a treatment grade.Last reviewed 27 August 2026