Where Does the Term 'Hypnosis' Come From?

In 1841 a Scottish physician living in Manchester attended a demonstration of the art of mesmerism by the Swiss magnetiser Charles Lafontaine. Although not initially impressed, putting the effects he witness down to trickery, James Braid, was sufficiently curious to attend a second performance a few nights later which served to dispel his former prejudices.

So much so in fact that he went on to undertake his own experiments with, among others, his own wife and to invent the word ‘hypnosis’ to describe the psychological state which up to this point had been known as mesmerism.

Braid derived the term hypnosis from Greek word ‘hypnos’ meaning sleep. He later tried to replace it with the word ‘monoideism’ to reflect his developing understanding hypnosis as a state of concentration rather than sleep in the true sense of the word. But the original word stuck and with it our modern conception of hypnosis was born.