Modern Trends in Hypnosis

Book excerpt: The 9th International Congress of Hypnosis and Psychosomatic Medicine expresses the continuity in the effort to gain scientific knowledge of hypnosis and scientific status for it, ever since the 1st International Congress for Experimental and Therapeutic Hypnotism was held in Paris in 1889, attended by many of the best-remembered psychiatrists and psychologists of the day - men such as Babinski, Bernheim, Binet, Delboeuf, Freud, James, Lombroso, F. W. H. Myers, Ribot, and many others. The continuity was broken by the period of reduced interest in hypnosis between the time of the 2nd Inter national Congress for Hypnotism in Paris in 1900, and the revival of interest shown by the 3rd International Congress for Hypnosis and Psychosomatic Medicine in Paris in 1965. Since then, the Congresses have met more regularly, making the one of which this is the report, the 9th. The programs of these Congresses have become increasingly rich through the years, with many of the older problems still with us but now studied more dispassionately in the light of new knowledge and new scientific methods in the design of investigations and the vali dation of scientific findings.