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The Nancy school: hypnosis as suggestion
At Nancy, Hippolyte Bernheim treated hypnosis as an effect of suggestion, against the Salpêtrière view of it as a pathological state. He learned the method from Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault. Bernheim's books of 1884 and 1886 set out the case.
- Where it sits
- Clinical psychologyAssessment or treatment of people with distress or disorder.
- Evidence level
- DocumentedThe event or practice is documented by primary or authoritative sources.
- Sources inspected
- 2 of 21 with the relevant text, company document or archive item checked, 1 as an abstract or reference article, 0 not verified.
What happened
Hippolyte Bernheim, a professor of medicine at Nancy, visited Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault's clinic around 1882 and began using hypnosis on patients. In 1884 he published De la suggestion dans l'état hypnotique et dans l'état de veille. In 1886 he published De la suggestion et de ses applications à la thérapeutique. Freud translated Bernheim's suggestion books into German, with the first German edition listed as 1888. Christian Herter's English translation appeared in 1889.
The psychological idea
Bernheim held that the state of hypnosis is produced by a psychical influence, not a physical or fluid one. In his preface he says it is not a neurosis analogous to hysteria, and that the signs resembling hysteria are due to the operator's suggestion. The translator's preface says the view of hypnotism as a pathological state, best studied in hysteria, largely follows the Paris school of Charcot.
In practice
The documented practice was clinical. Bernheim gives Liébeault the credit for first introducing the therapeutic application and says he owes his method of inducing sleep to him. The treatise is titled Suggestive Therapeutics. A reference entry says Bernheim popularized the word psychotherapy. No commercial or advertising use appears in the sources opened for this record.
Why it mattered
Suggestion became a working term in clinical medicine at Nancy. Other records on this site show later writers using the same word for crowds and for advertising. The sources opened for this record do not show a direct causal line from Nancy to advertising.
Limits and qualifications
The portions of the treatise read are a physician's argument, not a report of controlled experiment. The reference entry says Charcot later moved closer to the Nancy position. It also says that in 1888 Freud turned to Charcot for support in criticizing Bernheim, and that after 1889 he used some of Bernheim's ideas against Charcot. Only the English translation was read, not the French originals, and the 1884 and 1886 dates rest on the reference entry.
Evidence behind the claims
Bernheim published De la suggestion dans l'état hypnotique et dans l'état de veille in 1884 and De la suggestion et de ses applications à la thérapeutique in 1886; Freud translated his suggestion books into German, with German editions listed from 1888, and Herter's English translation appeared in 1889.
Around 1882 Bernheim visited Liébeault's clinic and began using hypnosis on patients.
Bernheim states that hypnosis is brought about by a psychical and not a physical or fluid influence, that it is not a neurosis analogous to hysteria, and that hysteria-like signs are due to the operator's suggestion.
Bernheim gives Liébeault the honor of first introducing the therapeutic application and says he owes his method of inducing sleep to him.
The translator's preface says the view of hypnotism as a pathological state, best studied in hysteria, is largely the consequence of the Paris school, of which Charcot is the chief exponent.
A reference entry says Bernheim popularized the term psychotherapy, that Charcot later moved closer to the Nancy position, and that Freud turned to Charcot in 1888 for support against Bernheim and later used some of Bernheim's ideas.
People involved
- Hippolyte Bernheim. Physician at Nancy, author of the suggestion books
- Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault. Nancy physician who used hypnosis therapeutically
- Jean-Martin Charcot. Head of the Salpêtrière school, the opposing view
In the Psy101 course
- OpenStax Psychology 2e, section 4.6: Other States of ConsciousnessChapter 4, States of Consciousness. Context. The section discusses this topic.The section has a Hypnosis heading and says therapists may use relaxation and suggestion.
This is course relevance only. It is not evidence for the historical or corporate claims on this page.See the full course map.
Sources and inspection
2 of 2 sources were opened and read at the level shown. A source marked as not verified supports no claim on this page by itself.
- [1]Suggestive Therapeutics: A Treatise on the Nature and Uses of HypnotismBernheim, H.. G. P. Putnam's Sons (translated by C. A. Herter from the second French edition); scan at Internet Archive, 1889. Book. Primary source.Relevant text checkedRead the first 100,000 characters (of about 918,000) of the OCR text as returned by the fetch tool: title page, both prefaces and the introduction. Later chapters were not read.
- [2]Bernheim, Hippolyte (1840-1919)Encyclopedia.com (reprinted biographical entries). Encyclopedia.com, Undated. Reference work. Secondary account.Reference article readRead the reprinted biographical entries. It is a reference summary, used only for dates, translations and the outline of the dispute.
Access note: The 1884 and 1886 French originals were not opened. Dates come from a reference entry; the English translation was read for Bernheim's own statements.
Independent source review: Claude review agent, independent of the research agent, 2026-10-21. Verdict: pass-with-edits.