Complete Hypnotism by A. Alpheus: Re: Visioned | eBook

Complete Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism is a modern, updated edition of A. Alpheus’s fascinating 1903 exploration of hypnosis, mesmerism, suggestion, telepathy, clairvoyance and spiritualist phenomena.

Part historical document and part modern investigation, the book shows not only what people believed at the beginning of the twentieth century, but how those beliefs helped shape the questions scientists are still asking about the human mind.

The original text has been carefully modernised for today’s reader while preserving its period ideas, arguments and extraordinary examples.

Each chapter is then followed by a new What We Now Know section examining the same subject through modern psychology, neuroscience, medicine and historical research.

The result is both a remarkable glimpse into the early history of hypnotism and an accessible guide to what science now tells us about hypnosis, suggestion, memory, perception, stage hypnotism, self-hypnosis and supposed paranormal abilities.

Chapter 1: How to Hypnotize

The original text: Alpheus explains classic hypnotic inductions, fixation methods, suggestion, rapid techniques and the qualities he believed made an effective hypnotist.

What We Now Know: Modern research explores hypnotic induction, hypnotisability, expectation, cooperation, stage hypnosis, Milton Erickson and the claims surrounding NLP.

Chapter 2: Amusing Experiments

The original text: A collection of remarkable stage demonstrations involving locked hands, hallucinations, imaginary objects, apparent burns and post-hypnotic suggestion.

What We Now Know: Discover how expectation, social pressure, volunteer selection, absorption and performance help explain the extraordinary behaviour seen in stage hypnosis.

Chapter 3: The Stages of Hypnotism

The original text: Alpheus describes Charcot’s famous stages of lethargy, catalepsy and somnambulism, together with rigid limbs, magnets, memory and prolonged hypnotic sleep.

What We Now Know: Modern psychology explains why Charcot’s fixed stages disappeared and how suggestion, functional neurological symptoms and the expectations of the Salpêtrière Hospital helped shape what doctors observed.

Chapter 4: How the Subject Feels Under Hypnotization

The original text: First-hand accounts explore what hypnosis feels like, including altered awareness, amnesia, heightened sensation, music, imagination and unusual changes in perception.

What We Now Know: Modern research examines absorption, involuntary experience, hypnotic amnesia, altered perception and why vivid sensations should not be confused with clairvoyance or supernatural powers.

Chapter 5: Self-Hypnotization

The original text: Can people hypnotise themselves? Alpheus considers self-induced trance, unusual experiments, visions, religious experiences and the strange inner worlds of the mind.

What We Now Know: Self-hypnosis is compared with meditation, absorption and dissociation, while frightening historical accounts and claims of mass hypnosis are placed in modern psychological context.

Chapter 6: Simulation

The original text: Alpheus confronts one of the oldest problems in hypnosis: how can anyone tell whether a hypnotic subject is genuine, exaggerating or simply pretending?

What We Now Know: Martin Orne’s famous simulator experiments introduce demand characteristics and the continuing debate between state theories and sociocognitive explanations of hypnosis.

Chapter 7: Criminal Suggestion

The original text: Could hypnosis force an ordinary person to steal, attack or even murder? Alpheus examines experiments designed to discover whether hypnotic suggestion can overcome morality.

What We Now Know: Real-world examples including Derren Brown’s The Assassin, the CIA’s MKUltra programme, Martin Orne’s experiments and Stanley Milgram’s obedience research reveal a more complicated story of authority, perception and manipulation.

Chapter 8: Dangers in Being Hypnotized

The original text: Alpheus considers the supposed dangers of hypnosis, including loss of control, harmful suggestions, unreliable operators and disturbing effects upon memory.

What We Now Know: Modern false-memory research, hypnotic regression and the recovered-memory controversies show that one of the genuine risks lies not in being trapped in hypnosis, but in becoming sincerely convinced of something that never happened.

Chapter 9: Hypnotism in Medicine

The original text: Early doctors experiment with hypnosis for surgery, pain relief, dentistry, childbirth and the treatment of disease.

What We Now Know: Modern hypnotherapy and clinical hypnosis are examined through real research into hypnoanalgesia, surgical procedures, dentistry, childbirth, irritable bowel syndrome and smoking cessation.

Chapter 10: Hypnotism of Animals

The original text: Chickens, rabbits, snakes and other animals appear to become hypnotised, raising questions about whether hypnotism exists beyond the human mind.

What We Now Know: Animal hypnosis is reconsidered through tonic immobility, defensive behaviour, snake charming and the many different reasons animals may become strangely motionless.

Chapter 11: A Scientific Explanation of Hypnotism

The original text: Alpheus attempts to explain hypnosis through the science of his time, considering the brain, blood flow, sleep, reflexes, suggestion and the mysterious relationship between thought and bodily change.

What We Now Know: EEG, PET and modern brain imaging reveal what happens during hypnosis, while dissociation, the hidden observer and changing brain networks show why there is still no single simple explanation.

Chapter 12: Telepathy and Clairvoyance

The original text: Mind-reading, distant vision, apparitions, deathbed experiences and experiments in telepathy take Alpheus beyond conventional hypnotism into the paranormal.

What We Now Know: Ganzfeld experiments, unconscious cueing, coincidence and confirmation bias reveal why telepathy remains controversial and why extraordinary experiences can feel convincing even when reliable paranormal abilities remain unproven.

Chapter 13: The Confessions of a Medium

The original text: The celebrated medium Leonora Piper becomes the centre of an investigation into trance, spirit communication, hidden memory, multiple consciousness and possible telepathy.

What We Now Know: Cold reading, hot reading, the Barnum effect, ideomotor movement and sincere anomalous experiences offer modern ways of understanding how mediumship can feel astonishingly real without requiring communication with the dead.

The book concludes by following these ideas into the present day, from modern hypnosis and hypnotherapy to television psychics, social-media mediums and continuing claims of hidden mental powers.

This edition of the public domain classic is ideal for readers interested in hypnosis, hypnotism, mesmerism, psychology, neuroscience, self-hypnosis, hypnotherapy, stage hypnosis, suggestion, mind control, false memory, telepathy, clairvoyance, spiritualism, psychic phenomena, mediumship and the history of the paranormal.