Ever since Franz Anton Mesmer induced trance-like states in his Parisian subjects in the late eighteenth century, dressed in long purple robes, hypnosis has been associated with performance, power and the occult.

 It has exerted a powerful hold over the cultural imagination, featuring in novels and films including Bram Stoker’s Dracula and George du Maurier’s Trilby - and it was even practiced by Charles Dickens himself.

But despite some debate within the medical establishment about the scientific validity of hypnosis, it continues to be used today as a successful treatment for physical and psychological conditions. Scientists are also using hypnosis to learn more about the power of suggestion and belief.

With:

Catherine Wynne, Reader in Victorian and Early Twentieth-Century Literature and Visual Cultures at the University of Hull

Devin Terhune, Reader in Experimental Psychology at King’s College London

And

Quinton Deeley, Consultant Neuropsychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, and Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, where he leads the Cultural and Social Neuroscience Research Group.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (Vol. 1, Basic Books, 1970)

William Hughes, That Devil’s Trick: Hypnotism and the Victorian Popular Imagination (Manchester University Press, 2015)

Asti Hustvedt, Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Bloomsbury, 2011)

Fred Kaplan, Dickens and Mesmerism: The Hidden Springs of Fiction (first published 1975; Princeton University Press, 2017)

Wendy Moore, The Mesmerist: The Society Doctor Who Held Victorian London Spellbound (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2017)

Michael R. Nash and Amanda J. Barnier (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Hypnosis Theory, Research, and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2012)

Judith Pintar and Steven Jay Lynn, Hypnosis: A Brief History (John Wiley & Sons, 2008)

Amir Raz, The Suggestible Brain: The Science and Magic of How We Make Up Our Minds (Balance, 2024)

Robin Waterfield, Hidden Depths: The Story of Hypnosis (Pan, 2004)

Alison Winter, Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain (Chicago University Press, 1998)

Fiction:

Thomas Mann, Mario and the Magician: & other stories (first published 1930; Vintage Classics, 1996)

George du Maurier, Trilby (first published 1894; Penguin Classics, 1994)

Bram Stoker, Dracula (first published 1897; Penguin Classics, 2003)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production