very deep trance is when the border between sleep and extreme hypnosis starts to grow thin. Some of the patients that can go this deep have actually dreamed, while still being fully aware of everything around them. Estimates of susceptibility vary greatly because of the continued disagreement concerning the exact nature of hypnosis. Some authorities claim that anyone is potentially hypnotizable and that failure to induce a hypnotic trance is due to either poor technique on the part of the hypnotist or resistance on the part of the subject. There are also researchers who assert that hypnotism, as it is generally understood, does not exist at all, and thus the question of susceptibility is irrelevant. They believe that hypnosis is not a result of some alteration in the subject's capacities or mental state but is a consequence of "role playing" based upon the subject's preconceptions of how hypnotized persons behave, their expectations, and their willingness to volunteer and eagerness to experience something unusual. When hypnosis first gained the attention of scientists, it was called animal magnetism or mesmerism, after Franz Mesmer of Vienna. In the late 18th century, Mesmer claimed to use it to heal certain ailments. He thought some sort of magnetism was transferred from him to his patients, and that it changed their body fluids. For many years mesmerism was denounced by medical practitioners and generally associated with stage performances and superstition. In the 19th century, before the discovery of anesthetics, physicians started to use mesmerism in surgery. They found that a deeply hypnotized patient would lie perfectly still and appear unaffected by pain, even during operations as serious as an amputation. Around 1840 a doctor named James Braid created the term hypnosis, which means a "nervous sleep." The new name was more acceptable than mesmerism, with its reputation of fraud, and it soon replaced the older term. In the mid- t...
