What is the Difference Betweeen Hypnosis and Mesmerism? And Does it Have Anything to Do with Chi or Prana?

 When you're talking to the public at large, the terms Hypnosis and Mesmerism are often used interchangeably, but even hypnotic some practitioners tend not to be sure what the difference is. 

First off, let's define what hypnosis is. Even practicing hypnotists don't always agree on a definition for "hypnosis," but I hope I can offer a definition that will satisfy both the practitioner and the curious layman. How's this:
Hypnosis is a way of offering suggestions to a client in a way that influences their subconscious mind  and bypasses their conscious resistance, so they accept new behaviors and concepts or alters their existing perceptions. How's that? Usually, it means talking to the client in a way that guide them into a relaxed state where they are open to accepting therapeutic suggestions. 

You can look up all sorts of information about hypnosis, including it's history and methods, so I won't waste your time with a lot of that, except to say that it's generally accepted that modern hypnosis dates back to the 19th. century with the Nancy School in France, and with James Braid in the England. Braid, in particular, is given the credit for the term hypnosis (actually, he said "neuro-hypnosis," though he preferred "neurypnology"). Braid's method, as far as I've been able to discover, was fairly straightforward: He would hold a shiny silver scalpel-case, about the size of a pencil case, slightly above eye level of his subjects and bid them stare at it while he gave them suggestions to sink into a deeply relaxed state, until their eyes were fatigued. They would eventually close their eyes and go deeper, but still maintaining a certain mental focus developed from staring at the silver case. in this state, his subjects were open to therapeutic suggestions, accepting them uncritically (OK, there's more to the process, but you get the idea).  

Hypnosis rapidly replaced the much older practice of Mesmerism. Their therapeutic goals were similar, but as one practitioner of both noted, Mesmerism was a much slower and less reliable process. While an hypnotic trance could be induced in 15 minutes or less, mesmerism typically took a half hour or more, and might require more than one sitting just to get it to work at all. Today, Mesmerism is a nearly lost art. 

What is Mesmerism? Some elements of mesmerism are identical to hypnosis, particularly the idea of inducing a relaxed state in the subject in order to achieve therapeutic effects. But from the ground up, mesmerism is very different.
The basis of Mesmerism is "Animal Magnetism" which is not a 1960s cologne, but a kind of energy generated by all living things. The theory was that a healthy individual produced a lot of it and it flowed naturally throughout a person's body, but an unhealthy person might chalk his illness up to weak or badly circulating energy. So a Mesmerist would use his own animal magnetism, or occasionally actual magnets, to influence the energy and flow of of the patient to flow correctly. A Mesmerist might engage in healing by laying on of hands, or he might even work with a partner and induce rapport between the patent and the partner which would cause the illness to travel to the partner, and by treating the partner, was able to heal the patient through a metaphysical connection. 

Historically, the word "Mesmerism" comes from Anton Mesmer, who may not have originated the theory himself, but as a young, highly regarded medical doctor married to a wealthy noble woman, was in a unique position to devote both his good name and his wife's fortune to creating a clinic to study and spread the "science" of Mesmerism. His clinic attracted hundreds of patients, most of which he didn't charge, and he seems to have gotten very good results, which for a time, made him very popular. Sadly, times turned and facing an increasingly more criticism from both the public and the science community, his reputation eroded. 

Most commonly, a Mesmerist would use downward "magnetic passes" of his hands in front of the patent to create a trance state in the patient do the work called for, and re-energizing them by making upward magnetic passes afterwards. Some older 20th century hypnotists, like Ormond McGill, still employed the occasional magnetic pass in their hypnotism. 

In order to be an effective Mesmerist, a practitioner had to build up his own animal magnetism and to learn how to project it reliably, and some of the old books describe exercises for that, such as practicing projecting their energy towards and empty chair, and a Mesmerist would learn to project their power both with their hands and also with their eyes, (just like Dracula!). 

There is no question that when Mesmerism worked, it worked. James Esdaile, a 19th century British surgeon working in India, was able to remove horrific, 80 pound tumors from his patients with minimal bleeding and rapid healing, using mesmerism as an anesthetic. (he achieved a kind of "hypnotic coma" to do the surgery, which is named after him, the Esdaile State).

