Who was the first hypnotist?

Answer 1

The phenomenon known today as "hypnosis" has been utilized throughout human history: there is plentiful evidence of the deliberate induction of trances for ritual and/ or healing purposes throughout the Ancient World - eg Ancient Egyptian "Sleep Temples", and Ancient Greek religious rituals such as the Elusynian "Mysteries". Oracles (eg the Ancient Greek "Delphic Oracle"), seers, mystics et al have used deliberately induced trances since time immemorial.

Many Early Christian Saints and mystics of other monotheisms (notably the Islamic Sufic tradition) did (and do!) likewise. Hypnosis is as old as Humankind, and the first "hypnotists" were almost certainly shaman, healers, and spiritual guides in prehistoric societies.

Most tribal societies engaged (and continue to engage) in "Shamanic" rituals, trance dancing etc (particularly to invoke "animal spirits" etc for guidance in hunting), and trance inducing dance, drumming etc are long established as an element of most pagan religious practices.

The first well documented practitioner of hypnosis in modern times was Abbe Faria, an C18th Portuguese Goan monk, who used intense eye fixation and deliberate suggestions and commands to induce trance (he called it "lucid sleep") in susceptible people.

Faria was meticulous in observing and documenting who might be responsive, and conducted numerous experiments, applying a remarkably "modern" methodology: controlled studies; "double blinds"; "control groups", plus basic statistical analysis of measurable outcomes etc.. He noted the power of suggestion (and what today would be called the "placebo effect") in helping people overcome or manage what he recognized as "psychosomatic" conditions, although, of course, such terminology did not exist back then! He was very rationalist in approach, rejecting totally any notion of "magic", and insisting that the power of "healing" was entirely in the subject's mind, seeing himself simply as a guide or facilitator helping troubled people to better manage their own lives. In short, he was the first modern psychotherapist/ hypnotherapist and "life coach"!

Faria ended his life in Revolutionary France. For a time he enjoyed a certain celebrity in fashionable intellectual and Rationalist circles, but later fell foul of certain revolutionary leaders, and disappeared some time during the Great Terror - no-one knows what became of him.

Faria's work and ideas were well known to Anton Mesmer, and later Dr James Braid, the Scottish surgeon, who coined the term "hypnotism", and is generally regarded as the "Father" of its scientific application in medicine and psychology. In a very real sense, however, it is Abbe Faria who deserves to be remembered as "the first hypnotist" in the sense that the term is used today.