Hypnosis

Hypnosis is known to many as a person taking control of another persons mind and controlling their actions. While that is a fair understanding of hypnosis, most hypnosis only works if the person being hypnotized wants to be hypnotized. After studying all the aspects and features of hypnosis, the most amazing factor is the enormous influence on a subjects suggestibility. The history of hypnosis is as ancient as that of sorcery, magic and medicine, to whose methods it belonged. Hypnosiss scientific history began in the later part of the 18th century with Franz Mesmer, a Viennese physician, who used it in the treatment of patients. Ever since Franz Anton Mesmer proposed his theory of animal magnetism more than 200 years ago, hypnosis has fought an uphill battle for scientific credibility. Hypnosis has been used in place of anesthesia to numb the pain of childbirth and major surgical procedures such as amputation and abdominal surgery. Numerous reports attest the effectiveness of hypnosis in the treatment of warts. In those who have been hypnotized, warts later disappear entirely on their own with out medicine or surgery. Since warts are virally induced, this striking phenomenon has fueled belief that hypnosis somehow mobilizes immune response. Patients can be hypnotized during amputation in order to relieve pain when morphine is not ava! ilable or when a person is allergic to medicine or if medicine is unavailable. Because of the mistaken belief that it was an occult force, which he termed animal magnetism that flowed through the hypnotist into the subject, Mesmer was soon discredited. Hypnotism or mesmerism, as it was nicknamed after Mesmer, continued to interest medical practitioners. In the mid-1880s, Sigmund Freud visited France and was impressed by the therapeutic potential of hypnosis for neurotic disorders. On his return home, he used hypnosis to help neurotics recall disturbing event...