Whether the mesmeric results were achieved by animal magnetism or by simple suggestion is debatable. Braid and others felt that all the passes and mystery were simply psychological suggestions and there was no magnetism. And scientific thought of the 20th century closed the book on the animal magnetism theory. 

Maybe it was Chi or Prana? The  cultivation of Animal Magnetism may be a lost art, but the concept seems to be a universal one, still alive and well in other cultures. In Indian culture they call the magnetic energy Prana, in Asian cultures is Chi or Ki. Most of these systems cultivate their magnetic energy for personal health. Some of the Asian ones also practice a kind of hands-on healing similar to some Mesmeric practices. Some of the Indian practitioners talk about the sort of psychic effects that Mesmerists used to talk about. To the best of my knowledge, however, the extensive use of metaphysical force to produce trance was a particular specialty of the Mesmerists.  

I suppose this article wouldn't be complete without mentioning Dr. Marco Paret in France, who seems to be the only person still teaching Mesmerism. I don't really know anything more about him that I've seen on his website and Youtube videos, but you can find his site here: http://www.marcoparet.com/

Book Report: The Magic of Psychic Power by David Schwartz (c)1968

The Magic of Psychic Power by David Schwartz (c)1968

If this book were written today, it would be called something like "The Secrets of the World's Most Successful People and How to Become One Yourself," or something like that, and it would be displayed prominently in the business section of the bookstore. Having been written in the 60s, it's called what it is. Interestingly, one of his earlier books, "The Magic of Thinking Big" has done precisely that, and is an all-time best seller, with a number of well known people citing it as the motivation for their success.

There's very little "magic" of the Halloween variety, and most of the "psychic power" has to do with psychological practices that can motivate you towards success in the things you want to do.

Starting with Schwartz' First Law: "80% of everything good is owned by 20% of the people," he encourages the reader to stop giving up his power to others and start going after what you really want. 

This is pop-psychology at it's finest, and when it comes to motivation, not a bad book at all. The author has evidently done a great deal of research and thought, and worked with many, many clients, the result of which is that he's thoroughly mapped our lists of all the things that hold most people back (his Seven Deadly Sins that Produce Failure, and Six forms of Psychological Slavery, for example), and explores each in detail. He then offers a number of ways to be3come successful at your chosen area, with advice taken from Disraeli, Steve McQueen, Lyndon Johnson, Churchill and others, as well as his own practical strategies to motivate people, develop leadership qualities, avoid worry and overcome fears, and more. 

There's a series of "Psychic Conditioners" which are reframes and affirmations designed to fire up your motivation and change the way you look at things. 

This book won't tell you how to move things with you mind, but it may do more. It had a lot of practical ways to overcome your limiting beliefs and behaviors. If you're a Practitioner of changework, some of these techniques would be very good for your clients.

Book Report: Master Secrets of Hypnosis and Self-Hypnosis by Kurt Tepperwein (c)1991

Master Secrets of Hypnosis and Self-Hypnosis by Kurt Tepperwein (c)1991 

I think I said everything about this book in my original review for Thriftbooks, where I purchased it. I'll expand on it just a little bit:

This is a very impressive looking book! It's serious and thick and looks great on the shelf. One of the reasons it's so thick, though, is that the type is really big! The author does include a lot of information. It's worth noting that this is a translation from the original German, so there may be a lot lost in translation.  

For all the information included, a lot of it was not very well explained. I was also frustrated that it's not a very well organized book. The author may start on one topic and then go off on a different tangent. (perhaps this is due to it being a translation?). The first part of the book contain a number of inductions. Some are very interesting and novel, some are very old fashioned, and some just seem awkward. He doesn't really fully explain the hypnotic process as thoroughly as he could have, and those inductions are so short that, unless the hypnotist has established really strong "prestige" over his client, they may or may not always work. Some techniques rely on mesmerism, which is very old fashioned, and some rely on actually placing hands on clients, which can be problematic in a professional setting. 

