Civilizations now belonging to the ancient past reveal that the primitive use of hypnosis was incorporated into the healing arts of the earliest civilizations. These civilizations arose, flourished, and fell, only to be buried under the ruins of newer civilizations that succeeded one another in man’s march out of the past. As man continued to think, to behave, to desire, so did he continue to use the art of hypnosis. Throughout history there has been an ever continuing need to cast the magic spell, to bring healing sleep to the sick, and inner peace to the wounded. Down through the ages priests and priestesses rendered their services to the ailing and troubled in Temples of Sleep, built upon the ruins of other Temples of Sleep belonging to previous civilizations. The Chinese, Hindus, Greeks, and Egyptians all had temples where suggestion and hypnosis were administered to lessen hurt and suffering. Undoubtedly, there are ancient civilizations yet-to-be-discovered that used hypnosis expressed in magical sleep, rites, and incantations. For men forever remain men with needs in common.

A rebirth of medical interest in hypnosis, although short-lived, began following World War I. The Germans in World War I exhausted their supply of chemical anesthetics and used hypnosis as an anesthetic agent. After the war, particularly in England, hypnosis was used as a calming and re-educative influence in what was then called “shell shock”. By the 1930s a new type of study of hypnosis was evolving. This was the use of hypnosis as a means of investigating psychological and physiological behavior. This was done first by the author, who was then one of Clark L. Hull’s students. Subsequently, Hull became seriously interested in hypnosis and proceeded to demonstrate that hypnosis could be subjected to laboratory examination and study just as can other forms of human behavior. Publications originating first in his laboratory, then elsewhere, disclosed that hypnosis could be evaluated by measurable changes brought about in the physiology of the person on whom it was employed, and that by inducing changes in the person’s behavior, there could be an investigation of the various forces and experiences that constitute the foundation of personality.

During World War II physicians and psychologists who had learned something about hypnosis found that it could be used not only as an anesthetic, as the Germans had shown in World War I, but to investigate the particular experiences that resulted in combat fatigue. Further, it could be employed to reeducate the patient to a better understanding of his actual capabilities and potentialities in meeting the stresses of war. Thus, many battle casualties were salvaged.

When World War II ended, many of the men from the psychological, medical, and dental fields, returning to civilian life, realized that there should be much more extensive teaching of hypnosis. Enterprising men from the professions of medicine, dentistry, and psychology organized teaching teams and traveled throughout the country conducting seminars on hypnosis. These teams included people well-founded in psychosomatic medicine, general medicine, psychiatry, obstetrics, surgery, psychology, and dentistry. They lectured before medical societies, psychological groups, or other organizations. Properly, the qualifications for admission to these seminars was the possession of a proper academic degree. Very slowly, scientific interest continued to grow. The result was that here and there a psychology department, a physiological department, or a dental school permitted investigative work by means of hypnosis.

In 1949 the Society of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis was organized by a small group of scientifically trained men in New York City. The organization promoted the development of hypnosis and founded a journal in that field. In 1957 came the founding of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, which affiliated with, and stimulated the growth of numerous comparable societies throughout the world. It also aroused the interest of qualified individuals interested in hypnosis. Thus, there arose a progressive and compelling interest in hypnosis as a valuable modality in the healing arts and in the field of psychological investigation of human behavior. Iatrogenic well-being rather than iatrogenic illness became a new center of interest.

Little is really known of the actual potentials of human functioning. Hypnosis offered for scientific exploration a different field of conscious awareness, an unexplored approach to puzzling medical problems, a new awareness that scientific studies could be approached in a different way. In brief, a new field of scientific investigation had been opened. Hypnosis, as an adjunct to the practice of medicine, has opened new fields of exploration in the study of human behavior and is changing the concepts of psychological and physiological potentialities.