ABSTRACT
Hypnosis has been in and out of favour over the last 200 or so years. Sometimes external factors, such as warfare or the discovery of chemical anaesthetics, have caused it to be neglected; sometimes internal factors, such as the extravagant claims of practitioners, have dismayed more sober-minded enquirers. Even now, for all the intensity and excellence of the academic research that has gone into the subject for the last fifty years, the prevalence of New Age forms of hypnotherapy is threatening to tarnish its reputation. And hypnosis has a fragile reputation: it doesn't take a lot for the general public to remember that it used to be thought of as a load of rubbish. But it simply refuses to go away. In the history of science and medicine in particular, countless theories have run out of fuel and become stranded on the highway, but all the many attempts to drive hypnosis off the road have failed. Its staying power is telling evidence not just of its fascination, but of the fact that it is real and effective.
