Customer Reviews

Hidden Depths: The Story of Hypnosis

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All books on the historical evolution of hypnosis - and there are a lot of them - start with Anton Mesmer in the 18th Cent. As a professionally-trained Archaeologist and a Certified Hypnotherapist with the National Guild of Hypnotists (NGH), I was excited by the idea of Robin Waterfield's book as it was supposed to chart the 'story' of hypnosis from Prehistory to Modern Times.
Waterfield, wisely, skates around defining what hypnosis actually is. He states in his Introduction : "....from our point of view, it doesnt matter there is such a thing as the hypnotic state, which is different from any other state of consciousness. All that matters is that something unusual is going on, that we can trace the history of this unusal something, and that as a result of this unusual something people can have all sorts of experiances, including being cured or being relieved of a number of disorders".
But, a mere few pages later in his all too short chapter called 'In the beginning' which is supposed to review the earliest evidence of hypnosis in the Egyptian, Greek and Roman Periods, his admirable open-mindedness has simply vanished. According to Waterfield, there is no evidence of hypnosis practiced before the Middle Ages because, as he states "... evidence for the induction of trance states is no more evidence for hypnosis than, say, evidence for the ingestion of narcoleptic drugs is evidence for hypnosis. to repeat: not every trance state is a hypnotically induced state" Waterfield, therefore, uses his own, very narrow defination of hypnosis, to simply exclude all evidence of trance induction in the Ancient World from further consideration. Amazingly, Waterfield further goes on to label all those working in the feild of Hypnosis who disagree with him - he's just a translator of ancient lit., remember- as 'Hypnotic Imperialists' (this presumeably includes the founder of Hypnotherapy, Dr Milton H. Erickson, MD) and calls two of the most important figures in Post-Ericksonian Hypnosis, Dr Richard Bandler & Dr John Grinder (Trance-formations) "arch-imperialists"! He therefore sets himself against mainstream opinion within Hypnosis without ever arguing his case for his narrow definition of hypnosis (for instance how would he explain the 'Placebo Effect' or well documented anthropological studies on Voodoo, niether of which would be classed as 'Hypnosis' in his definition) which allows him to simply dismiss the prehistoric evidence without further discussion. Most dissapointing to say the least!!!
I recommend anyone interested in the Ancient History of Hypnosis to read the following:
The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves
by Jean Clottes, et al , Trance: A Natural History of Altered States of Mind, by Brian Inglis, Jesus the Healer: Possession, Trance, and the Origins of Christianity, by Stevan L. Davies, & Trance: From Magic to Technology, by Dennis R. Wier

hidden depths is an absorbing and fascinating history of hypnosis --it's background, high and lows and it's influence in the birth of psychology. highly recommended.

note this is a history of hypnosis, not a history of trance, therefore the main stream is caught with the rise of mesmerism.

This is a very thorough, well organized, superbly researched and intelligently written book on the history of hypnotism. I recommend it to all of my hypnotherapy students and feel it should be required reading for anyone with a serious hypnosis practice.

Mary Elizabeth Raines, Director
Academy for Professional Hypnosis Training

Incredibly informative! Reading this book transported me back to a world from a previous century - a world that I had not had any previous insight of - Mesmer and Mozart's world as it really was. The author writes in a well balanced and objective manner throughout.
The author dismissed the likelihood of hypnotism in the ancient world by systematically demonstrating that there is no reliable proof of it. He describes the development of hypnotism from its first genuinely recognisable origins (Mesmer) onwards. He never loses track of the fact that there are many things that might share similar effects - such as the "placebo effect" - but just makes it clear that if we say that all of those states are the same, then we ignore that there is a separate state of induction induced hypnotic trance.
I'm stunned by the insight into human nature given by this book - and the obvious fact that much of this is denied in our culture and has been suppressed since the famous "debunking" of Mesmer by Benjamin Franklin. It is very clear that Franklin threw out the baby with the bath water and I have to thank this terrific author for getting that message across so thoroughly. Highly recommended reading.