The idea that a trance or special state of consciousness occurs during hypnosis traces its origins to the earliest attempts to understand hypnosis. The word “mesmerized” has a resemblance to the word “hypnotized.” There’s a reason for that. “Mesmerized” comes from the Viennese physician Franz Anton Mezmer (1734-1815), who gave powerful evidence of the power of suggestion to treat people who had physical problems like paralyses that stemmed from psychological factors.
Mesmer claimed that an invisible magnetic fluid filled the universe and triggered psychological nervous illnesses when it (the fluid) became imbalanced.
Dressed in a flowing cape, Mesmer merely had to touch his suggestible patients with a magnetic wand for them to experience wild laughter, crying, shrieking, and thrashing about followed by a stupor, a condition known as the “crisis.” The crisis became the hallmark of mesmerism, and Mesmer’s followers believed it was responsible for his dramatic cures.
But Mesmerism was eventually debunked in 1784 by a commission held by the American ambassador to France, Benjamin Franklin. By then, Mesmer had fled Vienna after a botched attempt to treat a blind musician, and had settled in Paris. The investigators concluded that Mesmer’s early success was due to imagination and belief (the placebo effect)
But some die-hard believers carried on his legacy, and tried to convince others that magnetism could give them supernatural powers, including vision without using the eyes, and disease detection by seeing through skin.
Before anesthetics were developed in the 1840s, there were claims that doctors used mesmerism to perform painless surgeries. James Esdaile’s reports of successful surgeries in India were performed by only using mesmerism. In the mid 19th century, hypnosis was a mysterious subject that provoked many claims.
By the late 1800s, myths about hypnosis abounded, including the idea that hypnotized people enter a sleep-like state in which they forgo their willpower, are oblivious to their surroundings, and forget what happened afterwards (Laurence & Perry, 1988). The fact that the Greek prefix “hypno” means sleep probably helped to foster these misunderstandings.
But research refutes these beliefs. Hypnotized people are not mindless automatons. They can resist hypnotic suggestions and will not do things that are out of character.
If you are interested in reading books about unmasking human nature, consider reading The Dichotomy of the Self, a book that explores the great psychoanalytic and philosophical ideas of our time, and what they can reveal to us about the nature of the self.