Between the 9th and 14th centuries there was a great flowering of civilization in the Mediterranean and Middle East which laid the foundations of modern science as we know it; medical and philosophical knowledge from Ancient Greece, Egypt and early Eastern civilizations was revitalized.
During that revival a deep understanding of human psychology was achieved and therapeutic processes such as analysis, altered states of consciousness and hypnosis were used to alleviate emotional distress and sufferings; thus preceding psychotherapy and hypnotherapy as we know them today by quite a few centuries.
From the 15th and 16th centuries onwards physicians from many nations developed further and refined the concept of hypnosis and its uses. Even though this knowledge spread throughout the European continent and to the British Isles it remained mostly confined to scientists, physicians and Universities and never quite reached the attention of the less educated people.

It was "reintroduced" to the West in the 18th century when Western explorers got in contact with the practice of hypnotism in the Middle East and the Far East.

In the 18th century the most influential figure in the development of hypnosis was Dr Frantz Anton Mesmer, an Austrian physician who was a charismatic and at times controversial personality. He used magnets and metal frames to perform "passes" over the patient to remove "blockages" (ie: the causes of diseases) in the magnetic forces in the body - nowadays we call such forces "life energy" - and to induce a trance-like state. He soon discovered that he could reach equally successful results by passing his hands over the patient which he did for hours at times.
He named this method "animal magnetism".

He worked in Austria, Switzerland and Germany before settling in France; although he achieved many successes he was soon derided and ostracized by the medical community; it is generally thought that his healing sessions held in front of the public and medical practitioners were such theatrical performances that the excessive showmanship displayed led to his work being ridiculed and his tangible results scorned at. Another contributing factor to his discredit is believed to be plain and simple jealousy from his medical colleagues as he achieved results with rather unorthodox methods.

However his name survived the passing of time and was immortalized in our vocabulary by the verb "mesmerize", which means to hold someone's attention to the exclusion of anything else so as to create a trance state, in other words to hypnotize that person. Not only his name survived in our vocabulary, so did his method which was named mesmerism.

After Mesmers' death in 1815 one of his disciples, Armand de Puysegur, carried on his work and took it one step further. He discovered that the spoken word and direct commands induced trance easily and noticeably faster than "mesmeric passes" and that a person could be operated upon without pain and anesthesia when in trance. This technique was used for many following decades by surgeons in France: Dr Recamier who performed the first recorded operation without anesthesia in 1821 and Dr Cloquet, and in England: Dr Elliotson and Dr Parker who was nicknamed "Painless Parker" !.

However the record for surgery under trance belongs to Dr James Esdaile, an English physician, who performed his first operation without anesthetic in India and reached an incredible tally of 300 major operations and a thousand minor operations using hypnosis or mesmerism as it was still called at the time. Soon after, chloroform was discovered and mesmerism dropped out of favor as an anesthetic, it was much faster to inject a patient than induce a state of trance.

The next impulse in the history of hypnosis was given by the Scottish optometrist, Dr. James Braid who discovered by accident that a person fixating an object could easily reach a trance state without the help of the mesmeric passes advocated by Dr Mesmer. In 1841 he published his findings, refuted Mesmer's work and inaccurately named his discovery "hypnotism" based on the Greek word "hypnos" which means "sleep"; it was a total misnomer as hypnosis is not sleep; yet the name remained and mesmerism became hypnotism. Another page was turned in the history of hypnosis.

By the 1870's two schools of hypnosis were created in France, one by Dr Jean-Martin Charcot, in Paris, and the other one in Nancy by Dr. Bernheim and Dr.Liebault. They wrote that hypnosis involved no physical forces but was a combination of psychologically mediated responses to suggestions . Further progresses were made in refining the concept of hypnosis however it was not without heated debates and arguments. Dr. Charcot stated that hypnosis could only be the result of physical or neurological stimulation while the Nancy school's view was that hypnosis is a natural state available to everyone using free will. Present days use of hypnosis follows the latter belief. Some twenty years later in 1891, the British Medical Association drafted a resolution in favor of the use of hypnosis in medicine but it was not approved until 1955, 64 years later.

Another precursor of modern hypnosis and self development was Dr Emile Coue who, at the end of the 19th century, was a believer in auto-suggestion and in the role of the hypnotist as a facilitator of changes/healing in the client's condition by involving the total participation of the client in the hypnosis process. His well known self-help statement: "Day by day in every way I am getting better and better", is still used in most self improvement therapies.

At about the same time, the Austrian physician Sigmund Freud visited France and was impressed by the therapeutic potential of hypnosis for neurotic disorders. On his return to Vienna he used hypnosis (with the collaboration of Joseph Breuer as the hypnotist) to help neurotics recall disturbing events that they had apparently forgotten. However, Freud had badly fitting false teeth and could not speak well. Thus he was not a good hypnotist and soon when he stopped his collaboration with Breuer, Freud dropped hypnosis in favor of free association.

With the development of psychoanalysis and the use of anesthetics, the interest in hypnosis somewhat declined; however in the beginning of the 20th century Russian scientists worked on the concept and mechanisms of hypnosis. The most illustrious one, Ivan P. Pavlov, is best known for his discovery of the conditioned reflex, in spite of the fact he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1904 for his work on digestion! After World War 1, hypnosis and its therapeutic uses experienced a revival when psychiatrists realized that soldiers suffering traumas (paralysis and amnesia) of a psychological rather than physical origin, were responding well to hypnosis and were rapidly cured. Despite this renewed interest, European scientists who had previously been to the forefront of the hypnosis saga for centuries devoted much less time and energy to the subject. Possibly by becoming more accepted and less controversial hypnosis was attracting less passion.

