ABSTRACT
Oddly enough, a considerable boost was given to the scientific study of hypnotism by the rash of stage hypnotists who trekked around Europe in the later nineteenth century. Two in particular were contacted and studied by academic psychologists – a Dane from Odense called Carl Hansen (1833–97) and a Belgian who called himself Donato (real name A.E. d'Hont, 1845–1900). Their shows reveal all the stock-in-trade of the modern TV hypnotist: the human plank, inability to move or speak, acting (often in a demeaning manner) under the influence of hallucinations and so on. Donato would ask his subjects to place their hands, stretched out, on his, which were resting flat on a table, and then to press down as hard as they could. By these simple means he could induce a trance state – remember that focused attention and the exclusion of distracting data are essential to trance induction. Followers of the Nancy school, especially Enrico Morselli in Italy, were certainly influenced by Donato's methods. Meanwhile, Liégeois himself took lessons from Hansen, who was one of the greatest evangelists for hypnotism. Hansen travelled to Sweden, Finland, Germany, Austria, France, Britain and Russia, and received good press coverage wherever he went. He asked his subjects to focus their attention on a shiny piece of glass, while he made a few passes over their faces, lightly closed their eyes and mouth, and gently stroked their cheeks.
