Since the most primitive times hypnosis has been employed almost universally in the practice of religious and medical rites to intensify belief in mysticism, magic, and medicine. The impressive, bewildering character of hypnotic manifestations and the profoundly inexplicable, seemingly miraculous psychological effects upon human behavior achieved by the use of hypnosis, have served to bring about two general contradictory attitudes toward it.

The first of these is the unscientific attitude of superstitious awe, fear, disbelief and actual hostility, all of which have delayed and obstructed the growth of scientific knowledge of hypnosis.

The second attitude is one of scientific acceptance of hypnosis as a legitimate and valid psychological phenomenon, of profound importance and significance in the investigation and understanding of human behavior, and of the experiential life of the individual. This attitude had its first beginnings with the work of Anton Mesmer in 1775, who tempered his scientific approach to an understanding of hypnosis by mystical theories. Nevertheless, Mesmer did succeed in demonstrating the usefulness and effectiveness of hypnosis in the treatment of certain types of patients otherwise unresponsive to medical care. Thus he laid the foundation for the therapeutic use of hypnosis and for the recognition of psychotherapy as a valid psychological medical procedure.

Since then there has been a long succession of clinically trained men who demonstrated the usefulness of hypnosis as a therapeutic medical procedure and as a means of examining, understanding and reeducating human behavior. Among these was James Braid, a Scotch physician who, in 1841, first discredited the superstitious mystical ideas about the nature of hypnosis, or “mesmerism,” as it was then called. Braid recognized the phenomenon as a normal psychological manifestation, coined the terms of “hypnosis” and “hypnotism”, and devised a great variety of scientific experimental studies to determine its medical and psychological values.