Although hypnosis was officially approved as a tool in medicine by the British Medical Association in 1955, most of the furthering in therapeutic hypnosis in the 20th century, took place in the United States. In 1958, only 3 years after the BMA, the American Medical Association recognized the therapeutic use of hypnosis.
There are many therapists, researchers and scientists - far too many to mention here - who made significant contributions to hypnosis. It is widely believed that in the 20th century, the two main figures in the field were Milton H. Erickson (1901-1980) and Dr William J.Bryan Jr (1924-1977).

M.H.Erickson was a psychotherapist who made intensive use of hypnosis in his work. He was a great and fast observer of people and could rapidly build rapport with his clients . Modern hypnotic methods in medicine were popularized worldwide by Dr. Milton Erickson during the middle third of the 20th century. He demonstrated that a variety of verbal stratagems and guided imageries could be used to help patients access their own inner abilities with profound results in healing and optimizing functioning in any or all areas of their lives. Erickson promoted and popularized the use of methods that indirectly accessed subconscious processes to promote healing and functioning. "Indirectly," meant that the hypnotist did not directly control the subject's responses. (That is, the hypnotizer doesn't say, "you eyelids are getting heavy." Instead, the hypnotizer says, "you might not notice your eyelids are getting heavy." Instead of directly telling the listener to do some specific thing, the listener is told that he or she might consider doing it, if they like.) These methods allow subjects to not only feel a greater sense of personal control and free will but also allows the listener to better understand and memorize the ways that they, themselves, are accomplishing the work of the hypnosis. And because of the listener's greater sense of control, focusing and then accessing and utilizing their own subconscious abilities is both easier and more likely to be experienced as ideally fitting with the listener's own particular needs.

Erickson also discovered, pioneered, developed and taught a wide variety of verbal strategies and other powerful techniques that electrified the fields of both psychotherapy and advertising. His verbal stratagems were based on the various ways that the mind processes verbal input -- interplays between words, strategically placed pauses and clauses, redirection and misdirection, words with multiple meanings, and the special properties of negatives, questions, silences, imagery, surprise, ambiguity and confusion. He demonstrated that these techniques could provide numerous benefits, including increasing the degree of persuasion within the message and reducing the degree of resistance within the subject. He demonstrated that this could lead to fostering positive changes and emotional growth in patients, increased performance in athletes, the reduction and sometimes the elimination of physical and/or emotional pain, alteration of time sense, and teaching conscious control over usually non-conscious physiological functions.

William J. Bryan Jr. was the first full time US medical practitioner of hypnosis and created the American Institute of Hypnosis.

In the 1970's a discovery was made in the field of self improvement and the harnessing of inner resources. Although it is not directly related to hypnosis, many of its techniques can be used with hypnosis or as an aid to hypnotic therapy.

It is a simple but brilliant technique created by Richard Bandler, an information scientist, and John Grindler, a linguistic professor; they named it : NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). Neuro-Linguistic Programming is a modern form of waking hypnosis created by Richard Bandler computer scientist and John Grinder a linguist.  They modeled such masters of change as Milton Erickson, Virginia Satier, Fredrick Perls and discovered ways of producing extremely rapid change . . NLP is a tool for improvement, using our neurology and thinking patterns (neuro), our way of expressing our thoughts and their influence on us (linguistic) and our patterns of behavior and goals setting (programming). It has been described as the ultimate software for the brain.

The constituent words of NLP are:

Neuro - the nervous system (which traverses the whole body and is more than just the brain) through which one experiences the external and internal worlds. These include our senses:

1. Visual -- our sense of seeing.
2. Auditory -- our sense of hearing.
3. Kinesthetic -- our sense of touch and feelings.
4. Olfactory -- our sense of smell.
5. Gustatory -- our sense of tastes.

Linguistic -- language both symbolic (verbal) and nonverbal communication with others and self. These include:

1. Pictures -- V or Visual (in NLP parlance).
2. Sounds -- A or Auditory Tonal. You may find some NLP books using At for this.
3. Feelings -- K or Kinesthetic.
4. Tastes -- G or gustatory.
5. Smells -- O or olfactory.
6. Self Talk or internal dialogue -- Ad or Auditory digital.

Programming -- is the ability to discover the mind's internal programs and changing them to produce appropriate behavior. As Richard Bandler once wrote, "Who is driving the bus?" We are always being programmed by our parents, loved ones, pets, friends, enemies, strangers, TV, papers, internet.... In NLP we consciously decide to program ourselves and change our behavior and internal states.

In NLP we can produce very rapid change by altering the brain's internal maps. Basically the maps are in term of V,A,K,G,O,Ad components and their relationships to each other in time, quality and quantity. In the last 3 to 4 decades of the last century we have witnessed an abundance of self-help and positive thinking therapies and methods, some of them openly using hypnosis, others more covertly. Technological advancements, such as television, cassette recorders and tapes, video tapes and the globalization of information through the Internet, have made the various uses of hypnosis - from hypnotherapy to stage hypnotism - better known, more accessible and popular.

The benefits of hypnotherapy are more and more recognized and for those who search for betterment of themselves and of their lives, hypnotherapy is available and very effective .