Next Hypno-CBT® Diploma: Webcast – May 2025
Online: 1st May 2025
FREE WEBINAR: A Career in Hypno-CBT®? Register
Evidence-based training in hypnosis, mindfulness & CBT
Morton Prince’s approach to psychotherapy, as described in his 1906 article, illustrates the use of “rational persuasion” methods in hypnotherapy, an early precursor of modern cognitive-behavioural hypnotherapy.
James Braid, the founder of hypnotherapy, coined the term “hypnotism” but reserved the concept of hypnotic “trance” (from a word meaning “half-dead”) for a tiny percentage of exceptional cases in which a state of total unconsciousness could be induced resembling coma, chemical anaesthesia, or animal hibernation. Braid’s use of the term is therefore more consistent with modern cognitive-behavioural theorists, both preferring to describe hypnosis as an “ordinary” state rather than “trance”.
James Braid, the founder of hypnotherapy, was unaware of oriental meditation techniques until a few years after introducing his technique of eye-fixation hypnotism. He subsequently embraced the notion that hypnotism and yogic meditation were distant cousins, and even that they were more closely-related than hypnotism and its immediate precursor, Mesmer’s animal magnetism.