 There's a section on "covert hypnosis," which veers into psychic influence. I don't know much about this, but it's some of the most interesting stuff in the book. If that's your interest, this book may be very worthwhile, but I can't really say. The self-hypnosis section includes a lot of scripts for different issues, but they also seem a little old fashioned, and some have only a very superficial understanding of the problems. I had fun, but also frustration, reading this book. If you're very experienced, it's a good addition to your library, but I'm afraid that such a title that promises so much to a beginner may leave him with a set of hit-or miss skills.

Book Report: Science and the Supernatural by John Taylor (c)1980

Science and the Supernatural by John Taylor (c)1980

Background Information: John G. Taylor was a Distinguished Professor of theoretical physics and artificial intelligence. He was very involved in the development of neural networks and wrote a number of books on various subject including physics, mind sciences and finance. more about him can be found here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-013-9226-z

 In 1980, John Taylor was an angry man. Being a solid, well respected scientist, he risked his reputation by applying himself to researching a variety of exotic psychic phenomena with the best of intentions, and it didn't work out very well. 

Among the phenomena he discusses and examined are remote viewing, telepathy (including dream telepathy), dowsing, precognition, psychokinesis. He discusses previous research done by J.B. Rhine, Victor Vasiliev and others. Despite his best efforts, he was unable to prove the existence of anything and came away clearly angry and disillusioned. Worse still, some of the most promising evidence turned out to be what he terms Fraud and Mischief. Some was deliberate fraud and trickery done by prominent "psychics" in order to build their reputation, or malicious mischief. Some was unconsciously done by people with the best intentions who were unaware of what they were doing. Some was mere coincidence misread as proof.
He entered with an extremely open mind, but left disappointed and with no conclusive data at all.

For what it's worth, I have some issues with his scientific methodology, and perhaps you'll agree, or disagree. From the top, he theorizes that of all the possible energies involved in psychic phenomena, it must be either caused by a transmission of X-rays, Black Body Radiation, Radio Waves or Electromagnetic Energy. He settled on the last one as the likely force involved, and right there he's set up a kind of a criteria bias. For all his experimentation, he failed to find any sign of it. Secondly, when he calculated results of his experiments, and the data he examined, he counted only positive and negative results. There were inevitably a lot of inconclusive results which he also considered as negative results, creating an almost impossible threshold where only absolute positives count, in a field where ambiguous results predominate. The book Parapsychology Today explores the difficulties and subtleties of interpreting data from psychic research in a way that takes into consideration all the vagaries more completely. 

The book is an interesting read, and even if it offers no final proofs, science is always fun. The author documents all the stories and sources very well, and some are thought provoking, even if they couldn't be proven. One interesting bit of trivia is that, at the time of writing, there was a Central Premonitions Registry, which was in operation from 1968 to about 2008, designed to collect data about premonitions from the public at large, and the author made use of their data.

 

Book Report: Self Hypnosis: Creating Your Own Destiny by Henry Leo Bolduc (c)1992

Self Hypnosis: Creating Your Own Destiny by Henry Leo Bolduc (c)1992

I've been doing hypnosis for a fairly long time, to the point that I have my own particular understandings, approaches and explanations for all the elements of it. But it's precisely for that reason that I love reading books like this -- to get different perspectives and see the things I think I know, but from different angles. Henry Leo Bolduc has his own perspective on hypnosis and self hypnosis, and he explains it very lucidly. 

Self-hypnosis is often a much more difficult thing to achieve than regular hypnosis, because with regular hypnosis, one person, the hypnotist, is leading and the other follows. But with self-hypnosis, there;s only one person to both lead and follow. 

Bolduc starts with a bit of hypnotic history, and he uses very neat ways to describe the self hypnosis and the hypnotic experience in a way that will make sense to anyone trying it for themselves. For example, he cleverly describes hypnosis as a "waking dream" and a "working dream," and presents a model of the self-hypnotic experience as a train driven by relaxation, carrying suggestions and visualizations, on a tack of ideas. As many authors writing these kinds of books do, he warns of hypnotic influences in everyday life, like advertising, friends and family, and the practice of prayer and and encourages the reader to be more aware of them and filter out the negative ones. 

The author seems to be very influenced by Edgar Cayce and quotes him. There are also distinct Ericksonian bits, as well as some NLP. Interestingly, he always includes both direct suggestion, which he feels appeals to the left, rational brain, and visualizations to appeal to the creative right brain. 

