smer, an 18th century physician, believed that
hypnosis occurred as a result of "vital fluids" drawn from a magnet or
lodestone and which drew their unique qualities from the sun, moon and
stars. Charcot, as well as Pierre Janet and others, was convinced that
hypnosis was a form of hysteria and that only hysterics could be
hypnotized. The former (Mesmer) thought further that metal became imbued
by the solar qualities, and his system is also known as metalogy by
which he meant the proper application of metals. Naturally, these
theories have been largely abandoned today, although there are still a
few who think that hypnosis is a form of hysteria.

Some pioneers, notably Dr. William S. Kroger, a psychiatrically-oriented
obstetrician and gynecologist who limits his practice to hypnotherapy,
believe hypnosis is a conviction phenomenon which produces results that
parallel the phenomena produced at Lourdes and other religious healing
shrines. His formula is that faith, hope, belief and expectation, all
catalyzed by the imagination, lead inevitably to hypnosis. He, like
Emile Coue before him, is convinced that you cannot "will" yourself to
be hypnotized, and that whenever the will and the imagination come into
conflict, the imagination wins out. This fits in perfectly, of course,
with the author's already discussed visual-imagery technique which
requires a high degree of imagination. Dr. Kroger, like a few others,
has proved to his own satisfaction that all hypnotic phenomena can be
produced at a non-hypnotic level.

A large number of hypnotists, including the author, has come to believe
that hypnosis is a semantic problem in which words are the building
blocks to success. Not just any words, but words which "ring a bell" or
tap the experiential background of the subject. This is why "sleep"
continues to be in the lexicon of the hypnotist even though hypnosis is
the antithesis of sleep. The word is used because hypnosis superficially
resembles sleep inasmuch as the eyes usually are closed, the body in a
posture of complete relaxation. Actually, the mind is hyperacute.
Pavlov, however, believed that there was an analogy between sleep and
hypnosis in that each involved cerebral inhibition. Words, of course,
would be of little use without the added effect of his conditioned
reflexology.

Probably the most widely held theory is that hypnosis is a transference
phenomenon in which the prestige of the hypnotist and his relationship