h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This article is reasonable enough but a few comments are called for.

i) The word "hypnotism" was popularised by Braid, although cognate terms seem to have been in use by mesmerists in earlier years.

ii) Briad used "hypnotism" as an abbreviation for "Neurohypnotism" as in the title of his seminal book "Neurypnology" (i.e., Neuro-hypnology). It does not mean "sleep" as normally understood but "sleep of the nervous system". The similarities between hypnosis and sleep are very limited, hypnosis is not sleep or (as one of teh articles on this site suggests) a state between waking and sleep.

iii) This article says that hypnotic regression therapy (hypnoanalysis) takes 10-20 sessions. Some famous proponents of hypnoanalysis conduct their therapy in one or two sessions. Some analyses, however, seem to go on much longer.

Don.

I have a couple of questions on hypnosis which have bothered me for ages.

1: I live in Germany and, if I had to go to a therapist or, (heaven forbid!) if I subjected myself to any form of hypnosis for entertainment's sake, I would be spoken to in German. As German is not my mother tongue, would my subconscience understand the hypotist?

2: I read somewhere that people prone to phantasising were more likely candidates for hypnosis. You only vaguely state that some are more susceptible than others but not why. In the other thread in this forum, "Hypnotist" is also only vague. Has any research been done on that?

3: How true are the stories that people can go back into "earlier lives" under hypnosis and speak foreign languages, or their own language but as it was spoken several centuries ago? And in these cases, how do the subjects react to commands in modern English (or whatever language the hypnotist is using)