The book includes two basic inductions, one more permissive and one more authoritarian, and then adds a series of 23 useful scripts, which he calls cycles, for various self-help purposes, including self-confidence, sports achievement, public speaking, creativity, ending a relationship, health, and other things. They are intended to be recorded and played back as needed. 

There's a second series of 8 cycles, both by the author and by his students, "for higher consciousness," which include cycles for developing psychic abilities, balancing chakras, etc. Some of the scripts are enticingly abstract, like the "Song of Life" cycle which encourages the listener to tune into sounds around him and then into sounds and vibrations inside himself and find the inner music and harmonies. Another was a cycle written by a woman who wanted to be more aware of the kinds of people coming into her life and takes the listener on walk through one's memories of different people. 

Sadly, the author passed away on 2011, but there's a website with interesting articles, and a link where you can download a free PDF of this book. http://henrybolduc.com/

Book report: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by Carlo M. Cipolla (c)2019

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by Carlo M. Cipolla (c)2019

You know you need this book! It's small, witty and (sadly) very insightful. The author is an historical economist and he has examined the influence of various phenomena on economics and culture throughout history, including clocks, education, spices, and apparently, stupidity.

There are 5 Basic Laws about Stupidity that make things a whole lot clearer, explaining the true nature of stupidity and how they screw everything up and get away with it. For the sake of brevity, I'll just quote number three: 
"A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses."

He has even mapped out a graph demonstrating the way stupid people affect society compared to other sorts of people.

Despite it's small size, it's a rewarding book, especially when you're aggravated, and makes a great gift item for your frustrated friends. 

Book Report: The Hidden Brain by Shankar Vedadtam (C)2010

The Hidden Brain by Shankar Vedantam (C)2010

Background Information: From his Wiki page: "Vedantam was a participant in the 2002–2003 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship, the 2003–2004 World Health Organization Journalism Fellowship, and the 2005 Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship on Science and Religion. He was a 2009–2010 Nieman Fellow. He worked at The Washington Post from 2001 to 2011, writing its "Department of Human Behavior" column from 2007 to 2009. He then wrote an occasional column called "Hidden Brain" for Slate. Vedantam published The Ghosts of Kashmir in 2005, a collection of short stories discussing the divide between Indians and Pakistani.
In 2010, Vedantam published the book entitled The Hidden Brain. The Edward R. Murrow Award winner focuses on how people become influenced by their unconscious biases. The book incorporates his experiences working as a reporter at the Washington Post. This nonfiction book showcases a range of real life examples on how their biases affect their mental health, including nine chapters discussing situations that affect unconscious biases.
Vedantam hosts the social sciences podcast also called Hidden Brain, where he "reveals the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, the biases that shape our choices, and the triggers that direct the course of our relationships."  You can read the whole thing here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shankar_Vedantam 

You may wonder why a mainstream, Edwin R. Murrow Award winning book is being included in my series of book reports on esoteric and nearly forgotten works of mind science and mumbo jumbo. Simple, it's a really good book, and if you like the other stuff, you'll probably love this book too!
It's a very readable, fast paced book all about cognitive biases and the subconscious mind and how these things influence what we think are our conscious decisions. 

For Vedantam, the hidden brain is the subconscious mind, and one of it's main purposes is to jump to conclusions, and to do it based on heuristics, a sort of simple, logical formula for making decisions. Trouble is, while practical, those decisions are not always right and we're left wondering "why did I do that?"

 All his discussions are backed by well described scientific research and he illuminates how things like familiarity and similarity can cloud our decision making process, He explores racial and gender biases, group psychology, 

Much of the book explores how these unconscious processes are involved in issues that concern us in big ways. Sexism and racism, of course, but also the processes by which some people become extremists or terrorists, and mob mentality, and what does and doesn't work in combating that. 

There's a lot more in the book, and it's all thought provoking and practical to know, since it happens to big populations and also to us one-on-one. A lot of it can also bee seen in current events today, so this book can help make sense of it. 

I can't help but not that this book makes a great companion to Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, which also explores the science and psychology of unconscious decisions.

If you like mind science you can use, be sure to check out Vedantam's podcast: https://hiddenbrain.org/